Facebook interview questions: candidates reveal the confusing and deep challenges that site sets potential employees

 'How many vacuums are there in the U.S.A.?'

Andrew Griffin
Tuesday 13 October 2015 17:26 BST
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Interview candidates at Facebook have revealed the tough and often bizarre questions that can be asked when applying for a job at the social media giant.

Facebook is one of the most valuable companies in the world, recruiting many of the brightest graduates. And the questions are as difficult and as strange as you might expect.

Job site Glassdoor serves as a way for interview candidates to post their questions online. And the best have been collected by Tech Insider.

Many of the questions tend towards the technical: “Given two unsorted arrays, one with event start times and one with end times, find out if any two events overlap”, or “How do you print all elements of a linked list”.

Others still are perhaps far more normal than might be expected of such a fast-moving company. “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” one client partner was asked.

But many more are extra-challenging, and clearly meant to test how candidates think.

"How many birthday posts occur on Facebook on a given day?" one candidate for a role of data scientist was asked.

"Do you think that Facebook should be available to China?" a potential user operations analyst was asked.

"Describe how the website works. (That's the whole question, with no context.)" one candidate was asked as part of an interview for a technical project manager role.

“How many vacuums are there in the U.S.A.?” the company asked a potential risk analyst.

Overall, 59 per cent of people on the site say that their interview went positively, and 17 per cent said that they had a negative experience.

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