A LinkedIn recruiter reached out to me via phone and scheduled a 2-hour phone interview for a Senior Staff Engineer position.

Phone Interview:

Code Interview: The code interview started 7 minutes late. The only technical question asked was the "Two Sum" problem. I was surprised by this easy question for a Senior Staff Engineer interview, especially since I had solved it on LeetCode as part of my interview preparation. I explained three effective solutions, including scenarios and time complexity. I provided executable code for two approaches. The interviewer was unable to review my code due to collabedit.com sync issues, but he was in agreement with the solution approaches I explained. My coding interview was cut short to 30 minutes with no further technical questions, possibly due to the sync issues. I also emailed my code after the interview to ensure he received it.

Background Interview: This interview was very detailed. The interviewer was clearly impressed with my previous work, leadership, and technical decision-making process. This interview extended to 1 hour and 15 minutes. The interviewer was very professional and did his best to clarify my questions related to the job and the LinkedIn work environment.

After one day, I received feedback that I was rejected based on my Code Interview.

I was completely surprised by this decision; it seemed like a predetermined outcome.

Like many of you, LinkedIn is one of my favorite companies to work for. I was excited about this job opportunity and prepared for weeks to present my technical skills to the best of my ability in the 1-hour technical/code interview. Unfortunately, my code interview was cut short to 30 minutes with only one easy technical question, for which I provided working solutions in effective ways. No other technical questions were asked, there were no technical discussions, no code review or input, and no opportunity to present my technical skills, which are expected components of a code interview.

My Recommendation:

Don't waste your time and efforts on these predetermined interviews.

It seems the LinkedIn interview panel and process were completely broken, with no transparency in the feedback process and no rejection reasons or details provided. Refer to the Glassdoor negative interview experience percentage (around 30%), which is very high for a top-rated tech company.

The positive aspect is that LinkedIn recruiters were very professional and followed up very well throughout the interview process.

Two Sum problem