I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 6 months. I interviewed at Two Sigma (New York, NY) in Nov 2015
Interview
They have a long interview process. It took 6+ months for me to get into on site. I found 3+ more offers during the interim. 3 steps to interview process. First is an hackerrank based online test.
It involves a graph based question. Nothing fancy. If you know DFS & BFS it should be a cake walk. I finished off it in 1 hour, they had 3 hours. I made coffee in between and had dinner too.
Second round was phone interview after 2 months. Simple basic questions. Knowledge based questions for 15-20 mins. I got an exciting offer from a big tech company and I asked them to speed up the process. They didn't. I accepted the offer I had and started working there.
Suddenly after 3 months one night recruiter calls me at 11 in night and asks me if I can interview tomorrow morning. I am like "Who is this ? " . He explained me that once upon a time I interviewed with 2 sigma. The recruiter forced me many times to continue the process. I was so pissed off but he was a nice guy and he wasn't ready to keep the phone till I commit to come in the morning.
I thought there is no harm in giving the interview. I went to interview about couple of hours late hoping that they would just not take me in. They still did. 2 short interviews and then recruiter comes and tells me I am not a good fit for remaining round. Who does that ? Can't they just email me later. They think they are saving our time but it's just rude. On top of that he mentioned that I am lucky to come here that only 2% of candidates reach here. I was thinking what kind of candidates you guys interview ? Are they software engineers or you interview random people on street ?
I don't remember the interview questions but all the interview process were extremely simple. Much simpler than most of the tech companies I have ever interviewed with. Everyone was friendly and nice. Interview process would have been so easy if HR wasn't involved.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Some java code and debug this and write test cases.
first interview was 60 minutes long with a leetcode hard question. second interview was 2 back to back 60 minute leetcode hard with emphasis on data structures. each interview had a 5 minute introduction and 10 minute at the end to ask questions
Standard medium difficulty hackerrank. The question involved decoded an encoded string. It was not something I had seen on LeetCode before and I think was unique to the company. The question was not that difficult but I ran out of time right before I could finish answering.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Decode a string encoded using a specific encoding algorithm.
It started of with one phone screen, then if you pass you have 2 back to back technicals, then 3 1 hour behaviorals, hiring committee, and management committee. Standard Leetcode and behavioral questions.