Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at YouTube with 3.4 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 79% positive. To compare, the company-average is 69.5% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer roles take an average of 35 days to get hired, when considering 41 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at YouTube overall takes an average of 26 days.
Common stages of the interview process at YouTube as a Software Engineer according to 41 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 44%
One on one interview: 21%
Skills test: 18%
Presentation: 5%
Group panel interview: 4%
Background check: 4%
Personality test: 3%
Other: 1%
Drug test: 1%
Here are the most commonly searched roles for interview reports -
I applied online. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at YouTube (San Bruno, CA) in Feb 2014
Interview
I was contacted by recruiter at first.
I had a phone screen which was fairly easy.
Recruiter then said I passed the screen and set up onsite interview.
She spoke to me briefly and told me what to prepare.
The onsite interviews went well but I thought I was slow in answering questions.
I was rejected despite getting answer right on 3/4 rounds because I was slow at coding. I didn't have coding fluidity also and I needed prompting. I was asked to apply in 1 year's time which they thought was required for me to get enough experience in coding.
Excellent experience overall
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Phone Screen:
1. Implement a function to penalize a student for over 3 continuous days of late arrival or over 2 days of absent in total.
2. Implement a stack. Include a method to find maximum element in the stack in O(1)
Onsite:
1. Auto-complete functionality with code.
2. Mirror reflecting an image with code.
3. Wiggle sort: i.e. rearrange an array such that A0 > A1 < A2 > A3 < A4 > .......... < AN in one pass.
4. Architectural implications of summing elements of an array in GORY detail.
It was a 3 round interview process with 2 technical rounds and 1 HR round. I was mostly asked DSA focused questions. Trees, heap, graphs and sliding window were mostly stressed for me.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Trees, heap, graphs and sliding window were mostly stressed for me.
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at YouTube in Oct 2024
Interview
Long and slow. There were four rounds of interviews spanning over a month and they don't get back to you quickly. The interviews themselves were ok and took an hour each.
The interview process was demanding as they asked several questions about my masters degree thesis and on my research projects, which were challenging to remember as I had done these more than 7 years ago.