Role: New Grad Software Engineer
College: Not Specified
Interview Date: March 3, 2025
Interview Type: Full-Time
Result: Rejected
Difficulty: Hard
Rounds: 4 rounds
Topics Asked: Data Structures, Algorithms, Math Proof, Low-Level Design, Behavioral
Experience:
The candidate was contacted by a recruiter after applying on Glean's career site for a new grad role.
- Round 1 (Technical Screen - 1 hour): This was a LeetCode question round. The question asked was: "Given m arrays of size n how do you find the kth largest element."
- Round 2 (Recruiter Call - 30 min): After positive feedback from the first round, a recruiter call followed, covering typical HR questions such as "why Glean, why the role etc."
- Round 3 (Technical Round - 1 hour): This round started with a 20-minute resume deep dive and discussion about projects. The remaining time was dedicated to a math proof question, with no coding involved. The candidate had to "basically prove why median was the best value for balancing an array."
- Round 4 (Final Round - 2 back-to-back interviews): This final stage consisted of two separate interviews.
- Assignment Round (2 hours): This was a 5-part low-level design problem. The task was to code a table module from scratch, starting with basic functionalities like adding rows/columns and then moving on to implementing joins. The candidate ran out of time after implementing joins.
- LeetCode Round (1 hour): This round included one medium and one hard LeetCode question. The first question was: "You're given a sorted array with one element that is out of place. Write a function that sorts the array." The second question was LeetCode 317 (Shortest Distance from All Buildings).
The candidate received a rejection email the day after Round 4. They inferred that the expectation for the assignment round was to complete at least 4 out of 5 parts, as feedback indicated they did not meet expectations for that round. Overall, the experience was positive, with friendly and responsive engineers and recruiters.