I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at LinkedIn in Jan 2015
Interview
Got contacted by the recruiter and schedule two rounds of technical phone interviews. first round was on time, but the second round the interviewer canceled in the last minute, and no one told me until I waited over 30 minutes. after the second round I got a thank you email. the recruiter and one of the engineer had a heavy accent which made things a little more difficult. the interview process was the same, first the engineer will tell you what their role is at LinkedIn and they will ask you about a most interesting recent project. they seemed to ask it because they were told to and not because they wanted to know about it. After that it was typical coding algorithm problems. some were harder than the other. If you took too much time solving one question and ended up not getting multiple questions it probably means you will not proceed to the next round. expect to solve two to three problems.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1) given a target and a sorted array, find the element that is strictly larger than the target.
i.e. {a,c,d,e} b output: c
2) find the max sum of continuous sequence in the array.
{2,-1,3,-5,3} output: 4
3) given a DNA sequence find pattern (hardest problem that you probably won't be expected to finish)
4) given intervals find overlap and return the length. (it is surprising how easy to make mistakes in this one, I ended up spending too much time fixing my own bug)
The interview process started with a screening round featuring one LeetCode medium problem and an SQL challenge. This was followed by a comprehensive onsite with five rounds: a LeetCode coding challenge, an SQL assessment, a system design interview, a hiring manager conversation to evaluate cultural fit, and finally a team matching phase to find the right team.
Interviewed for an SDE role. The process was well-organized and the recruiters were responsive throughout. That said, the technical rounds were significantly more challenging than expected — definitely come prepared to go deep. Overall a valuable experience regardless of the outcome.
That was a real stroke of luck — when I got to the coding round and encountered a question on finding the maximum subarray sum, I had literally seen this exact problem on prachub.com a few days earlier. The interview kicked off with a recruiter screen, followed by a technical phone interview. It was intense, especially with the focus on algorithms and data structures. I also faced some behavioral questions that challenged my experience. After a final onsite round, I received an offer and happily accepted. Overall, it was tough but rewarding.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given an integer array nums, find the contiguous subarray (containing at least one number) which has the largest sum and return its sum. Walk through Kadane's algorithm and explain the O(n) approach.