I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA) in Dec 2012
Interview
I was contacted by a FB recruiter via LinkedIn and had two rounds of interviews. The first round was with two PMs and the second with three more.
Each interview focused on one particular subject, such as:
- Logic. Estimate something, such as how many email messages are sent in a day worldwide via mobile devices. Identify the most important factors when determining whether product X is successful or not. They want to see that you can think quantitatively and have a clear thought process.
- Vision. Imagine an industry 10 years out (transportation, local commerce, fashion, etc.) and describe it. This was the interview I most enjoyed, as it's really about brainstorming and thinking BIG. The key is to identify trends and have a framework for evaluating what could be.
- Design. Typical PM stuff -- design a new feature or product. What's the framework for identifying needs and segments. Identify solutions and priorities. Draw rough wireframes.
- Cultural Fit. Are you a good person? Will you fit with other FBers? They ask you typical interview questions here like: why do you want to work at FB, what would you most want to work on, etc.
Overall the PMs are exceptionally nice and really tried to make our meetings more like conversations rather than interviews. Honestly I wasn't sure about joining FB before I interviewed but was convinced during the course of the interviews by the really smart and nice guys I met during the process.
The process was relatively quick -- from the time of first contact to the offer was about a month. Overall, one of the best interview processes I've been through, and props to the Facebook PM management for actively training their PMs on how to interview!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Let's say you wanted to build the world's most popular mobile messaging product, and you needed to estimate how much network bandwidth would be used in a year. How would you go about doing this?
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA)
Interview
First an interview phone screen with a very knowledgable, followed by two phone interviews with current Facebook PMs. All the questions probed into how you thought about understanding users, features, technologies, and the vision you had for building things. People are friendly and smart but will definitely push you to justify your responses and be thoughtful.
They very much want to see how you think rather than have you talk about your CV.
There are specific interviews during the final on-site round covering (1) analytics, (2) usability and design, and (3) vision --e.g. what would you want to build if time/resources were not a constraint
Referred through a friend, phone interview first. Asked facebook product related questions, why facebook, why PM, normal stuff. Then skipped second phone screen to onsite interviews. 3 interviews, 1 logic based, 1 future trends based, and 1 product design based. The logic one was tricky but can be cracked with a little more prep.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What would you do if Mark Z. asked you to investigate whether we should switch from low-res images to hi-res images for the whole app?