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Meta London Interview Experience for Internship || May, 2022 [Offer -> Rescinded]

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Status: 3rd year, B.Tech in CSE
Position: Intern
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date: May 22, 2022

The interview process had 4 rounds:

Round 1 -> Technical Phone Screening
This was a 45 minutes round focused solely on DSA.

  • Started with the introductions from both ends and then he gave me the first question.
  • The first question was from Binary Search Tree with a difficulty of Leetcode Medium.
  • Second question was an array question which had to solved using sliding window to optimise it. This question was also of Medium difficulty.

Solved both the question easily explaining my thought process first. The interviewer seemed to be completely happy with my solution and he even gave me a hint to start preparing for the second round.

Round 2 -> Technical Round 1

  • This round was an hour long interview starting off with the discussion from my resume. We discussed about my projects, my open source contributions, my previous internships in detail.
  • The interviewer then gave me a coding question from Graphs which was initially stated as a Binary Tree and hence had to identify the pattern. It was a variation of Topological Sorting. It took me 5 minutes to understand the pattern, but when I did, I directly started coding it out and explaining the approach along with it. (Difficulty -> Medium)
  • Now, since I did not take much time in the first question, he gave me a Hard level question from Arrays and Heaps. After discussing a lot with the interviewer, I figured out that it was a question that had to be solved using Heaps.

Solved both the questions and I was positive that I should get the call for the next round and eventually received a mail regarding the same after 8 days.

Round 3 -> Technical round 2

  • Again started off with the introductions. This time the interviewer was very experienced, like she was having as experience of 10+ years in the industry, previously worked at Netflix, Amazon and Microsoft.
  • The first question was a Digit DP question of Hard difficulty. At that point I knew about other patterns of Dynamic Programming, but did not know about Digit DP. The interviewer was very supportive in this round. She gave me 2-3 hints in the beginning and I took sometime to understand the problem statement and tested my various approaches using sample test cases. She was actually impressed with my problem-solving skills, how I broke the problem into smaller problems and solving one objective at a time. Finally I understood the approach, the interviewer gave me a green signal and then I coded the solution.
  • The second question was from Binary Trees with a Medium-Hard difficulty, but I had already solved the question earlier so directly started coding the solution and explaining the approach side by side. The interviewer was again impressed how I managed the time by saving a lot of time in the second question after taking considerable amount of time in the first one. She actually wanted to test me on CS fundamentals after the two questions.
  • After both the coding questions, she started asking questions from OOPS, DBMS and OS. She wanted me to explain each and every thing in details and wanted to test my basics. This part was kinda discussion-based where she was also sharing some of her experiences. Also, she asked me some basic System Design terminologies.

By the end of this round, she seemed to be pretty happy and therefore, I was expecting a positive result.

Round 4 - Hiring Manager Round + HR
This was slightly easy and chilled out as compared to the other rounds. She grilled me on the basis of Low Level Design Questions. She discussed in detail about my previous internships.
She also asked me HR type questions and wanted to learn about my willingness to accept new technologies. She explained me the time for which I was going to be hired and also gave me a hint that I was selected. Also, she explained that the team is a fast-paced team and hence my seriousness is expected. (This was just told so that I don't make myself comfortable after cracking a Big Tech). Actually, She was very sweet and discussed a lot of things with her.

So, 15 days later I received a mail from my recruiter that I have received an offer from Meta London and asked me to send my ID proof details.
But, things changed when I then received a mail after 10 days regarding their restructuring, and therefore my offer was revoked. But, the recruiter mentioned, she would keep my resume handy and let me know if any such similar openings come up in the future.

Tips for Meta:

  • Solve and practice heirarchical data structures such as Binary Trees, BST and Graphs nicely. They tend to focus a lot on these.
  • Have patience in between two rounds while waiting for the feedback. It usually takes longer than expected for them to get back. Also, keep preparing durig this time.
  • Solve questions mostly from Medium level.
  • Have in depth and clear understanding of Data Structures and their internal implementations. Also, study the CS Fundamentals thoroughly.

All the best!!!

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