Position: Frontend Engineer Intern (R&D)
Location: China
Education: B Tech Tier 3 College
Experience: GSoC & other popular Open Source programs
Interview Process
Applied through a referral for different locations in China and got calls from 3 different recruiters within a month.
1st Recruiter
The recruiter reached out to me within 3 days of applying. Her very first question was if I could speak Chinese/Mandarin. Since she was hardly able to speak in English & wasn't able to understand what I'm saying. We agreed upon communicating via email. She sent an email asking me to connect via WeChat. But later found that WeChat has been banned in India along with various other Chinese apps. Suggested her to communicate via Linkedin or any other medium. But she ghosted me & never got any reply back.
2nd Recruiter
The second recruiter reached after two weeks. Luckily he was able to speak English but again suggested to chat further via WeChat.
Meanwhile, the incident with the first recruiter happened, I contacted one of my seniors who recently joined ByteDance. He suggested to use an internal tool called "Lark" which is mainly used by ByteDance employees & is available to download on play store. Asked the second recruiter to communicate via Lark, to which he agreed. But we could not move forward in the interview process, since they were not sponsoring a visa for students outside China & remote work wasn't possible.
3rd Recruiter
The third recruiter called within a week after the second recruiter. After the first two encounters, I told this recruiter clearly that I'm an international student & will be able to interview only if they are sponsoring me a visa. To which he asked me to wait for few more days for the hiring manager's approval. Finally, got a call after few days saying the manager has agreed to sponsor a visa & provide relocation if I clear all the interviews.
Meanwhile, I was reading up online that whether it's actually possible to travel to China considering the India-China situation at the moment. I later realized that I mentioned myself as an international student and forgot to tell him I'm from India. Messaged him asking to confirm if they could sponsor a visa from India. Since it would have been a waste of 2-3 weeks of interviewing & preparing just to find out later that they will not be able to sponsor a visa from India. And my guess was right, received a message saying that - Unfortunately, they have to cancel the interview schedule since the hiring manager told that it is very difficult to get to China from India at the moment.
Though the interview got cancelled, I was able to get a brief of the number of rounds & the process for an internship position at ByteDance which might help others.
Three rounds in total were to be taken.
First round: It would have been around questions related to past experiences, projects & computer science fundamentals (OOPS + Networking). Yes networking, they emphasize a lot on networking - not sure, why.
Second round: DSA + Grilling on JavaScript concepts.
Third round: HR, cultural fit.
Why did I apply to China than Singapore/Mountain view in the first place? Since I'm majorly into Frontend Development & Frontend intern roles are only present for locations in China. Thus unwillingly had to apply for China. Moreover, I found three to four different referral links for ByteDance without even asking anyone. Getting referrals are very easy for ByteDance. The referrals are publically available on Linkedin. Just search "Referrals ByteDance" on Linkedin & you will find plenty of people posting their referral codes.
Takeaways: Don't apply to ByteDance China from India, there is no way to move to China at the moment & they don't have remote jobs. Apply via referrals for any other locations & you will sure get a call within a week of applying.