TikTok Software Engineer Interview Experience — Three VO Rounds, Then Radio Silence After HR

TikTok·Software Engineer·Aug 2025
HR ScreenOnsiteNo responsemedium

A recruiter reached out to me in July for a team hiring push. I did three rounds of VO interviews, plus one round with a Talent Partner about salary expectations. Feedback on every earlier round came back fast, basically the next day, but ever since the HR call it's been almost a week with no word — feels like I've been shelved in the talent pool. I really don't want to give up, but there doesn't seem to be much else to do... Maybe I didn't show enough determination in that Talent Partner round. Anyway, here's my writeup.

VO1: Two questions. The first one went pretty smoothly — count the number of uniquely shaped islands, where islands with the same shape only count once. I hadn't seen the second one before. I came up with my own approach and explained it, but the interviewer wanted me to write the optimal solution directly. With some hints I eventually got there and wrote it down. The connection was bad too and dropped a few times... I figured I'd bombed it, so thanks to the interviewer for passing me anyway. Turns out this guy likes asking hard questions lol.

VO2: Got hit with a bunch of trivia about multithreading, locks, that kind of thing. The interviewer could tell I didn't know much of it and reassured me not to be nervous, just answer whatever came to mind. At the end he threw in a simple DP question to fill the remaining time. I thought I'd already failed by that point, but somehow it passed — thanks to the interviewer!

VO3: Hiring manager round. Normal resume chat plus a 30-minute system design.

Right now it's just gone quiet after the HR call. Makes me wonder if I wasn't their top pick. Feeling pretty down about it.

Published

Curated and edited by PracHub

Practice the questions from this interview

Discussion

Sign in to join the discussion. The author is notified of every comment.

Loading comments…

Interview at a glance

Company
TikTok
Role
Software Engineer
Rounds
Onsite → HR Screen
Outcome
No response
Difficulty
medium
Interview date
Aug 2025
Questions from this interview
2 questions

Real TikTok interview experiences

First-hand reports from TikTok candidates — the rounds, the questions they were asked, and how it went.

All 33 TikTok interview experiences