Fulgent Interview Questions
& Process

Applied in October, the process was slow and disorganized, with 5 rounds: intro with a team member about projects, technical interview 1 (reverse complement DNA), technical interview 2 (leetcode merge intervals medium), cultural fit with two people, and a meeting with the principal and manager. The disorganization was evident as the same person was in rounds 1 and 4, confused about his presence, and a third interviewer was on vacation. HR coordination seemed poor. Passed all 5 rounds but got rejected a week later by HR for not having tailored experience. Months later, a different HR reached out for the same position. I mentioned my previous application and rejection due to experience. He scheduled a screening and then the team wanted to re-interview. I had another technical assessment: create two classes with 5 methods each. Passed this and scheduled a final interview with the principal and a senior engineer. The senior engineer questioned why I applied again after the previous rejection. The project discussion felt like grilling, delving into irrelevant details from my coursework. Strange questions about hardware, computer building, and network programming (UDP/TCP, HTTP/HTTPS) were asked, even by someone who admitted not knowing the answers. The principal questioned my choice of MySQL over NoSQL for my internship project, interpreting my explanation as a lack of NoSQL knowledge. I was rejected again a week later for lacking experience. Noticed 6 out of 7 interviewers were Asian, raising concerns about potential diversity issues or bias.

The interview experience was awful. The interviewer chatted with me for about 5-8 mins at the beginning. He didn't prepare a platform, so I had to set one up myself. Then he had me solve Leetcode 399. After I solved it, he asked some follow-up questions as the interview time was ending. He didn't let me ask any questions and just ended the meeting. It was really disrespectful. I also haven't heard back since last December.

The interview was pretty straightforward. I met with a panel of three people who all had different technical roles at the company. They asked a lot of questions about my past projects and my software development work. I was a bit surprised they didn't ask more about my academic bioinformatics background. What was frustrating though, was after the interview, I sent a thank you email but never heard back from HR about any feedback. After about a week, I sent another polite email checking on the hiring status, but still no response.

It was an easy interview, mostly generic questions. They wanted to see if I understood basic lab techniques. They also asked me to do a demonstration in the lab, so I had to show that I have hands-on experience. I demonstrated how to use a pipette.