Interview Experiences

Real candidates, real loops: every round, what was asked, and how it ended.

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33 stories

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TikTokSoftware Engineer
Nov 2025

Resume Grilling Turns Into a Surprise 30-Minute Hotel Booking System Design

It started with a self-introduction, then 20 minutes of the interviewer grilling my resume — almost no rote trivia questions, mostly project-related questions, and the interviewer asked at a very high level. Then, very abruptly, I was told I had to spend the remaining thirty minutes finishing a system design question, any diagramming tool I wanted, and I had to share my screen. The functional req…

Technical Screen0
TikTokData Scientist
Oct 2025

Four Rounds, Then Downgraded to a DA Offer

Locked — open it to unlock the full story with XP.

OfferOnsiteXP0
TikTokData ScientistSenior+
Oct 2025

Three Rounds, Rejected After the Hiring Manager Round

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
TikTokFrontend Engineer
Sep 2025

Comment Box Coding Question, Rejected Two Days Later

Sharing my recent TikTok front-end phone interview experience. I applied for a front-end position. The recruiter reached out about a week after I applied through the system, and we scheduled a phone screen. The technical phone screen was 1-on-1, 45 minutes of coding. The interviewer spoke English fine, but talked pretty fast. The whole pace was tight — basically no small talk, straight into it. T…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
TikTokData Engineer
Sep 2025

Recruiter Chaos, a Skipped OA, and a Data Modeling Round With No Code

I interviewed for a data engineer role on one of the teams under USDS. The questions were pretty weak, so I'll focus mostly on the process instead. Right now I've just finished one HR round plus three Zoom call interviews. First, I had a friend at TikTok (not on the USDS team) refer me for a bunch of positions, but I only got one rejection back — no response on any of the rest. Then, almost a mon…

In progressTechnical Screen0
TikTokData Engineer
Sep 2025

Recruiter Chaos and a Final Round That Ended Before I Wrote Any SQL

I interviewed with a team under USDS for a data engineer role. The questions were really weak, so I'm mainly going to focus on the whole process instead. Right now I've just finished one HR round plus three Zoom call rounds. First, I had a friend at TikTok (not on the USDS team) refer me for a bunch of positions, but I only got one rejection back — never heard anything about the rest. Then, almos…

In progressTechnical Screen0
TikTokMachine Learning Engineer
Sep 2025

Great First Two Rounds, Then a Hostile HM Round and a Ghosting

Quick summary: Round 1: LeetCode 300 + resume questions. Round 2: LeetCode 403 + resume questions. Round 3: resume only. TL;DR: all high-frequency questions, grind them, and talk through your resume well. If you don't want to read the rant, feel free to skip out now — what follows is my personal venting, and I need to get it off my chest. The first two rounds felt like they were with people actua…

No responseOnsite0
TikTokSRE
Sep 2025

One-Hour Technical Screen Covering K8s, SLOs, and LeetCode 94

Interview process Overall it was a technical interview lasting about 1 hour The interviewer was pretty friendly, but the questions covered a wide range — felt like they were testing general SRE skills plus coding fundamentals Interview content Kubernetes Asked some basic K8s principles, like the difference between Pod and Deployment, and what a Service does. Also asked how to debug a Pod that fai…

Technical Screen0
TikTokSoftware Engineer
Sep 2025

Passed Round 1 Coding I Couldn't Solve, Rejected After Round 2

The first round was with a peer based in North America. They opened with some common project questions — what was the hardest part, and how I solved it. Then there was a coding question, a variant of a LeetCode problem. They gave a string and a width. The first part was to split the whole string into lines of that width, then add a suffix to each line saying which line number it is out of the tot…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
TikTokSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

Three VO Rounds, Then Radio Silence After HR

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…

No responseHR Screen0
TikTokSoftware Engineer
Jul 2025

Two Technical Screens, Rejected After a Rushed Final Coding Round

Interviewed a couple months ago. First round was with a North America-based peer. They started off asking some common project questions - what the difficult parts were, how I solved them. Then one coding question, a variant of a LeetCode-style problem. They gave a string and a width. The first part was to split the whole string into lines of that width, and then append a suffix to each line sayin…

RejectedTechnical Screen0
TikTokProduct ManagerIntern
Jul 2025

Four Rounds, Manager Round Was the Toughest

Getting through all 4 rounds of the intern interview process was genuinely not easy. After I finished, I felt like my English and my structured way of speaking had leveled up dramatically. I got the interview invite from HR on LinkedIn. After we scheduled a call, they walked me through the role details and the interview process. Round 1: Full self-introduction in English. For the questions after…

OfferOnsite0
TikTokData Scientist
Jul 2025

A Hiring Manager Round Built Around One Experimentation Case

Round 1: HR screen, pretty much a normal phone screen — confirmed my work experience and visa status. Round 2: Hiring manager. This round had no coding (not sure if that counts as weird...). First 25 minutes: deep dive into my resume, lots of "why" questions about my project experience. Last 25 minutes, the case was: They want to launch an experiment testing a new version of a recommendation algo…

Technical Screen0

What are interview experiences?

An interview experience is a candidate's own account of a hiring loop — not a question bank entry. It tells you the shape of the process: how many rounds there were, what each round actually tested, how long the gaps between them ran, and what the recruiter said at the end. That context is the part a question list cannot give you.

How to read them

Weight recent write-ups more heavily — interview loops change, often within a year. Read several for the same company and role rather than one: a single account tells you what one interviewer asked, while five tell you what the bar is. Note the outcome badge too, since a rejection write-up usually explains the gap far more precisely than an offer one.

Share your own

Every published experience earns 50 XP, and each of the first 3 likes it receives in a day earns you 10 XP more. Likes must come from established accounts; like-for-like swaps and likes from your own second account are not paid. Write it while the details are fresh — the round order, the exact prompts, and how much time you were given are what the next reader needs.

Share your experience to earn XP