I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2+ months. I interviewed at LinkedIn in Oct 2018
Interview
I received the interview through Grace Hopper and did two back to back technical interviews in early October. Four weeks later, I heard back and learned that I had passed hiring committee and would now be moved onto the team matching phase. They asked for location and work preferences and also told me that although a team match was not guaranteed, things were looking pretty good. After waiting for six weeks, I was informed that all intern spots have been filled for the summer. I had talked to other candidates during this process and they said that LinkedIn could not even speed up the process for people with other offer deadlines. I know this may not necessarily be recruiting's fault, but I would have appreciated some more transparency about the team matching process earlier on. This has been the slowest and worst recruiting experience I have ever had.
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%
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