Interviewed for the applied research scientist in recommendations position - there were 3 rounds - first 2 coding, last one was coding + research discussion. Overall, for a research position, seemed too heavy on coding - but it seemed it did not depend on how you performed, but whether the director round (who took one of the rounds) liked your background. Similar to most research orgs - bias for university tier and if you have published in NeurIPS, ICML, KDD and if they knew you.
I applied online. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at ByteDance (Singapur) in Oct 2021
Interview
TL;DR: Huge waste of time. Very confusing with a lot of interviews that will take you nowhere.
The interviews are scheduled one by one, so once I was approved in the previous round, a new one was scheduled.
After 3 technical interviews and a "homework assessment" (which I had to work on over a weekend), I received a slightly confusing message saying that I could interview with another team for another position they had open.
I agreed with the idea, and we started the process for the new position, after 2 other technical interviews (5 technical interviews in total by now) I was told I had been approved by the team, and I was going to be moved to their last step of the hiring process, a call with an HR representative to discuss a few other details before their offer.
Several days after the last HR interview, I did not receive any feedback, so I decided to contact the recruiter, and to my surprise, I simply received the "standard rejection" (e.g the team decided to not proceed...)
At this point I am very confused and disappointed (since I had been told I had been "approved" by their team previously), so I asked for further feedback, nothing concrete came on.
I was once again offered to interview for another role, but I was told I would have to go through their interview process all over again, e.g Another 3 technical rounds.
I decided to stop the hiring process at this point. I wish the company would've respected my time.
Huge waste of time, 1 technical assessment and several technical interviews, many messages exchanged via email for nothing, e.g no offer made, no proper feedback shared.
I applied online. I interviewed at ByteDance in Nov 2019
Interview
Dress codes at ByteDance are casual, no need to carry a hard copy of the resume. The interview took on time without any delay. Everything was very systematic.
First-round was the HR round
The second round was Manager round
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about yourself? What do you know about social media? Tell me about Bytedance ? Tell me about your previse experience?