I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at LinkedIn (San Francisco, CA) in Feb 2017
Interview
The process in LinkedIn is straight forward and perfect.
First you get a phone call from the HR about the process and the next steps.
Then you interview on phone with a Software Engineer - They ask you a couple of coding questions on a doc share site and you code it and review it with them. This question is pretty straight forward and simple. Think about the corner cases.
If the phone interview goes well, then they call you onsite (Sometimes there might be a second phone screen but mostly just the one)
Onsite has about 5 different kind of interviews and one Lunch session to learn about LinkedIn.
1. Coding Basics - More to do with the way we code than the code itself.
2. Coding extensively - Code as many questions as you can considering the corner cases.
3. Communications - Talk about projects, mentorship, communication - This is unique to LinkedIn and an interesting interview.
4. Manager Interview - Talk about your experience, growth, some general questions.
5. System Design Interview - Learn about all the basic components and structure your interview well.
You get your results in about 1 week from your interview.
I felt their process is very well organized and very apt.
Unfortunately, I did not make it. But I will definitely apply again.
For Coding, use LeetCode (premium for company questions) and CTCI (Cracking the Coding Interview), Learn about your current projects, read the engineering blogs if you can.
The interview process started with a screening round featuring one LeetCode medium problem and an SQL challenge. This was followed by a comprehensive onsite with five rounds: a LeetCode coding challenge, an SQL assessment, a system design interview, a hiring manager conversation to evaluate cultural fit, and finally a team matching phase to find the right team.
Interviewed for an SDE role. The process was well-organized and the recruiters were responsive throughout. That said, the technical rounds were significantly more challenging than expected — definitely come prepared to go deep. Overall a valuable experience regardless of the outcome.
That was a real stroke of luck — when I got to the coding round and encountered a question on finding the maximum subarray sum, I had literally seen this exact problem on prachub.com a few days earlier. The interview kicked off with a recruiter screen, followed by a technical phone interview. It was intense, especially with the focus on algorithms and data structures. I also faced some behavioral questions that challenged my experience. After a final onsite round, I received an offer and happily accepted. Overall, it was tough but rewarding.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given an integer array nums, find the contiguous subarray (containing at least one number) which has the largest sum and return its sum. Walk through Kadane's algorithm and explain the O(n) approach.
Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at LinkedIn with 3.1 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 50% positive. To compare, the company-average is 54.2% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer roles take an average of 23 days to get hired, when considering 316 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at LinkedIn overall takes an average of 28 days.
Common stages of the interview process at LinkedIn as a Software Engineer according to 316 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 48%
One on one interview: 19%
Skills test: 12%
Group panel interview: 8%
Presentation: 6%
Background check: 3%
Personality test: 2%
IQ intelligence test: 1%
Other: 1%
Drug test: 1%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -