Linkedin

I applied for the Software Engineer Intern position at LinkedIn through an off-campus opening. After my application was shortlisted, the first proper assessment was an online coding test. The process was quite DSA-oriented from the beginning. In one of the reported off-campus processes, the assessment contained three coding questions to be solved within 90 minutes, with the questions being around the LeetCode-medium level. The main challenge was not necessarily knowing some extremely advanced algorithm, but identifying the correct approach quickly and leaving enough time to implement and test it. After clearing the assessment, I moved to the technical interview. The discussion began with a short introduction before moving into problem solving. The interviewer wanted me to explain my approach before starting the implementation, and I was expected to discuss complexity and consider edge cases. LinkedIn interview reports have included questions involving trees, recursion, arrays, strings, greedy techniques and data structures. One reported SWE intern interview, for example, included a majority-element problem followed by discussion of multiple approaches. During my technical discussion, I also had to talk about my projects. Rather than simply asking me to describe what I had built, the interviewer was interested in the reasoning behind some of my implementation decisions and how I had handled particular problems. This part made it important for me to know my own projects thoroughly instead of preparing only standard DSA questions. The final stage was more managerial in nature. The conversation moved away from pure coding and towards my background, projects, teamwork and general behavioural questions. I tried to explain my experiences clearly and give concrete examples instead of giving prepared one-line answers. Similar LinkedIn internship processes have been reported as having coding, technical and managerial stages, although the exact number and structure can vary between hiring cycles. I ultimately did not receive an offer after completing the process. Looking back, the experience showed me that preparing only for the OA was not enough. I needed to be equally comfortable explaining my solutions aloud, discussing complexity and edge cases, and answering detailed questions about the projects mentioned on my resume. The technical rounds were manageable individually, but the process required consistency across DSA, project discussion and communication.