Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Meta with 3.3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 56% positive. To compare, the company-average is 56.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer roles take an average of 27 days to get hired, when considering 2,262 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Meta overall takes an average of 31 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Meta as a Software Engineer according to 2,262 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 39%
One on one interview: 24%
Skills test: 15%
Presentation: 8%
Background check: 4%
Group panel interview: 3%
Personality test: 3%
IQ intelligence test: 2%
Drug test: 1%
Other: 1%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Meta in Oct 2017
Interview
Applied on careers page for Software Engineer Internship and got contacted by a recruiter 3 months later. Got scheduled a video screening interview involving two technical questions:
1. Check for palindrome in string ignoring special characters. Ex: &^ab*ab is a palindrome in O(N) time and O(1) space.
2. Validate Binary Tree for being a Binary Search Tree in O(N) time and O(1) space.
Then I was scheduled a video onsite interview:
1. Determine whether array contains a contiguous sub-array whose elements sum up to a given number in O(N) time and O(1) space.
The interviewer didn't seem very interested at all in interviewing me and seemed in a hurry.
I solved the final interview question as well in the most optimal time. But I did not know this solution from the beginning. So I had to develop this algorithm myself in the interview. This took some time and getting there involved changing the initial algorithm I had thought of. Got rejection call 2 business days later. Reasons were:
- I didn't clarify the new approach when my original approach did not work, and started coding straight-away. But I clearly remember saying that original one doesn't work and needs changes rather than simply going on with my work. Also I had no clue about the new approach I was going to implement, and I was explaining the stuff along the way as I developed the solution, rather than explaining it all in the beginning. I don't know how else could have I clarified my approach because I simply could not have clarified in the beginning other than explaining that it needs changes and doesn't work this way which I did.
- The approach seemed overly complicated to the interviewer. I was considering to add more things in the solution to make it more efficient, when he asked if it needs anything more (but I didn't when he pointed out its not required), which was termed needless and considered "complicated".
- I didn't test any other test cases other than the ones given to me. But I didn't test other test cases even in the first interview. So I don't know why I was expected to do it here, since it was supposed to be same format as the last one as told to me by the recruiter.
Overall, this didn't seem a fair rejection to me and I was not satisfied with the result.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Check whether string is palindrome or not ignoring special characters. For ex: "&^ab*ab" is a palindrome.
Validate Binary Tree for being a Binary Search Tree in O(N) time and O(1) space.
Determine whether array contains a contiguous sub-array whose elements sum up to a given number in O(N) time and O(1) space.
Generic LeetCode-style questions, many tagged as Meta, so extensive preparation is required to perform well in the technical interview. The experience varies significantly - some interviewers provide hints and guidance, while others expect candidates to solve problems independently with minimal assistance.
Spoke with interviewer over video conferencing. He was very communicative . He answered my questions. Asked me BFS question. A question that involved BFS search. Given a matrix, I am suppose to find a path from top left to down right.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
A question that involved BFS search. Given a matrix, I am suppose to find a path from top left to down right.
The technical round hit me with a classic array manipulation problem: moving zeroes to the end without disrupting the order of non-zero elements. As I tackled it, I felt a wave of familiarity wash over me; I had just practiced a similar challenge on PracHub. The rest of the interview followed a straightforward path, with some easy behavioral questions sprinkled in. Overall, it felt very easy, but I wasn’t quite the right fit for what they needed, so I didn’t receive an offer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Move zeroes in an array to the end while keeping non-zero element order, in place