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.
Standard cookie cutter interview with a coding interview, a system design interview and culture interview. The coding part is basically leetcode. The system design is what you can find on many youtube videos. The culture one is more tricky as they want to see that you fit Meta's culture, not that you were doing great at your existing company. So skills like dealing with conflict without calling in managers is sought after.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
coding: I forgot, sorry
system design: design ticketmaster
culture: talk about past project; when you disagreed with a peer; how I resolved dissagreements, etc.