A layoff recently pushed me to start job hunting.
A LinkedIn recruiter reached out in the second week of August. The phone screen happened the week after that. About a week later I got a call to set up the next stage, and the recruiter gave me two weeks to get ready for the full loop.
They offered either a virtual or an in-person loop and I went virtual. I would have liked a gap of two or three days between interviews, but that wasn't on the table. All five rounds were booked back to back over five weekdays.
I had a team-matching call with a Senior Manager a week after the loop ended, and the offer letter arrived before that week was over, with a start date four weeks out.
Round 0: Phone Screen
Two DSA problems, both taken from the list of questions LinkedIn has reportedly asked before on LeetCode. Both were medium.
Tips for this one:
- Talk through your approach and the solution before you start coding.
- After coding, do a real dry run and check edge cases and whether the implementation is correct.
- The code isn't run, so you need to be comfortable spotting bugs by tracing through it by hand.
Round 1: Coding
Again two DSA problems from that same set of previously asked LinkedIn questions, both medium. My tips are the same as for the phone screen.
Round 2: AI Coding
The task was to work out the throughput of train rides in an amusement park. This round went badly for me because I was dealing with some personal issues at the time. Looking back, I should have asked to reschedule.
Tip: practise solving DSA problems with an AI assistant, and read up on a strategy for AI-assisted coding rounds, since that would help here.
Round 3: Technical Communication
We went deep on one of my earlier projects: its system design, how I implemented it, and the technical decisions I made along the way.
Tip: have at least one project you can discuss both in depth and in breadth. Know its architecture, the trade-offs, the challenges, the implementation details, and why you chose what you chose.
Round 4: System Design
I was asked to design a calendar application, and I thought this round was fairly easy. I prepared by following a system design study plan and practising questions from past interview reports. You can also find solutions to the calendar design problem online.
Round 5: Host Manager
This one mixed system design, discussion of my past experience, and behavioural questions. The design question was to build the page that suggests jobs to a user on LinkedIn.
Team Matching
A week after the loop I spoke with a Senior Manager, who asked me a number of questions about my earlier experience. After that I got to ask about the role, the team, and what it would be responsible for.
The offer letter came by the end of that same week, with a joining date four weeks later.
Discussion
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