I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (New York, NY) in Jul 2021
Interview
The interview process is overall extremily smooth -- the recruiters in particular are very helpful and give you lots of information about what to expect. The interview overall is very focused on business acumen as opposed to technical skills. This reflects the role at Meta where your most important asset is using data to influence business decisions -- which often doesn't require anything beyond asking good questions and producing some good summary statistics. There were 4 half hour parts: 1. A "very broad" business problem. Such as "how do you evaluate the success of Newsfeed?" 2. A somewhat narrower but still open ended problem such as "what do you do about 'fake' friend requests"? 3. A SQL section -- "how would you query X from this table?" 4. A stats teaser -- "if a doctor has a test with 99% accuracy but only 5% of the population has a disease, what is the chance their patient has the disease with a positive test?" (Bayes Rule)
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Q: What would you do about the problem of "fake" friend requests
Tough interview overall—definitely not what I expected. The technical rounds were intense, particularly when they had me design an A/B test for the News Feed ranking algorithm. I had to discuss metrics and sample sizes in detail. Lucky for me, the time I spent on PracHub right before the interview helped me nail that deep-dive question as it mirrored what I practiced. The behavioral questions felt standard but were still challenging. After a whirlwind process, they extended an offer, which I happily accepted.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design an A/B test to evaluate a new ranking algorithm for the Facebook News Feed. Walk through metric selection (engagement, time-spent, MSI, well-being), unit of randomization given network effects between friends, sample size and power calculations, how you'd detect novelty effects vs. true lift, and how you'd handle a guardrail metric regressing while the primary metric is up.
Total 7 rounds: first round for resume screening, second for technical screening, then for on-site virtual with 4 interviews back to back, then hiring manager round after team matching and then salary negotiation with HR
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Meta’s evaluation rubrics focus heavily on "Product Thinking over Fancy Math". Interviewers want to see if you can operate like a product owner with an analytical mindset, navigating messy scenarios affecting billions of users
The Interview Process is very structured -
First Tech Screening round - 45 mins (usually can extend a bit depending on the interviewer)
- 2 SQL Questions ( Medium to Hard ) - based on Joins
Full Loop - 4 rounds 45 mins each.
- SQL
- Behavioral
- Analytical Execution - stats & prob, A/B testing, case study
- Analytical Reasoning - Case study
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Questions on Bayes Theorem, Probability distribution, etc.