I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Meta in Sep 2010
Interview
I was contacted by the Facebook recruiter saying I need to solve one of the puzzle from the Facebook puzzles to start the interview process. I had solved one problem and then recruiter scheduled my phone interview.
The interview was good. The guy at the other end was nice and smart. The interview last for around 1 hr. It start by asking me about myself. He asked me about my choice between three platforms (linux kernel, MySql, JAVA script). I had chosen Mysql and he asked me why did I choose MySql. Other questions are described below.
I got response from the recruiter that they would like to keep me on hold, as they are finding difficulty in judging with large number of candidates.
I answered all questions correctly (I feel) except my written code (took around 10 to 15 mins) for the problem had one bug which he had noticed correctly and told me to resolve it. After resolving it he gave me the green signal.
One of the big problem (I guess one of the main factor in the interview) I faced that as I am OK with English, I was finding difficulty in understanding his accent. So many times the interviewer had to repeat his questions.
Lastly he asked me if I have any questions for them. I asked one question.
This is how end my phone interview with Facebook.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
You are going to take some numbers as an input from a file. You need to witer a program to find longest increasing sequence. You should process it as soon as you are taking an input. After finishing the last input immediately you should be able to tell the sequence.
Input: 1 5 3 4 6 4
Output: 3 4 6
Took about a month from start to finish, which felt longer than I expected. After a couple of initial phone screenings, I faced a challenging technical round focused on system design. It was during this round that I was asked to describe overcoming a major career challenge. Interestingly, I had just reviewed a similar framework on PracHub, which helped me articulate my thoughts clearly. Overall, I appreciated the depth of the process and ended up accepting the offer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe Overcoming a Major Challenge in Your Career
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.
