I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Seattle, WA) in Feb 2016
Interview
First recruiter phone screen, then 45 minutes on-site technical interview followed by a 4 rounds technical interview loop.
Interview process is good however it appears the interviewers are more focused on coding fast and coding without bugs. It is a test for memorization skills instead of actual algorithms knowledge and the candidate's ability to solve a real engineering problem. They are looking for canned solution, any out-of-box idea would get rejected.
I'd say the facebook hiring criteria would prefer younger coders who are just out of college and who had been exercised simple algorithms codings for a year or so. Leetcode.com is its bible. Experienced engineer may not be favored if you don't have time to sweep the coding exercises.
Took about a month altogether, which felt longer given the intensity of the process. Kicked off with a technical screening, followed by two rigorous coding interviews. The DSA question on binary tree vertical order traversal hit me hard at first, but then I recognized the prompt instantly — I had just worked through something similar on PracHub. The final round was focused on system design, and while I ended up receiving an offer, I ultimately declined it. Overall, a challenging experience that definitely sharpened my skills.
1 leetcode med, 1 leetcode hard. make sure you know your DSA and leetcode questions. I wasn't able to get an offer bc i didnt complete the second question. Got a reply 2 days later saying they would move on
Overall, the process took a little over two weeks, which felt a bit longer than I anticipated. After a quick screening, I went through two technical rounds focusing on coding and DSA concepts. One of the questions was a classic palindrome check; mid-way through, I realized it was something I had practiced on PracHub just days earlier. The final step was a casual behavioral interview. I was relieved to get an offer shortly after, which I happily accepted.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a string, determine if it is a valid palindrome considering only alphanumeric characters and ignoring case.