Originally Published on Quora and Featured on Forbes.
Typical Interview Process
1) 2 - 3 Telephonic interviews : The purpose of telephonic interviews is to screen you before flying you over for onsite interviews. Typically, the interviews focus on easy algorithmic questions where you are asked to write code on a shared code editor like collabedit. The interview also tries to evaluate whether there are red signals to your cultural fit into the company.
2) Onsite interviews : Assuming you have done well in the telephonic interviews, you are flown over to the Facebook ( / Google ) campus for onsite interviews. Typically, there are 4 interviews :
Interview 1 -2 ( Coding ) : Atleast a couple of interviews focus on your algorithmic skills ( nothing too advanced ) and your coding accuracy.
Interview 3 ( Coding or System design ) : This interview depends on your years of experience, and the position you are considered for. Senior engineers ( typically more than 2 years of experience ) are tested on their understanding of systems operating on huge scale and architectural design.
Interview 4 ( Behavioral ) : This interview tries to evaluate whether you will be a good cultural fit for the company. The interviewer tries to get answers to the following questions :
- Are you passionate about what the company is doing ?
- Can you work with a team towards a goal ?
- Your previous work experience ( Mostly around your pro-activity in making decisions and providing feedback at your previous work )
Now, to answer your question on how to prepare for the above interview process.
Preparation :
There are a lot of blogs and websites with scattered content when it comes to preparing for technical interviews, but I failed to find a free website which provides a structure to the content.
With that in mind, we worked on building InterviewBit which we believe solves this problem. It's free, and it provides a structured and engaging approach to your interview preparation, just like a personal coach.
Here is a link to Google interview quetions and Facebook interview questions.
Topic by topic approach :
No point approaching hashing or tree related problems till you understand how arrays and lists work.
Topic broken down into micro-concepts :
Simulating the interview experience when solving problems :
Problem solving is driven by :
- Solving questions asked in previous interviews
- Providing hints when stuck, along with a live expert help if you are still stuck
- Timer to push you towards solving within 40 minutes ( typical interview duration )
- Immediate feedback on failing corner cases
- Measurement of time complexity to suggest you to do better in case your solution is sub-optimal.
- Editorial solution approach in case you are stuck.
We have structured the content, so that you can complete the course within 3 months if you devote 1-2 hours daily. If you have higher commitment, you can finish the course within a month.
Disclaimer : These are my personal opinions, and are not endorsed by Facebook in anyway.
Top comments (1)
I landed a full-time offer at Microsoft last week. The process was similar as you mentioned.
Microsoft worries a lot about their candidates and for me that meant two tutorial interviews were they guided us on how to prepare for the real ones. The book “Cracking the Coding Interview” is a must but not everything is technical, good soft skills are a huge plus. In my case there was a first skype interview with a co-programming screen were my interviewer could see what i was coding. After that they sent me to Argentina (i’m fron Chile) for the four 45-min interviews in 4 hours straight with the same structure as you mentioned.
Even if you don’t land a job offer, the experience is awesome and you don’t loose anything trying!