I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA) in Nov 2012
Interview
I met the recruiter in an event hosted by the university, and then send her my application. In one week, they schedule an interview for me.
It was 1-1 phone interview, purely technical. The interviewer asked me some small algorithm problems, and then asked me to write code. Sometimes they will ask you to optimize your first solution and, also, write the optimized code. They are very friendly, it's ok to ask for some hints and fix some minor bugs in code.
I had two phases of interviews, same style, and then got the offer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I cannot disclose it due to the confidential policy.
Recruiter call was pretty standard, first round was 2 Meta tagged LC mediums in 45 minutes. On-site was 2 coding sessions of 2 LC mediums, a system design interview and a behavioral interview with an engineering manager.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How do you answer if someone asks how long a deliverable or project will take?
The entire process usually takes 3–8 weeks, depending on scheduling and the specific role. Coding interviews heavily emphasize common DSA topics such as arrays, strings, trees, graphs, BFS/DFS, heaps, hash maps, and dynamic programming. System design becomes increasingly important for E4+ positions.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given an array of integers and a target value, return the indices of two numbers that add up to the target
Unexpectedly, the first question in the technical round felt familiar. It was about finding a subset of strings with unique character concatenation — same problem I had worked through on PracHub a few days earlier. The interview included a recruiter screen followed by a rigorous pair of technical interviews where I tackled data structures and algorithms alongside system design concepts. After successfully answering a few more challenging DSA questions, I received an offer. The entire experience was intense but ultimately rewarding, and I happily accepted the position.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given an array of strings, pick a subset whose concatenation contains no duplicate characters, and return the maximum possible length of that concatenation.
