I applied through university. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Block in Oct 2014
Interview
Applied via college/university. Recruiter reached out with a coding exam, which was pretty easy to solve. Next, a phone screen was scheduled, but I did not make it past this stage. The phone screen consisted of some resume questions and a programming question based on CoderPad, so the interviewer can watch you write your solution, though you are also free to implement your solution on an IDE first.
It does seem that they want people who can think of a good solution and code pretty quickly, and if you use API docs, that you use them properly by making the correct calls that are appropriate for what you want to do and that provide the best theoretical performance. The technical questions themselves weren't too bad, but they set the bar at a pretty high level for the solution that you deliver. So in this case, simply being able to deliver a workable solution isn't enough.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
In implementing the solution, the interviewer did ask how I could optimize my solution further. It was kind of a unique case.
Inital take home, followed by extension interview, followed by a coding challenge, followed by system design interview.
The whole process took 3 months!
The interviewers are usually really nice and want you to do your best.
The interviewer was nice, and he is friendly and willing to give hint, the question has 2 follow-ups, it was hard to complete in time. The question was not a typical LeetCode
Phone screen and then a full day of interviews. 3 pair programming challenges, a system design review and a prior experience interview. There was also an onsite lunch with a person from the company.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
To design a hotel booking system. Pick any part (backend, frontend, database, api etc) and deepdive into that, explaining the decisions along the way.