How I interviewed @FB

A couple of years ago I was working at Dow Jones and a Meta recruiter (then Facebook) reached out to me and asked me if I'd be interested in interviewing. You can probably guess what my answer was based on the post title. :^)

Okay, so interviewing at a big tech company isn't easy. But neither is getting an imterview. So before I got to this point, how about we back up and talk about why I think the recruiter felt I was a good candidate.

How to get the interview

Work on your tech skills and build your portfolio and display it publicly.

I'm a business major and MBA. I don't have an ounce of formal education in computer science in me. This normally doesn't help the candidate get an interview. So how did I get an interview? Here is my speculation:

  • I coded a lot. And I was public about it. You could see my work on my LinkedIn, I asked and answered questions on Stack Overflow, you could see my green boxes on GitHub from Dow Jones and from my passion projects.
  • I embraced my background. I used my business background to lead a free gaming passion project of 10 developers and 20 additional volunteer staff. I build the website for the game too and that code was open source.
  • I had a few years of experience at the same place. I was so fortunate to have started my career at Dow Jones and be on the team I was on. I learned a lot and built some neat things.

All of this helped build my portfolio so that a recruiter would be interested to reach out to me despite my non-traditional background. In my opinion, the hardest part of starting down a new path is getting your foot in the door with an interview. Work on your tech skills and build your portfolio and display it publicly. Recruiters are more likely to reach out to you if they know you like to work on code and that people enjoy working with you!

How to work on your interview

Get Cracking the Coding Interview, Educative.io, AlgoExpert, Pramp, and LeetCode Premium
  • Cracking the Coding Interview - Yes, it's as good as everyone says it is. Read it. Pay strong attention to the behavioral interview tips. I attribute the behavioral interview preparation that this book gave me as the reason I passed my behavioral interview. I don't particularly believe that you need to go through the exact technical problems in the book, but the techniques on how to handle the coding portion of the interview are amazing.
  • Grokking the Behavioral Interview - I complimented the book above with this course. Also worth it! But if you have to get one, get the book.
  • Educative.io - I unfortunately don't remember which course I took on Educative.io but it looks most similar to this one. I also hear good things about Grokking the System Design Interview although I didn't personally purchase it since when I was Googling prep materials for the FB interview the Educative.io course looked the most relevant for the type of system design interview I was targeting. There is also a free course on Educative.io if you're constrained on budget. But I strongly suggest to just cough up the money. This is your future we're talking about here!
  • AlgoExpert.io - This was extremely valuable to me; coming from a non-traditional background. It really helped explain the reasons behind the algorithms and practice for a coding interview. This resource combined with the techniques in Cracking the Coding Interview are not to be underestimated for a non-traditional background.
  • Leetcode Premium - Yep, pay the money for a few months. Do as many of the problems for FB that you can!
  • Pramp.com - This is a great place practice here. And it's free if you're a decent interviewer. You start out with five credits and you get more credits if you are rated by your matched peer well. The problem here is that you're going to get a fair share of freshly-graduated bootcampers that haven't practiced what to do in an interview--and it shows. Especially when selecting the JavaScript language.
  • Meta resources - I can't provide a link here but once you get an interview scheduled you'll get some resources from Meta to prepare. Take advantage! Do the coding questions. Read about how else to prepare.

Other thoughts

Memorize stories, not answers

All of the resources above were part of my personal jouney to getting an offer at FB. That doesn't mean you'll need them or that you won't need more. We are all different and need different things. The best advice that I can give is just keep researching what Meta is looking for and preparing for your interview.

Jot down stories about yourself that you can mold into answers about different questions the interviewer might ask. Questions such as "tell me about a time you couldn't meet a deadline" or "tell me about a time you disagreed with a coworker" might be answered by the same story--you just need to highlight different aspects of it. So memorize your stories, not answers to questions. You'll never be able to prepare 100% answers for all the questions.