The Twitter Interview
Shortly after returning back from my amazing internship at Google(more about that here), I interviewed with Twitter for a full time Software Engineering role.
Before applying, I was curious about the process but couldn’t find anything useful. Hence this.
Applying
I applied through their careers page. A recruiter reached out to me in about 2 days, asking me complete an online coding challenge in Hackerrank and fill out some basic information. The coding challenge was really easy, and was probably designed to make sure if you are actually worth their time.
I had interviewed with Google and a few other companies before, and Twitter was the slowest to respond my emails. I started thinking I was rejected. I heard back again from my recruiter only after about 10 days — they were willing to move forward, and I was asked to provide preferred interview dates/times.
Telephonic Interview
I had one 45 minute telephonic interview.
The interviewer was really cool. One question about processing log files. And another based on Balanced Binary Search Trees. The questions were not that hard, but I felt they were not really phone screen questions. The interviewer expected a lot of code in under 45 minutes.
After the interview, we just talked about Twitter’s work culture, and different projects they are working on.
On Site
I haven’t heard back from them yet, but this is what I’ve read.
There are 4 technical interview: 3 technical and 1 behavioural. Mostly basic data structures and algorithms, but some were asked design questions too.
Conclusion
Definitely not my most favourite interview process. Recruiters were slow and uninterested. I really loved my phone screen questions, but I feel they were more suited for an on-site interview.
Twitter works on some amazing open source tools, which was actually the main reason I applied. If you are into Data Science or Analytics, Twitter would be a great place for you since they have amazing access to data and most engineers there have good access to it.
Good luck!
