I'm wrapping up my loop with Notion right now (in the waiting period after final round, truly awful) and figured I'd write the post I wish had existed when I started. This is specifically for new grad / entry level SWE candidates, class of 2024 or 2025.
First: Notion's new grad process is not the same as their senior process. The rounds are similar but the calibration is very different. They know you don't have production STAR stories. What they're actually testing is signal for how you'll grow.
What the process looked like for me:
Recruiter screen (30 min) -> Technical phone screen (60 min) -> Virtual onsite (3-4 rounds, ~4 hours total).
Technical phone screen: Two coding problems. One was a medium-ish array/string manipulation thing, nothing fancy. The second was more data structure focused, I got something involving trees. They're watching how you think out loud as much as whether you get to the answer. I got stuck for 5 minutes on the second one and talking through where I was stuck helped a lot. Don't go silent.
Virtual onsite: Coding round 1: Another medium Leetcode problem, but they were really focused on code quality and edge cases, not just that you finished. Coding round 2: More open-ended. I had to design a small feature in pseudocode and talk through how I'd test it. This one felt closest to actual work. System design (simplified): They do a lightweight system design even for new grads. Mine was: design the data model for a simple note-sharing system. Not a full distributed systems question, more about your ability to think about data and interfaces. Behavioral: 45 minutes, mostly around collaboration, how you handle unclear requirements, and a time you had to learn something quickly. For new grads they really aren't expecting years of experience here, they want to see self-awareness and intellectual curiosity.
What I prepped: Neetcode 150 for coding (stopped at about 80 problems and felt ready enough). For system design I read the Notion engineering blog and watched a couple primer videos on document storage. For behavioral I wrote out 5-6 STAR stories from internships and class projects and rehearsed them out loud which was uncomfortable but genuinely helped.
One thing that surprised me: they asked a lot about what tools and processes I found interesting, what I'd want to build. It felt like they were trying to understand whether I'd be excited to work on the product, not just whether I could code.