Round 1 Behavioral
Questions: Was asked 11 standard behavior questions focused around principles listed in the preparation guide. The interviewer did not ask any follow-up questions to my responses. I prepared and presented end-to-end/complete stories to all of them. It was a rapid fire of Q&As.
Candidate's Approach
I prepared complete stories for each question based on the principles in the preparation guide, ensuring I could articulate my experiences clearly and concisely.
Interviewer's Feedback
Recruiter Verdict: Strong hire
Round 2 Coding
Questions: Two variants of top 25 most frequent meta tagged (Medium/Medium). Expected optimal solution for both questions.
Candidate's Approach
I explained and wrote down the algorithm in plain text first, coded it, and verbally ran through test cases. I also identified and fixed a couple of small mistakes in my code.
Interviewer's Feedback
Recruiter Verdict: Strong hire
Round 3 System Design
Questions: Per User Top K (instead of all time top K on hello interview). The interviewer recommended not drawing any diagrams on excalidraw due to time constraints.
Candidate's Approach
I approached the interview like I was writing a design document, which led to a productive brainstorming session. We discussed different design approaches, server-side handling, client-side offloading, trade-offs on cost, operational complexity, and how the system could evolve over time.
Interviewer's Feedback
Recruiter Verdict: Strong hire
Round 4 Coding
Questions: 2 questions (Medium/Hard) from top 100 meta tagged. I stumbled a little bit on the first question and needed a small but critical hint from the interviewer to solve it.
Candidate's Approach
I solved the second question optimally with no problems. I explained my thought process, wrote the algorithm in text, implemented it, and verbally ran through a couple of test cases.
Interviewer's Feedback
Recruiter Verdict: Hire/Lean Hire