I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Salesforce (San Francisco, CA) in Jan 2019
Interview
Salesforce's interview process was genuinely great. The interview stages were all logical and streamlines, so nothing caught me off guard. I especially want to highlight the fact that the interviewers were extremely friendly. This made them easy to talk to so don't be nervous!
The interview process started off with a Hackerrank coding challenge that contained 2 questions. Next was a 45 min behavioural and culture fit interview. This interview consisted of standard behavioural questions (eg. describe a project or work experience). Finally, there was a 1 hour technical interview with an engineer.
My main advice for any candidate is to be enthusiastic about the company. This tip applies to all companies, but culture fit is extremely important to Salesforce. Show them your company knowledge and how excited you are to be a part of the team. A genuine desire to work with a company will help make up for any weaknesses you have or mistakes you made. As always, don't forget to Leetcode a bit before interviews ;)
The technical interview was much tougher than I anticipated. I faced a DSA question related to word searches that required optimizing a brute-force approach with a Trie. It was intense, but the practice I’d done on PracHub the week before really helped solidify my understanding of the problem-solving techniques. The behavioral round felt lighter, focusing on teamwork and project experience. After a couple of days, I received an offer, which I happily accepted. Overall, it was a challenging yet rewarding experience.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Word Search II - given an m x n board of characters and a list of words, return all words that can be formed from sequentially adjacent cells; had to optimize the brute-force backtracking with a Trie to pass the time limit
The interview process started with an online coding assessment that included DSA and problem-solving questions. After clearing the test, I had two technical interview rounds focused on data structures, OOPs concepts, DBMS, and project discussion. The final round was with the hiring manager where they asked about teamwork, problem solving, and career goals. The interviewers were professional and the process was smooth overall.
Went through 3 rounds. First round was a technical interview - it was a take home assessment. I didn't pass the test cases but still went through to the next round. The onsite had 1 behavioral, 1 system design, and 1 technical Leetcode style interview. It was in person on a whiteboard.