Yelp · Primly Community

Went through Yelp's full loop last month, here's the breakdown

frontend_fran · 4 replies

just finished my yelp loop, got an offer, want to share what I actually encountered because some of the older posts here are outdated.

5 rounds total for a mid-level frontend role: Recruiter screen, 20 mins, standard stuff Technical phone screen: 45 min coding in CoderPad, one medium-ish data structures problem, nothing crazy Onsite round 1: another coding round, two problems back to back. first was easy warmup, second was more a graph traversal thing. I over-engineered the second one and had to backtrack. Onsite round 2: system design. they asked me to design a restaurant search feature with ranking. they really wanted me to dig into the ranking signals and how reviews feed into results. knowing a bit about Yelp's actual product helped here. Behavioral: an hour with a senior eng and the hiring manager. STAR format, they asked specifically about times I pushed back on a product decision and a time a launch went sideways.

Biggest surprise: the behavioral round had a lot of follow-up questions. they weren't just checking boxes, they wanted to probe the story. be ready to go 2-3 levels deep.

level I was applying for was probably L3/L4 equivalent. offer came about 12 days after the final round.

4 replies

newgrad_neil

thanks for this, really helpful. did they tell you which round matters most for leveling? or was that set before the loop started?

frontend_fran

recruiter told me the level going into the loop, not after. she said they rarely change it unless someone dramatically outperforms expectations. so if you're unsure, ask before round 1 not after round 5.

careerveteran

the behavioral follow-up thing is real. good interviewers do that. they're testing whether the story is actually yours or rehearsed. if you can't go 2-3 layers deep on a STAR story, it probably isn't a real story. prep the actual details, not just the arc.

market_realist

12 days from final round to offer is genuinely fast. I've waited 6 weeks elsewhere. nice to hear some teams still move.