Applied online and was quickly contacted by a recruiter for a phone screen.

After the phone screen, I was put through a one-hour technical screen. I really enjoyed the question as I was asked to design and implement a traditional game utilizing JavaScript (I won't state which game here due to NDA, but it's definitely something you've played before).

I made it to the final round and was surprised by how many rounds there were. The recruiter explained that I had the option of splitting up the 7 rounds over the span of several days if necessary, but I opted to go through the entire gauntlet in one day.

1. Frontend applicable technical round

The question was pretty trivial as it was again implementing something I've seen before, but the engineer/interviewer in this session was extremely condescending. This was a horrible way to start off a full day of interviews, but I ended up implementing the entire project, which was in parts. It was clear the interviewer was either in a bad mood that day or just didn't like me off the bat.

1. Three technical rounds

Contrary to popular belief, Square does in fact ask traditional FAANG LeetCode questions. I was presented with three medium-hard LeetCode-style questions for the next three rounds.

1. Engineering manager round with two managers

This was a knowledge domain and leadership principle type round.

1. System design round

The system design question is given beforehand during the sync-up with your recruiter if you make it to the virtual onsite. However, I struggled in this round as the interviewers made it extremely arbitrary on what they wanted. It was clear they were looking for specific answers, yet they jumped around on what they wanted.

1. Engineer manager round

This was another knowledge domain/leadership principle type round.

Overall, the whole process was what you would expect at a huge company like Square. Though they state that the questions they ask are more practical, this isn't true as I wasn't surprised when I was presented with LeetCode-style questions that involved DFS, BFS, Graphs, Trees, and matrices.

All in all, the process was average overall, but I would have to say it was the best recruiter I have ever had the pleasure of communicating with. I do believe she had my best interests in mind, providing me with adequate preparation materials. This was the only time I've ever experienced a recruiter whom offered and followed up on feedback after a rejection.

Practice LeetCode problems, focusing on:

• DFS
• Matrixes
• BFS
• Graphs
• Trees

Implement these features on an already built frontend application.

Explain a project you worked on, either professionally or as a side project.