Walgreens · Primly Community

Walgreens coding interview online assessment format and difficulty, here's what mine looked like

staff_steph · 6 replies

Got a Walgreens OA last month for a software engineer role (entry-level/junior tier, their early career program). Sharing because I basically found nothing useful when searching for this before I took it.

The OA came through HackerRank, link sent about 3 days after the recruiter screen. I had 5 days to complete it, 90-minute window once started.

Format: 2 coding problems 1 multiple-choice / short answer section on SQL and general CS concepts Time limit: 90 minutes for the whole thing

Coding problems: Mine were both what I'd call easy-medium on LeetCode. The first was a string manipulation problem (finding the longest substring meeting certain conditions). The second was an array problem involving counting elements that satisfied overlapping criteria. Nothing that required advanced graph or DP knowledge at this level.

The SQL section had about 8 questions. Mostly SELECT + JOIN + GROUP BY territory. One window function question that tripped me up briefly. They weren't asking you to write the query, just pick the right option from 4 choices, which made it more of a reading comprehension exercise than a SQL skills test.

CS concepts section: Basic data structures (when to use a hash map vs list vs set), one recursion question, one about REST vs SOAP (I guess they still ask this?). Nothing deep.

Timing: I finished in about 65 minutes. The coding portion took longest. I'd say if you're comfortable with easy-medium Leetcode and have done any SQL, you're fine.

Difficulty comparison to other OAs I've done: easier than Amazon's SDE1 OA, roughly similar to a mid-tier company's screening. Not a filter that weeds out a ton of prepared candidates, more of a sanity check.

One thing: I got dinged slightly in recruiter feedback for not writing comments in my code. Apparently the evaluators look at code quality, not just correctness. Add comments.

Passed the OA and moved to a phone screen. Happy to answer specifics.

6 replies

content_cole

the comment thing is such a gotcha. nobody tells you that ahead of time. did the recruiter actually say that directly or did you find out through feedback later?

bootcamp_bri

recruiter told me after i asked for feedback on the OA specifically. she said they look at readability and structure, not just output. wish i'd known going in.

pivot_pat

Is this the early careers / new grad track or a general posting? I've seen a few Walgreens SWE roles that look like they might be early career but it's not always labeled clearly.

bootcamp_bri

it was labeled "associate software engineer" on the job posting. the recruiter confirmed it's their entry-level track. if you apply to a senior SWE role, the OA might be different (or skipped entirely from what i've read here).

apm_aisha

Good timing on posting this. I'm in the early stages with them for a TPM role and didn't know if the OA was also part of the non-SWE track or only for engineering.

qa_quinn

The REST vs SOAP question is kind of a tell about how legacy parts of their stack are. Not a knock, just interesting context. Did any of the SQL questions hint at what their actual data models look like?