My Full Meta Interview Experience (Sept–Oct 2025) — Rejected

Hey everyone, I recently finished my full interview loop with Meta and unfortunately got rejected at the end. Still, I wanted to share my full experience since posts like these really helped me during preparation.

My background includes an education from IIT Kanpur, working at a product-based startup, with 2.5+ years of full-time experience, plus 6 months + 2 months of internships.

Recruiter Reach-out (25th Sept)

A recruiter contacted me via LinkedIn, and we had a detailed conversation where she explained the role and expectations, the full hiring process, the elimination stage, timeline, interview structure, and prep tips.

The elimination stage consisted of three parts:

1. Live DSA Elimination Interview (Zoom): This was 45 minutes. I received two DSA questions and managed to solve both within ~20 minutes. These were Ocean View Buildings (a standard LeetCode problem) and a Pattern–Target Matching problem where repeated characters can be removed to match the pattern. The interviewer was nice.
2. Hard DSA Online Assessment: This one was genuinely tough. There were 4 questions, and I barely managed to finish them in time.
3. Behavioral Assessment: This had situational questions like “In this scenario, what would you do?” which I answered using a Likert scale (Strongly Agree / Agree / Neutral / Disagree / Strongly Disagree). I found it simple overall, but I'd highly recommend understanding Meta’s values beforehand, as it helps align your responses.

Two days later, I was told I cleared the elimination stage and could schedule the full loop. I booked my interviews from 27th–31st October 2025.

Full Interview Loop (4 Rounds)

Every round was 45 minutes, except the AI-enabled round which was 60 minutes. Each round also included 5 minutes for an intro and 5 minutes at the end to ask questions.

1️⃣ Round 1 — Behavioral (45 minutes)

This round consisted of standard Meta behavioral questions, including topics like a project I’m proud of, a conflict with a teammate, a time I disagreed with someone, a time I had to follow someone else’s opinion, and ownership and failures. The interviewer asked rapid follow-up questions, which made it harder to strictly follow the STAR framework, but overall, I felt I handled it fine. My self-verdict: Hire.

2️⃣ Round 2 — Product Architecture (45 minutes)

Since the role was full-stack, I got a Product Architecture round instead of classical System Design. The prompt was to Design an Online Food Delivery App. I followed my complete framework: clarifications, high-level architecture, entities, services, API design, functional + non-functional requirements, scalability + edge cases, and follow-up questions. This felt like my strongest round, and the interviewer seemed impressed. My self-verdict: Hire → Strong Hire.

3️⃣ Round 3 — AI-Enabled Coding Round (60 minutes)

This is a new Meta format, introduced around October 2025. I received a partially built game scenario and had to understand the existing codebase, fill in missing logic, and optimize a final strategy. The interviewer was very friendly and helpful. Since this format was new, I didn’t have much prior information, but I still felt I did well. My self-verdict: Leaning Hire → Hire.

4️⃣ Round 4 — Pure DSA (45 minutes)

This round had two coding problems: LRU Cache and a String manipulation problem to check if a string can be made palindrome after deleting certain characters. For both, I explained the brute force approach, then an optimized approach, wrote clean code, and covered edge cases. My self-verdict: Hire → Strong Hire.

Final Result ❌

I was honestly expecting a positive result based on how the interviews went… but after 10–12 days, I received the rejection email. They did not share any specific feedback, which would have been really great. It stung, because I felt I performed well in most rounds — but that’s how interviews go sometimes.

Let me know if you have any questions!