Get a Job at LinkedIn: Interview Process and Top Questions

LinkedIn, which has been owned by Microsoft since 2016, hosts over 1 billion users on its professional social networking platform.

LinkedIn’s revenue stems from its subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.

You could be a great fit at LinkedIn if you’re a lifelong learner and connect to LinkedIn’s vision of creating economic opportunities for every member of the global workforce.

In addition to the core social network and app, LinkedIn products include:

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator,
• LinkedIn Recruiter,
• LinkedIn Jobs,
• LinkedIn Learning.

LinkedIn hosts several programs for those new to a career path.

Check out these LinkedIn opportunities:

• internships,
• entry-level opportunities for new grads,
• apprenticeships for professionals seeking to start a new career journey,
• LinkedIn Scholars, a program for academics and researchers to research with LinkedIn in data science and AI.

Below, we summarize the LinkedIn interview process and the questions you should expect to answer.

What is the LinkedIn interview process?

LinkedIn’s interview process is relatively standard compared to other tech companies.

The process can be pretty long, especially at the end, because the final hiring decision can sometimes take a week or longer. 

The LinkedIn interview process typically takes 4–8 weeks and involves:

• Recruiter phone screen,
• Hiring manager screen (for non-tech roles),
• Technical screen (for technical roles),
• Virtual onsite final round.

Recruiter phone screen

The recruiter screen is a 30-minute phone call with the recruiter focused on basic behavioral questions.

Expect to discuss your resume, how your experience fits the job description, and why you want to work at LinkedIn.

Hiring manager screen

After the recruiter call, some candidates in non-technical roles move on to a 30–45-minute video call with the hiring manager or a senior member of the team.

This call explores your experience and technical domain knowledge in more depth.

Technical screen

All engineering roles get a tech screen conducted via phone or video call, which can either precede or follow the recruiter screen.

Expect a 45–60-minute coding challenge on CoderPad, split between SQL and Python, with questions of easy—to medium-level difficulty.

LinkedIn’s tech screen assesses your knowledge of basic data structures, algorithms, and CS fundamentals. First, you’ll be asked a few knowledge questions, followed by one or two coding questions. 

First and foremost, focus on communication.

Talk through your process and any test strategies and edge cases. Then, try your best to complete the task efficiently, preparing to optimize if asked.

Final round

LinkedIn’s final interview is a virtual onsite interview with four to five 45–60-minute rounds with a panel of interviewers.

The rounds vary for technical and non-technical roles, but all candidates can expect a behavioral round with the hiring manager.

Top LinkedIn Interview Questions

Check out these real interview questions asked at LinkedIn.

Behavioral

• Tell me about yourself.
• Why do you want to work at LinkedIn?
• Tell me about a time when you questioned the status quo.
• How did your past job prepare you for this one?
• Tell me about a time you dealt with conflict.
• What is one achievement at work you’re proud of?

Coding

• Merge two sorted arrays.
• Algorithms
• Arrays
• Linked lists 
• Graphs and trees
• Strings

System Design

• Design a service or product API.
• Design a recommender system.
• Design Netflix.

Machine Learning

• Implement k-means clustering.
• Display job postings to users based on their behavior and geography.
• Describe your machine-learning experience.
• Apply the quadratic formula to a sorted array so the resulting array is still sorted.
• Given a biased coin function, write another function to make it return heads or tails with equal probability.
• Given an array of integers, find a tuple of three integers that can form a triangle.

Data Science

• Describe a metric for website performance.
• Describe how to build dashboards.
• Aggregate functions
• Joins
• SQL window functions
• Statistics
• SQL data manipulation
• Python data structures

Product management 

• Describe a time when you worked on a project that wasn't initially on the roadmap. What prompted this project, and how did you decide it was worth pursuing?
• What makes a good product manager?
• Tell me about a time you got a project back on track.
• How would you improve LinkedIn Messaging?
• What's your favorite digital product or hardware product? Why?

LinkedIn Interview Loops Explained

Review common interview loops at LinkedIn.

Behavioral

LinkedIn’s behavioral round is a 30 to 45-minute interview with the hiring manager.

The conversation will include behavioral and situational questions assessing your cultural and team fit.

You will likely be asked about previous roles, past projects and challenges, personal goals, high-level technical concepts, and interest in LinkedIn.

Before your interview, prepare for behavioral questions by determining how your experience and goals align with LinkedIn’s values.

Practice for behavioral questions by talking through your responses in a mock interview with a peer.

Get to know LinkedIn’s core values:

• We put members first
• We trust and care about each other
• We are open, honest, and constructive
• We act as One LinkedIn
• We embody diversity, inclusion, and belonging
• We dream big, get things done, and know how to have fun

Coding

The final coding rounds at LinkedIn are similar to the tech screen but slightly more challenging.

Prepare to solve one or two coding questions on CoderPad within one hour, but they will be medium—to hard-level difficulty this time.

Explain your thought process and do your best to optimize your code and handle edge cases.

Expect data structure and algorithm questions, as well as real-world problem-solving.

LinkedIn interviewers assess coding rounds in four main areas:

• Coding fundamentals: Do you fully grasp essential data structures and algorithms? Can you optimize the space-time complexity of your solutions?
• Code quality and maintainability: Can you catch your own mistakes? Do you have a testing plan to ensure your solution works as planned? Are you naming variables appropriately? Is your code human-readable?
• Experience with large datasets: LinkedIn products serve nearly a billion users. Coding questions may assess your ability to deal with large datasets requiring novel spatial/mathematical calculations. Be sure to practice graph questions before this interview.
• Communication: Can you articulate your ideas and concepts? Do you know how to ask the right questions to get to the root of a problem? Can you explain why your solution is good?

System design

LinkedIn’s final round includes a one-hour system design interview for all technical roles. Expect to lead the conversation after receiving a prompt like “Design Netflix.”

Be sure to clarify the problem, design a high-level system, and evaluate edge cases. You’ll be assessed on your design, communication, and decision-making so you can thoroughly articulate your thought process. 

Practice ahead of your system design round by thinking about your favorite features in apps or websites you use often. Then, try to design them yourself, from problem statements to edge cases and scaling.

Get comfortable discussing:

• Usability: How will you quickly assess the end user’s experience with the system or product? How will you pivot to address changing needs?
• Security: Can your design survive DDOS, spoofing, tampering, repudiation, etc.?
• Availability: How does your design handle failures?
• Scalability: How will your design handle changes in traffic?
• Operational characteristics: How will you diagnose or debug problems when they occur?

Machine learning

LinkedIn’s machine learning round assesses your technical, problem-solving, and communication skills related to ML. You’ll have a one-hour interview involving a coding challenge on CoderPad.

Get to know LinkedIn’s products that use machine learning:

• The LinkedIn news feed,
• Recommendation systems,
• and ads ranking systems.

Check out LinkedIn’s AI blog to learn more about AI and ML at LinkedIn.

Expect to encounter questions that involve ML fundamentals and algorithms, model evaluation, and feature engineering, including: 

• K-means clustering
• Linear regression
• Logistic regression
• Neural network
• Arrays
• Graphs and trees
• Decision trees

Data Science

The data science round at LinkedIn consists of 1 to 2 rounds (45 to 60 minutes) that assess your analytical, statistical, technical, and communication skills and ability to work with large datasets.

Be prepared to clearly communicate how you make data-driven business decisions.

At LinkedIn, data scientists work closely with product teams, so the interview will involve product metrics.

You should also expect real-world problem-solving, where you’re given a business case and expected to propose a solution. Also, you are expected to be assessed on your understanding of statistics and experimentation design.

Check out LinkedIn’s data blog to find out more about data science at LinkedIn.

Prepare for the following topics in your LinkedIn DS interview:

• Hypothesis testing
• A/B testing
• Probability
• Basic statistics
• Data manipulation
• Data modeling

Product management 

PM rounds at LinkedIn will include product sense (also called product design), analytical, and estimation questions.

For product-sense questions, be user-focused. You can use the framework of "broad, then deep."

Analytical questions are about business decisions and testing your knowledge of product strategy, metrics, and data. For analytical questions, be sure to show that you make data-driven decisions. 

Estimation questions assess your logic behind estimations and ability to size a potential market.

Don’t worry about getting the estimation questions correct; focus on asking clarifying questions and clearly showing your approach to the problem, which is what the interviewers will be assessing.

As part of your PM final rounds at LinkedIn, you may also be asked to do case studies and present them to the interview panel.

LinkedIn Interview Tips

Know LinkedIn inside and out.

LinkedIn is more than just a networking social media platform. Get to know all of LinkedIn’s products by spending some time on LinkedIn’s product page.

LinkedIn values collaboration, leadership, and learning. 

Stand out from the pack by preparing anecdotes from past experiences showing off these skills. Employers like to hear concrete examples, so be specific with these past work situations. Having these stories in your back pocket can be helpful in any round, but for the behavioral interviews in particular, the recruiter screen and the hiring manager interview 

LinkedIn’s technical questions are mainly easy and medium difficulty. 

Even if LinkedIn’s coding challenges are more straightforward compared to other top tech companies, you should still practice coding questions before your technical rounds to prepare. LinkedIn focuses on fundamental data structure and algorithm questions in SQL and Python. However, you might get some more complex questions in your final coding round, including real-world problem-solving.

FAQs

How competitive are LinkedIn interviews?

LinkedIn’s interviews are known for being easy to medium-difficult. This goes for the technical coding challenge, too, although the final coding round can be slightly more difficult, with medium—to hard-level questions. 

How should I prepare for my interview at LinkedIn? 

We recommend the following steps before your LinkedIn interview:

• Update your LinkedIn profile—you can bet that LinkedIn will check your LinkedIn page and resume.
• Get to know the LinkedIn platform. Check out LinkedIn’s product page to familiarize yourself with all of LinkedIn’s offerings. 
• Practice your technical skills. For technical roles, practice your coding, especially data structure and algorithm questions. 
• Try a peer mock interview beforehand, or get interview coaching from a tech professional.

Does LinkedIn hire students or new grads? 

Yes! LinkedIn has a page devoted to its entry-level opportunities.

It also offers student internships, apprenticeships for people starting out in a new field, and a program for academics to do data science and AI research that could influence LinkedIn’s products, called LinkedIn Scholars.