What it’s like to interview with BuzzFeed Engineering
This post focuses on hiring for individual contributor roles at BuzzFeed Engineering.
Interviewing is stressful! Not knowing what to expect in an interview makes it worse. In order to alleviate some of that stress for potential engineering candidates, we thought we’d answer some common questions, share our views on tech interviewing, and walk you through BuzzFeed Engineering’s hiring process.
How does BuzzFeed Engineering approach hiring?
At BuzzFeed, we are passionate about understanding our users and building great experiences for them. Similarly, we want our interview process to be a great experience for you. We want to give you the best chance to show what you are capable of while also moving through the process as quickly as your schedule allows. We aim for transparency throughout the process and know you are interviewing us as much as we are interviewing you.
What are the technical portions of the interview like?
Because we want to get a sense of what it is like to work with you, our technical interviews are not built to trick you. We view them as discussions rather than tests. We focus on topics and exercises that are applicable to the work we do and the challenges we face.
In order to understand how you have dealt with real-world challenges, we talk through some of your past projects. Because it is a common way engineers at BuzzFeed visualize system architecture, we do use whiteboards in our discussions. Our pair programming exercises help us understand how you turn ideas into code and communicate that thought process. Ultimately, we are more interested in finding great problem solvers with capacity to learn than we are in finding candidates who have experience in a specific technology.
BuzzFeed is hiring for multiple teams. How do I know which one I’m being considered for?
BuzzFeed tech has more than 20 teams or squads that work on a wide range of initiatives covering consumer products (e.g. buzzfeed.com, native apps), internal tools (e.g. content creation, video production, content distribution, content performance dashboards) and infrastructure (e.g. ops, data infrastructure, platform engineering). We often don’t know which squad a candidate will land on until we’ve completed the interview process.
You will interview with members of multiple squads as we figure out which one is right for you. Squad assignments are made based on your interests, our needs, and most importantly, where you will be best setup to succeed. We want to put new hires in a place with the right opportunities and mentorship because your initial team assignment is just a starting point for long term success at BuzzFeed. Don’t worry, we will loop you in on this discussion and you’ll know which team you’d be joining before you need to accept an offer!
Here is how the process actually works…
1. Phone call with a recruiter
A recruiter will explain the steps in the BuzzFeed hiring process, which you already know because you’re reading this post! They will ask you about your skills and experience and what you are looking for in your next role. They can answer any questions you have about the team structure, benefits, and culture. The recruiter will be an advocate for you and will guide you through the rest of this process.
2. Phone call with a manager
At this point you will talk to an experienced manager, director, or VP from our engineering team. This call will not be a technical deep dive. The manager will be talking with you more about your expectations and experiences as we start to figure out which role and which team might be the best fit for you. This is a great opportunity to ask questions of a senior member of our team so be ready for that!
3. Tech Interview #1
The next step is a technical interview, typically held face to face. If you don’t live near one of our offices, we will do this via a video conference. In this one-hour session, you will go through a whiteboarding discussion or a pair programming exercise with one or two of our engineers. We have moved away from take-home assignments for most of our engineering roles because we know your time is valuable and we think a discussion is more efficient. However, if you think an assignment would be a better way for you to showcase your abilities, we are happy to accommodate.
4. Interview Day
The last step is the interview day, which consists of four or five one-hour interviews in one of our offices. Two of the interviews will be technical in nature, but we are also interested in your views and experiences on how teams come together to build great products. Most of our interview loops include members of our product design or product management teams because we work closely with those teams every day. Since we have a distributed team with engineers in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, London, and New York, some of these interviews may be conducted via video conference. We hope you will leave these interviews with more of an understanding of how we are organized, what our teams are up to, and what working at BuzzFeed is like.
If you are interested in going through this process with us, check out buzzfeed.com/jobs. We’re hiring engineers and managers in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, London, and New York!
Each week, a different BuzzFeed tech team member takes over our Twitter account. Follow BuzzFeed Tech on Twitter @buzzfeedexp!
