I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Meta (Menlo Park, CA) in Jul 2014
Interview
Facebook has two data science teams, the "core" team (which is the one featured in various news stories), and the product/growth team. I interviewed for the product side, so a core data science interview might be substantially different. From my experience, I get the sense that "data scientist" on the product side is a misnomer, and they are more of the business analysts; while the "core" team is similar to other data science teams in the bay area.
The first interview is a phone screen (or on-site if you're local). They asked a few SQL and probability questions, and it was over in ~30 minutes. My interviewer was friendly and enthusiastic, and the questions weren't particularly difficult.
The second interview was on-site, and involved talking with 5 different people (or groups of people). Each interviewer had a specific task they were asking about, including business analytics/product health questions, stats/probability theory, algorithms, and more SQL. The questions weren't particularly hard or out of left field but they're looking for you to answer confidently and efficiently.
The people were overwhelmingly friendly and tended to be enthusiastic about working for Facebook (although, at least 2 of my interviewers subtly admitted they were casually looking for jobs - so, I suspect even employees at Facebook aren't 100% fulfilled by their positions).
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I was surprised that there were no machine learning or data mining questions, or any personality/experience ("tell me about a time when you...") questions. The more technical questions were things that a graduating CS student would succeed at, but did not involve principles that you would actually use in practice in a data role at a company.
Also, make sure you continue working on a problem until you've provided the most efficient solution you think you can. I stopped after I had a working solution, and indicated to the interviewer that I don't think it's the most efficient solution. The interviewer said it was fine and we moved on to another question. Nonetheless, the biggest piece of feedback I got from the recruiter afterwards is that I didn't provide a solution that was sufficiently efficient.
The Interview Process is very structured -
First Tech Screening round - 45 mins (usually can extend a bit depending on the interviewer)
- 2 SQL Questions ( Medium to Hard ) - based on Joins
Full Loop - 4 rounds 45 mins each.
- SQL
- Behavioral
- Analytical Execution - stats & prob, A/B testing, case study
- Analytical Reasoning - Case study
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Questions on Bayes Theorem, Probability distribution, etc.
I applied online. The process took 6 months. I interviewed at Meta
Interview
Completed 3 rounds of the process, which includes the initial recruiter screen, technical, full loop, and team matching.
Couldn't move past the full loop interview. The interview was very engaging, and I actually enjoyed working through the cases. No crazy questions.
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