2020 Summer Internship Job Search Summary

Posted on Edited on In Disqus:

Nearly two months have passed since I posted my first summer internship interview experience on Nowcoder. In between, I successively participated in recruiting processes at eight companies. All roles were backend/server development roles, based in Beijing.

Failed

ByteDance

I failed in the first round. ByteDance is still a company I feel quite connected to and also really like. Last year, I interviewed once for a summer internship in the Ads system and went through a brutal four rounds, all the way to the lead, Lizhe. In the end, I did not go because the internship timing did not work. Last summer, I also joined ByteDance’s summer camp. Since this was my first interview in a long time, I was not prepared enough and did not perform very well. I failed to solve the algorithm problem, Edit Distance, so I was rejected in the first round.

Microsoft

I found a senior schoolmate who had previously worked at Microsoft, and through him contacted another colleague currently working at Microsoft for a referral. In 2018, I once interviewed with Microsoft Suzhou. Back then my level was limited, and I unfortunately failed. This year I was full of ambition and wanted to avenge that defeat. Unexpectedly, I capsized again. But I did learn a very important lesson: do not brag about having participated in contests.

In the first round, the interviewer asked me whether I had participated in any contests. At that time, I stupidly answered that I had done some LeetCode, Kick Start, Codeforces, and AtCoder. In reality, only LeetCode weekly contests were something I participated in often. I joined Kick Start’s monthly rounds if the time worked. The total number of contests I had done on the other platforms was only a few. Because of this, the interviewer misunderstood my level and thought I was at a Codeforces level; in reality, my Codeforces rating was not even 1500. He only asked me system design questions and did not ask me to handwrite code. Even though I had solved 900 problems on LeetCode, I had no chance to show it.

The second-round interviewer started with two very difficult algorithm problems. They felt like problems prepared for ACM contestants. It was all because I bragged in the first round, and then got arranged into this second round.

Ended

Google

I passed the first phone interview, but unfortunately, because of the pandemic, Google China canceled the summer internship program. My interview process therefore stopped after the first round.

DingTalk

Because I previously thought Ant Financial was an independent company, I applied to both Ant and DingTalk. When I officially submitted applications in Alibaba’s system, I learned that only one could be submitted. Since Ant was in Beijing, I chose Ant. Before being entered into the system, I participated in one interview.

DingTalk first round

Successfully Landed

Ant Financial

Received a letter of intent. The situation for this summer is unclear, and I do not know whether I will be able to go back to Beijing for the internship.

First round
Second round
Third round
Fourth round

miHoYo

I passed the interviews, but because it was impossible for me to go to Shanghai for the internship during the summer vacation, I declined.

First round
Second round
Third round

In Progress

Tencent

Because of the base location of the job, I interviewed with many different groups. I got as far as HR conversations, but there just happened to be no HC in Beijing.

First round
Second round
Third round
Fourth round
Fifth round
Seventh round
Eighth round
Ninth round
Written test

Huawei

I participated in the online written test. It was not difficult, about LeetCode Medium level.

Meituan

I participated in the online written test. The result was not good. There were five programming problems; I only got AC on two, passed half of two others, and could not debug the last one in the end. The problems did not look very difficult, but my result was really poor. I felt I was probably going to fail.
Meituan was also referred by a close senior schoolmate from my lab, so I felt I had failed to live up to expectations.

First Round

Because two very strong close senior schoolmates were at Meituan, I was still carried into the interview. The interview also did not ask very hard questions, so I felt like I had been vouched for by strong people. Trembling.

String search. I thought I needed to write KMP, but how could I handwrite that template in the last 10 minutes without copying it? In the end, I explained it and wrote an N*M brute-force solution.

Second Round

twoSum, find all index pairs of two numbers whose sum is target.