Eli Lilly · Primly Community

Eli Lilly coding interview and online assessment: format, difficulty, what I wish I'd known

qa_quinn · 4 replies

Did the Lilly online assessment in January 2026. Sharing the format because I couldn't find this info anywhere and spent way too long guessing what to expect.

Platform: HackerRank. You get a link in your email with a 5-day window to complete it.

Format: 2 coding problems 90 minutes total No proctoring that I noticed Allowed to use IDE locally and paste in

Difficulty: both were LC medium. One was a graph/BFS problem (finding shortest path with some constraints). The other was more array manipulation. Neither required a clever trick. If you can solve medium Leetcode in under 30 minutes each, you'll be fine.

Languages: I used Python, saw no restriction on language choice in the prompt.

Then there's a separate technical phone screen (not the OA) that comes before or after depending on team. For me it was before the OA. That one was more conversational, with one coding question asked live in a Google Doc. Yes, a Google Doc. No syntax highlighting. The interviewer said 'don't worry about syntax, just write working pseudocode or Python.' So at least they're upfront about it.

For the QA/SDET role I was also targeting, the assessment swapped one coding problem for a test-case design question. Given a feature spec, write the test cases. That part felt much more relevant to actual work.

One thing that caught me off guard: there was a video response section in the OA too. Three behavioral questions, 2 minutes per response, recorded. No redo. That's the part I was least prepared for. Lilly values questions: integrity, innovation, excellence. Know those and you'll have an answer for anything they throw.

4 replies

newgrad_neil

The Google Doc coding thing is such a vibe check. Did the interviewer help if you got stuck or just watch silently?

qa_quinn

Mine nudged me once when I went down a wrong path. Said something like 'what if n is very large, does your approach still hold?' which honestly was helpful. Not everyone gives hints though, depends on the interviewer.

ds_dmitri

The video response section is Lilly's way of pre-screening behavioral before they burn headcount on a live phone screen. Annoying but at least they're explicit about the values they're screening for.

content_cole

Counterpoint: HackerRank OA with a video behavioral module means they're filtering for people who aren't nervous on camera, not for engineering competence. Questionable proxy.