I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Salesforce (San Francisco, CA) in Nov 2015
Interview
I got my phone interview through a campus recruiter, and a little over a week later, I went to the final round on-site interview in San Fransisco.
The phone interview was mostly screening and about experience, but it also consisted of basic Java questions, such as what is OOP and polymorphism, overloading vs overriding, how to use super() in Java.
The 1:1 interview on-site was similar, but in addition, there were two one-hour team projects, and they evaluated us on how we worked in teams. They want people with a good resume, and after that, the competition boils down to how well of a team player you are.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What is the JRE and what does it have to do with .jar files?
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.