Kik Interview Questions
& Process

So first there was a group interview with all the pre-selected candidates, then we did some games, and finally, they interviewed each of us individually. It was all good, but at the start, there's a lot to think about.

Started with a recruiter call that was standard, asking about my experience. Then had an online technical interview with the team. After those, I went to their Waterloo office for a 3.5-hour onsite interview with 5 people. The first hour involved a technical task on a computer, creating a tableView app with specific requirements. The next hour was with a senior dev and project lead, discussing my experience, architectures, and solving white board problems by drawing system designs. I then had an hour-long one-on-one with a team lead, focusing on my experience with processes and development. About a week later, I was asked to do another online technical interview because the team felt the previous stages weren't enough. This online coding interview was on their computer, with a small screen and slow performance, which I found strange. I was told I'd hear back by the end of the week, but received nothing. After two weeks of no response to my follow-up email, I realized they were ignoring me, despite the significant time, energy, and money I invested.

So, I had a phone call with HR first. Then, there was a technical phone call. After that, there were three in-person interviews. The in-person interviews involved pseudocoding and probability questions. I felt like during one of the panel interviews, the two interviewers talked over each other and didn't even let me speak. Also, they didn't even check my GitHub. They kept talking before I could explain my model and methodology. Honestly, I would have preferred a take home test after the second phone call instead of answering probability and coding questions on the spot. I guess I should have practiced more LeetCode problems.

First, there was an HR phone screen where they checked my python and SQL knowledge. Then a technical phone screen with some basic stats and probability questions, a simple python coding task, and a chat about an ML project I liked, plus questions on model and feature selection. The on-site involved stats/probability brain teasers, an SQL question, a common coding problem in python (or pseudocode) with discussion on its computational complexity. I didn't get the job; the coding challenges were tough, and I wasn't expecting it since my background isn't CS. I tried using standard python libraries, but they disallowed it, asking for a textbook-style solution.