I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Meta in Apr 2013
Interview
I applied online through Linkedin and got an email from a FB recruiter asking whether we can arrange sometime to talk on phone. We then had a quick talk on phone about what I was doing, what I had done related to software development, and how was an interview process with FB. Then he said he will arrange a phone interview for me. The first phone interviewer was nice and I can answer the question easily although I did not understand the question correctly. But he was very patient explaining it to me and I finally did it right. After a week I received an email from the recruiter saying that the response to the first interview was positive and they wanted to schedule another phone interview. The second phone interview was a week later with a Chinese girl who did not sound friendly or enthusiastic but with a cold voice. I felt that she did not like me and would not want me to be in FB since the beginning of the interview. This made me very nervous and confused, and I lost my confidence. Hence, even though the question was quite simple but I did not do it well. I can guess what happen next: I got a "thanks from FB" the day after.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The questions are easy and common, but I was very disappointed with the second phone interviewer. The first interviewer was very nice and supportive. The first question was to return the value of a roman number given in a string. The question for the second phone interview was to print out the paths to all leaves of a binary tree.
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.
