Thanks again for your time on the phone today. I enjoyed talking with you and I’ll be back in touch soon with more information on the next steps.
Please let me know if you have any questions in the meantime or if there is any information that we didn't get to cover on the phone, but might be useful for me to know.
Here is additional information on our interviews and the preparation material I mentioned.
The phone interview will take an hour and you’ll need to have a computer with internet access for the coding portion of the interview which will be done through www.collabedit.com. A major component of our assessment involves applying algorithm and Computer Science fundamentals, and explaining/implementing the solution in code. You will need to do this without any aids engineers typically have access to, e.g. IDE, online docs and you will be under the time gun.
Algorithms Hints:
- Think about trade-offs of different approaches
- Knowing the complexity of your solution can indicate whether you can do better
- Don't over-complicate your algorithm to fit in specific concepts - we are looking for answers to the question, not looking for certain techniques
I know interviewing can be a stressful process, so here are a few additional tips to help you: Tip #1: Ask clarifying questions instead of making assumptions. Before starting on your implementation, be clear on requirements. Tip #2: Verbalize your thoughts while you’re solving a problem. Our interviewer wants to understand your thought process and how you go about solving a problem. So by thinking out loud, you’ll give them an idea and they’ll be able to give you hints to steer you in the right direction. Tip #3: You will be assessed on both speed as well as quality of the solution. So, don’t take too much time to think through the problem, but take enough time so you can provide a clean and elegant solution. For some questions, the expectation is that someone should be able to work through the problem in 20min, so there could be multiple questions in the hour slot; others may take the entire hour to solve. Tip #4: If asked about an interesting project, make sure to choose a project that you are actually interested in rather than just picking your most current project. Tip #5: Find and fix your bugs using edge cases, tests, or other means. Tip #6: Visit our engineering blog to find out a bit more about the different technologies and projects we are working on as well as get a feel for our engineering and company culture. - http://engineering.linkedin.com/
Here are a few links to articles with additional tips on how to practice for Software Engineering interviews:
- https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140205163949-28614372-getting-that-job-at-linkedin?goback=.nmp_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1&trk=object-title
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141119081429-75491088-land-a-job-at-a-top-silicon-valley-company
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140425202654-10752460-what-to-do-and-not-do-if-i-interview-you?trk=mp-reader-card
Here’s an article about the interesting problems our engineers are working on: http://gigaom.com/2013/03/03/how-and-why-linkedin-is-becoming-an-engineering-powerhouse/
I know this email was long, but I hope you find it helpful.