It took a few weeks to screen my CV and get in touch. I would estimate about 3 weeks, though I'm not sure of the exact timeframe. My correspondent was very accommodating and quick to reply throughout the process with any queries I had.

I had a phone call first. It was very pleasant. We just went through my CV and looked at the different aspects of it. One thing that stood out was how interested my interviewer was in my charity/volunteer work. Salesforce has the 1-1-1 scheme, so I suppose volunteering must stand out to them. If you have any volunteer experience, get it in!

A week later, I got a call to come into the office for the day to do a few interviews.

First was a technical test. I was given the choice of two questions and 1.5 hours to complete the task. The first was to build a calculator using any web languages, and the second was to write a program to convert two specific number systems (I cannot remember the specifics). I chose the latter. I opened Chrome for some cheeky Stack Overflow tips, but don't tell anyone!

Then there was a 40-minute review of the exercise. Two of the team came in, and we just walked through it. Just keep talking about what you did, and there shouldn't be too many problems.

We broke for lunch then – on the house!

Next was a whiteboard test. Don't panic! It is a lot easier than it sounds. The lads there admitted that they had forgotten some of the theory behind the problems from their college days. I had 4 sheets of questions increasing in difficulty and only got to the third question. One was FizzBuzz, another was to detect a loop in a single linked list, and I don't recall the last one.

Finally, I had an interview with the HR team. Very nice and quite informal. We just talked about myself and why I was interested – the usual stuff. The day was long and tiring but very interesting, and nothing was too stressful.

The next day, a meeting was set up with one of the managers in their office in the US. Again, it was very nice and friendly.

One tip I would give to people is to be enthusiastic about Salesforce. They are looking for people to join their community, not just for the job!

In the end, I got an offer from a smaller company the day after this interview. I've always wanted to work with a small company if I got the chance, so I decided to take the risk and go for it. However, Salesforce offered me a very generous package, with a MacBook and iPhone included! If I hadn't gotten my other offer, I would 100% have accepted Salesforce's offer.

Detect a loop in a single linked list.

If a number is a multiple of 3, print 'fizz'. If a number is a multiple of 5, print 'buzz'. If a number is a multiple of 3 and 5, print 'fizzbuzz'.