My interview was part of a recruiting event that consisted of a set of presentations on a Thursday night, followed by interviews all day Friday, starting at 9 a.m. I was there until 4:30 p.m. and had nine interviews (three each for three different groups).

The middle group was in the NYC office, while the other two were in the Jersey City office. Three of the nine interviews were with two people; the rest were one-on-one.

Of the nine interviewers, almost all asked technical questions. They were all C++/Java focused (they allowed me to pick which language to answer in) and included the usual expected questions, such as what data structures to use in certain scenarios and writing pseudocode for example problems.

All SQL questions were extremely easy, involving only inner joins on a single field. I was also asked to describe in detail the algorithms and data structures used to create my projects at previous internships.

One of the interviewers grilled me on teamwork experience, specifically how I dealt with difficult teammates. I'm pretty sure he didn't like me, but that's the beauty of having eight other interviewers.

Another interviewer focused exclusively on logic/trick questions, the kind designed to see how you approach a problem. I forget the first question, but I had read it on a website the night before, so I feigned concentration and a subsequent "aha" before answering. The second question was one I had never heard before, and I didn't know how to approach it. She gave me a hint, but that still didn't help. She then gave a second hint, and I was able to solve it. She asked a follow-up question, and since I knew the approach, I was able to do it in 10 seconds. Personally, I don't see the value in these types of questions since they are usually trick questions that you'll only get if you've heard them before.

Overall, I would say I felt like I answered about 75-85% of the questions well enough. During the process, I was constantly told that there was no expectation for me to know every answer; they were just trying to understand the breadth and depth of my knowledge. Every interviewer, except for the one who grilled me on teamwork, was very polite, and I felt comfortable and not threatened by their questions. I wasn't afraid to be wrong, and I got the sense that they almost wanted to see me succeed. It was, overall, a very positive experience.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting an offer because I didn't think 75-85% was good enough for this company. However, I apparently made a good impression, since I received offers from all three groups.

How to remove a node from a singly-linked list when only given the pointer to the node.

I was asked to describe efficient string searching algorithms.