I applied through college or university. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at LinkedIn in Dec 2014
Interview
The most professional and comfortable interviewing experience I've ever had.
I gave my resume to a LinkedIn engineer at my university career fair, and also applied online. A few weeks later, a recruiter called me and discussed what I was looking for in an internship. He then set up my first round technical interview: a single 1-hour phone interview, coding on collabedit. A few days after the first interview, my recruiter scheduled my second round technical interview: two 1-hour phone interviews, same format. The recruiter was very friendly and helpful in giving me advice and insight into the interviews. All three engineers I talked to were patient with me as I worked through the coding problems.
If I had to say anything negative about the experience, it would be the length (6 weeks between last interview and offer letter). However, the recruiter was quick to respond to my emails and was willing to take the time to explain exactly what was going on in the process.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Be sure to think out loud, and don't be afraid to ask for hints if you are stuck. Be comfortable coding without an IDE. They'll most likely have you talk out a solution outline before you start writing any code.
(hint: always consider recursion)
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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