Common Questions

General

  • Why do you want to work for X company?
  • Why do you want to leave your current/last company?
  • What are you looking for in your next role?
  • Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a co-worker.
  • Tell me about a time in which you had a conflict and needed to influence somebody else.
  • What project are you currently working on?
  • What is the most challenging aspect of your current project?
  • What was the most difficult bug that you fixed in the past 6 months?
  • How do you tackle challenges? Name a difficult challenge you faced while working on a project, how you overcame it, and what you learned.
  • What are you excited about?
  • What frustrates you?
  • Imagine it is your first day here at the company. What do you want to work on? What features would you improve on?
  • What are the most interesting projects you have worked on and how might they be relevant to this company's environment?
  • Tell me about a time you had a disagreement with your manager.
  • Talk about a project you are most passionate about, or one where you did your best work.
  • What does your best day of work look like?
  • What is something that you had to push for in your previous projects?
  • What is the most constructive feedback you have received in your career?
  • What is something you had to persevere at for multiple months?
  • Tell me about a time you met a tight deadline.

Airbnb

Source: Glassdoor

While loving to travel or appreciating Airbnb's growth may be good answers, try to demonstrate the deep connection you have with the product.

  • What does "belong anywhere" mean to you?
  • What large problems in the world would you solve today?
  • Why do you like Airbnb?
  • If you had an unlimited budget and you could buy one gift for one person, what would you buy and who would you buy it for?
  • If you had an unlimited budget and you could go somewhere, where would you go?
  • Share one of your trips with us.
  • What is the most challenging project in or out of school that you have worked on in the last 6 months.
  • What is something that you don't want from your last internship/job?
  • Give me an example of when you've been a good host.
  • What's something you'd like to remove from the Airbnb experience?
  • What is something new that you can teach your interviewer in a few minutes?
  • Tell me about why you want to work here.
  • What is the best gift you have ever given or received?
  • Tell me about a time you were uncomfortable and how you dealt with it.
  • Explain a project that you worked on recently.
  • What do you think of Airbnb?
  • Tell me something about yourself and why you'd be a good fit for the position.
  • Name a situation where you were impressed by a company's customer service.
  • How did you work with senior management on large projects as well as multiple internal teams?
  • Tell me about a time you had to give someone terrible news.
  • If you were a gerbil, which gerbil would you be?
  • What excites you about the company?
  • How does Airbnb impact our guests and hosts?
  • What part of our mission resonates the most with you?

Amazon

Source: Glassdoor

  • How do you deal with a failed deadline?
  • Why do you want to work for Amazon?
  • Tell me about a situation where you had a conflict with a teammate.
  • In your professional experience have you worked on something without getting approval from your manager?
  • Tell me a situation where you would have done something differently from what you actually did.
  • What is the most exceedingly bad misstep you've made at any point?
  • Describe what Human Resources means to you.
  • How would you improve Amazon's website?

Dropbox

Source: Glassdoor

  • Talk about your favorite project.
  • If you were hired here what would you do?
  • State an experience about how you solved a technical problem. Be specific about the diagnosis and process.

Hired

Source: Glassdoor

  • Tell me about yourself.
  • What is your biggest strength and area of growth?
  • Why are you interested in this opportunity?
  • What are your salary expectations?
  • Why are you looking to leave your current company?
  • Tell me about a time your work responsibilities got a little overwhelming. What did you do?
  • Give me an example of a time when you had a difference of opinion with a team member. How did you handle that?
  • Tell me about a challenge you faced recently in your role. How did you tackle it? What was the outcome?
  • Where do you want to be in five years?
  • Tell me about a time you needed information from someone who wasn't responsive. What did you do?

Lyft

Source: Glassdoor

  • Tell me about your most interesting/challenging project to date.
  • Why Lyft? What are you looking for in the next role?

Palantir

Source: Glassdoor

  • What is something 90% of people disagree with you about?
  • What is broken around you?
  • How do you deal with difficult coworkers? Think about specific instances where you resolved conflicts.
  • How did you win over the difficult employees?
  • Tell me about an analytical problem that you have worked on in the past.
  • What are your three strengths and three weaknesses?
  • If you were in charge of picking projects for Palantir, what problem would you try to solve?
  • What are some of the best and worst things about your current company?
  • What would your manager say about you?
  • Describe Palantir to your grandmother.
  • Teach me something you've learned.
  • Tell me a time when you predicted something.
  • If your supervisors were to rate you on a scale of 1-10, what would they rate you?
  • What was the most fun thing you did recently?
  • Tell me the story of how you became who you are today and what made you apply to Palantir.

Slack

Source: Glassdoor

  • Tell me something about your internship.
  • Why do you want to join Slack?
  • Tell me about your past projects.
  • Explain me your toughest project and the working architecture.
  • Apart from technical knowledge, what did you learn during your internship?
  • If someone has a different viewpoint to do a project like different programming language, how would handle this situation?
  • What are your most interesting subjects and why?
  • Did you find any bugs in Slack?
  • What is your favorite feature and why?

Stack Overflow

Source: Glassdoor

  • What have you built?
  • What is the hardest technical problem you have run into?
  • How did you solve it?
  • Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
  • Why do you want to work here?
  • How do you handle disagreements with co-workers?

Stripe

Source: Glassdoor

  • How do you stay up to date with the latest technologies?
  • Explain a project that you worked on recently that was difficult.
  • Where do you see yourself in five years?

Twitter

Source: Glassdoor

  • What would your previous boss say your biggest strength was?
Last updated on by Niraj