Trulia Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process was pretty fast. After a referral, I had a phone chat with the hiring manager, then an hour-long in-person meeting with her. After that, I had another in-person interview with six team members. The whole thing took about 3-4 weeks. The hiring manager asked me about my approach to developing a social strategy for Trulia and three specific questions. I spent a week and a half doing a lot of research and thinking to build a big plan to answer those three questions. I sent over a 40-page deck before meeting again at Trulia to interview with the six team members. They didn't offer me the job, saying I was a great strategic thinker but they weren't sure I could handle the copywriting. Honestly, if they needed a copywriter, they should've asked questions to find that out, not these huge strategy questions. It feels like they asked for a lot, I delivered, they took my ideas, and then didn't hire me. Maybe it's for the best, as I'm not sure I'd want to work with people who'd happily take someone's work like that!

First, there's a recruiter screening where they'll ask about your tech stack and work history. You should be ready to ask the recruiter questions too. Then, a phone tech interview, which is a basic tech screening. They'll ask basic JavaScript knowledge questions and give you a front end coding test. After that, a take-home assignment with a couple of basic exercises and recreating a simple interface. Finally, an onsite interview, which is over 4 hours of tech interviews plus lunch (lunch is basically another interview, so be ready with questions).

I got contacted by a recruiter on LinkedIn. They were good at getting info and found a job that fit what I was looking for. I liked the tech stack and how the role would help Trulia's main business. Then, I had a phone interview where the engineer asked about my current job and why I'm interested in Trulia. There was a coding problem about a common data structure and a design question about a Map-Reduce job for big data. I heard back the next day and got scheduled for an onsite interview. They gave me the schedule and who I'd meet. Everyone was nice and tried to make it a good experience. The first two interviews were technical, with lots of whiteboard coding. They asked about text parsing, heaps, maps, hashing, and natural ordering. Then I met the VP for 20 minutes and had lunch, which was a good chance to chat about business. After that, there were three more technical interviews: one for systems design and two coding/behavioral ones, with questions like a merge sort variation and a dynamic programming problem. I got good feedback that same day and an offer a few days later.

I applied and then got a phone interview a few days later. The phone interview was pretty easy and professional. After that, they invited me for an in-person interview. There were two interviewers. The first one was really nice, and the interview with him was fun and comfortable. The second guy, I have no clue who he was. He just walked in, didn't introduce himself, and immediately said he only had 10 minutes for the interview. I felt unwelcome, like he was forced to interview me. It didn't even last the 10 minutes. I left confused, and still don't know who he was. I was really excited about this job, but I feel like the second guy didn't even give me a real chance.