LinkedIn Software Engineer Interview Questions and Answers

Round: Test
Experience: The first test
contained 25 objective questions encompassing the basics of Computer Science ranging from
data structures, networks and operating systems to theory of computation
Duration: 45 minutes
Total Questions: 25

Round: Test
Experience: The second test contained 3 coding questions.
Duration: 45 minutes
Total Questions: 3

Round: HR Interview
Experience: After the written test, next day I appeared for 3 interviews.
They were checking if you can write code and also if you are aware of the practical issues faced while coding. In the final round they were testing if you could abstract out a real world
problem into code.
Tips: Overall I can say that you must hope for the best and prepare for the
worst. So make sure that you are prepared on all counts. You never know what might go wrong.

Round: Problem Statement
Experience: coding and submission before face to face interview shortlisting
Tips: practice coding ,coding is key to success for SE

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: based on marks ,I was called for F2F
Tips: the ppt was to be submitted explaining the approach

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: a lot of brain storming
Tips: understands the nitty gritty of the structs and algos

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: exact code was to be written instead of pseudo code
Tips: get hold of DS,Algos

Round: Test
Experience: there were 20 MCQ which were on ds , networks and basic coding followed by 2 coding questions.
1) print all the distinct substrings of a given string in lexicographical order
2) find the max i-j value in the given array of 0's and 1's such that there are equal number of zeros and ones, where i is the starting index and j is the ending index of the array.
Tips: make sure that you pass atleast half the test cases for both the question.
Duration: 90 minutes
Total Questions: 22

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: 1) i printed left view then leaves and right view using three level order traversals . he asked me to use one traversal only, then i told him the approach and wrote the working code.
2) told him the approach and coded it.
Tips: look at corner cases properly. the interviewers were friendly, so i felt relaxed.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: 1) i told him a recursive O(2^n) solution, optimised it to O(n^2). he told me to optimise further. Then i finally came up with O(n) solution after 5 min and he was satisfied . i coded it. he was satisfied finally :D .
2) came up with the approach immediately and coded it. he was satisfied.
Tips: he was very particular about corner cases and he checked the code througly tested it on some cases to ensure it was working.

General Tips: be cool. interviewers were friendly. tell them what you are thinking and be clear with the question before answering to avoid wasteage of time.
Skill Tips: solve problems from codechef, spoj and codeforces. solve interview questions from geeksforgeeks and careercup.
Skills: the way you think, coding skills and knowledge on data structures.
Duration: 3
College Name: IIT Roorkee
Motivation: some good seniors got intern, so i was inspired.
Funny Moments: on the interview day a person came into the conference room to call me for interview, i didnt thought he was interviewer. he was very simple, but intelligent and at last i felt like asking him to ask me one more coding question as it was fun solving questions infront of him, but i didnt do that as i was frightened if i would not be able to answer it would be a negative remark :P .