I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at LinkedIn (Sunnyvale, CA) in Jan 2022
Interview
I applied for the position online.
A recruiter responded with an email but took two weeks to schedule an introductory phone call.
I spoke with the recruiter - the call lasted for about 30 minutes. The recruiter asked several questions about my experience and why I was willing to change my job. The recruiter explained the interview process and asked me time slots to schedule the next round, a one-hour technical phone screen round. Then there will be six other rounds - 3 technical and three behavioral.
Scheduled the phone screen on 2/1
Phone screen :
The interviewer introduced themselves and asked me to introduce myself. Then the interviewer asked me some questions about my previous experience.
The interviewer moved on to the coding part of the interview and asked me two coding questions.
I solved both the questions within the time limit, but the interviewer wanted me to optimize my space complexity for the first question. I couldn't do that.
After three weeks, the recruiter responded with an email that they would not move forward with me.
I reached out to the recruiter about the reason and feedback as I was confident about moving to the next round, but I did not receive any response.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
- Find the max depth of a binary tree.
- Find an element in a rotated sorted array.
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.