- 1 initial coding challenge.
- 2 Interviewing rounds. (1 interview for first round, 2 interviews back-to-back on final round)
- 1 Phone Call w/Recruiter (honestly was probably more of a phone screen)
Leetcode Medium problems. Given one coding problem during one of the interviews that I saw on LeetCode's Yelp questions list.
I applied through two places in Fall of 2018. One was online, and the other was at a career/internship fair at my school.
After a week or so, I received an email from a recruiter to complete a coding challenge online on HackerRank. It had a 20 minute time limit. You were able to choose any popular programming language to complete the challenge with. I didn't get 100% test coverage, I got about 50% test coverage.
A few days later, I received an email to schedule a Skype interview with a current software engineer. He asked me basic questions regarding my projects and experience from my resume. Asked me basic technical questions that anyone should know when applying for this specific position. I applied for Backend Engineering specifically. See below for questions he asked. Interview went really well and completed the coding challenge with enough time to review and make improvements to the runtime.
After Yelp decided to move forward with me, the recruiter wanted to schedule a phone call with me to discuss any questions and concerns I have. It was probably more or less a phone-screening to make sure I was not a weirdo. Just be truthful and sound enthusiastic about working there. IIRC, she asked me why I wanted to work at Yelp.
At the same time that I was asked to schedule a phone call with the recruiter, the recruiter asked me to schedule my final back-to-back interviews. So the phone call with the recruiter was probably supplementary to the final decision in giving me an offer. The final back-to-back interview involves one software engineer, and one manager. You don't know who is who, unless you looked them up on LinkedIn ahead of time.
For the final round, the first interviewer was late to the Skype call. He was apologetic for being late and gave me ample time to complete my interview. I actually went over 10-15 minutes from the allotted time. He went over my resume and asked me questions about my other projects since the interview from the first round already went over them. He gave time for me to ask questions about what it is like working at Yelp and what an intern can expect to do. Overall the conversation went well, and he seemed enthusiastic with me as the first interviewer from round 1. We went straight to the coding problem after. I completed the problem a little over the total time given for the interview (45 minutes). But, he ensured me to not worry and we went over my solution and discussed my possible enhancements that I would make.
Second interview for the final round happened a few minutes after. The interviewer did not have his camera on, it sounded like he was at home or somewhere busy with people talking in the background. Honestly, I did not feel any connection with this interviewer. He went straight to the coding question and didn't ask about myself. The coding problem more on the LeetCode Hard difficulty compared to the other problems given. I didn't complete my solution on code. However, I had a thought up solution on paper. I communicated my thoughts clearly with the interviewer every second. That probably saved me for this interview. Make sure you communicate your thoughts as you go through!! Overall, the interview with this guy didn't feel good. I thought I screwed up, and the guy was not very talkative as I was working the problem out.
I received an offer a few weeks later over the phone. The offer was at $45/hour with $1500 housing stipend. I didn't negotiate, since this was my first internship ever and had no leverage.