Meta | E5 | London | July |Reject

Hi everyone,
I want to give back to this wonderful community by sharing my recent interview experience at Meta for an L5 software engineering position.
This was the very first time I interviewed with Meta. Earlier, I had interviewed with Amazon only, that too 3 years back. So, this was my second FAANG interview.

Screening:

1. https://leetcode.com/problems/lowest-common-ancestor-of-a-binary-tree/description/
2. https://leetcode.com/problems/powx-n/description/
   Feedback: Strong Hire

Coding Round 1 :
1: https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-remove-to-make-valid-parentheses/description/
2. https://leetcode.com/problems/validate-binary-search-tree/description/
Feedback : Strong Hire

Coding Round 2 :

1. https://leetcode.com/problems/nested-list-weight-sum/description/
2. https://leetcode.com/problems/k-closest-points-to-origin/description/
   Feedback : Strong Hire

Behaviour Round:

1. Tell me about your most proud project
2. Tell me about a time you had to pivot in your current work
3. Tell me about a time when you had to deal with difficult coworker
4. Tell me areas of improvement for your self
   Feedback : Hire

Design Round:
Ad click aggregator with 24 hour granularity only.
Feedback : Lean Hire

Verdict: Rejected in HC . They are not ready for a redo of design round. I had to ask :) .

My Observations:
I had preapred well for all the rounds and I had already seen/prepared these questions. But still outcome was not in my favour.
I feel time management is super important in design rounds. With introduction and questions by interviewer, you are effectively left with
25 to 30 mins only for the design round. Even if you have seen the question before, one random question from interviewer can throw you
off from whatever strategy you have. But one thing is for sure, taking an iterative approach will not land you anywhere. You have to come up with best possible solution quickly as time is very less.
I did not take any mock interviews for this and I cannot say how effective it would have been had I taken mock interviews. Maybe next time I will take some mock interview round :).

For behaviour questions, it always pays up to be prepared for them. I had prepared extensive stories out of my experience and gave my answers accordingly. I don't like to follow STAR format but answer questions more like story telling. How can you make your story really engaging? I always start by keeping this question in mind and communicate my answers accordingly.

For coding question, I was lucky enough to get straightforward meta tagged questions. Hence, they were a breeze for me.

Competition is super tough for FAANG and one mistake can cost you months of preparation. In the end I believe, you can prepare only so much. Interviewing is damn exhausting process. MY whole meta process went for 2 months. Luck matters a lot in interviews and it matters more in FAANG interviews. There is cool down of 1 year. I need to re-evaluate my goals and priorities and see If it makes sense to retry for Meta.

Does any one has insight into how HC makes their decision. Do they do it offline or do they meet face to face? My recruiter came back with results one day prior to what was mentioned in the email.