I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at LinkedIn
Interview
Submitted resume online,
Email from recruiter same day
Phone screen with recruiter
technical phone screen with online coding exercise with hiring manager a week later
Another technical phone screen with an engineer in the group
On site interviews - multiple engineers
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
At the end of a long day of interviews I was asked about a prior success in my career. I was not told that there was a second more critical part of the interview - another coding exercise at the whiteboard.
Code a non blocking thread safe queue
and
code a text justification routine (Given a line length insert white space so text is uniformly displayed within the given length).
Both are fairly straightforward, but I had spent time on the first portion.
I applied through other source. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at LinkedIn (Mountain View, CA) in Dec 2012
Interview
I was contacted by a LinkedIn HR rep a few weeks after submitting my resume at a conference. He was really enthusiastic and clearly loves his job, which initially peaked my interested in working for LinkedIn.
I had one phone interview, which was pleasant and went well. About a week later I was invited to attend a Linkedin Invitational, which I gather is LinkedIn's new approach to the gruelling, all day long interview process. Basically, I arrived at the LinkedIn office, along with about fifteen other Software Engineering candidates (all new grads, like me), to participate in an all day long event which included not only four hour-long, one on one interviews (three technical, one management), but also included Q&A sessions with a group of recent hires, the director of Engineering and the CEO himself, as well as a campus tour, and a fancy dinner in San Francisco. LinkedIn put us up in a great hotel in downtown San Francisco that night, and I gladly took the opportunity to spend the rest of the night on the town with the other candidates (it was a Friday after all).
Overall, the experience was overwhelmingly positive. How could I not want to work for LinkedIn after that? Especially after talking to so many current LinkedIn employees who clearly loved their jobs and were genuinely excited to talk to us candidates. If a company cares so much about treating not just their employees well, but even their candidates well, I think it bodes well for a future career with them.
Anyways, a week later I was contacted by my HR rep again, this time to offer me a job with a very good salary and hefty relocation bonus, as well stock options, great benefits, free CalTrain pass, etc. It took all of about two seconds to decide I was going to take the job.
Program an iterator for a Linked List which may include nodes which are nested within other nodes. i.e. (1)->(2)->(3(4))->((5)(6). Iterator returns 1->2->3->4->5->6
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at LinkedIn
Interview
Recruiter was awesome and had great communication. Did a phone screen with her and then moved on to two technical phone interviews. Both phone interviews are done in an IDE of your choice with someone watching your screen over skype. You're given 45 minutes to complete the problem and then allowed to wrap it up at home and submit it.
Passed the first telephone screening but "failed" the second. When I asked why I failed, the recruiter sent me the engineer's responds with all of these problems with my code.
Granted these problems were present in my first 45 minutes (because I was working through the problem) but my final solution had none of these problems.
It was evident that the 2nd interviewer didn't even look at my final solution. He made his judgement off of what he saw on the phone an told me to submit a final answer anyways.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Implement a shooting algorithm for the game of Battleship.