TikTok It is needless to say that North America has almost every resume, especially when 26 NG/Intern positions were released, the circle of friends were all "Did you vote for TikTok?". We, at programhelp, have been working on our resumes since summer. We, at programhelp, have helped students with dozens of OAs since summer, and we have a lot of first-hand experience with VOs. The student I'm sharing with you today just finished the second round of TikTok VO interviews last week, and relied on our real-time assists to get through the interviews.
Interview Opening: Nervousness vs Rhythm
The interviewer is a senior engineer, with a very calm voice, giving a feeling of "you'd better be well-prepared". After just a few pleasantries, he said, "Let's start with some behavioral questions."
The trainee was originally a bit nervous and spoke on the fast side. Our side immediately reminded him in the voice channel, "Slow down, throw in a key word first, then expand." He immediately adjusted his pace and introduced himself in a more natural way. This detail is actually very critical, as many people are nervous at the beginning and mess up at the end.
TikTok VO - BQ Interview
Here comes the first question:
"Can you share an example of how you moved a project forward when you were on a team with limited resources?"
The participant has a lot of examples in their head instantly, but is a little unsure of where to cut. We voice prompt immediately in the background:
"Situation first, don't say it all in your head."
"The end must fall on Result."
So his answer went along:
- Situation: A project has to go live with functionality in a week, but only two people can do it.
- Task: He volunteered to take on the development of the back-end interfaces and also took care of the front-end.
- Action: Worked on front-end during the day, taught myself Node.js at night to write interfaces, and messed around with a minimalist data model.
- Result: The functionality went live on time and the client and leadership were happy.
He was close to saying, "I worked pretty hard and finally got online," but when we prompted him to add impact, the effect is completely different, the interviewer nods and jumps straight to the next question.
TikTok VO - Coding Interviews
Coding The title is pretty straightforward:
"Implementing a String Addition and Subtraction Calculator."
For example, type "3+2-5+7"Output 7.
Participants' first reactions
He had usually written similar questions and his thoughts were quick:
- Iterate over the string
- (math.) analysis number (of a function)
- Adding and subtracting according to the previous operator
- The final result is returned
Wrote it in less than 10 minutes, ran through some examples and passed.
Follow-up.
Interviewer filler:
"And what if you add multiplication, division and parentheses?"
The trainee froze for a moment and was about to say something in the direction of "prioritization", but the words were not yet formed. We immediately voice prompted:
- "Double Stack, Operator + Operator."
- "Mention priority first, then bracket recursion/stacking."
As soon as he heard that he immediately picked up, "I would use two stacks, one for numbers and one for symbols, so that I could handle multiplication and division priorities and parentheses." The interviewer smiled a little, an obvious look of recognition.
This is the kind of momentary save that, without a real-time assist, would have left many people either silent for 10 seconds or scattered, and in the fast-paced nature of TikTok VOs, such pauses can give the impression of "unpreparedness".
Resume Pursuit: Project Deep Dive
TikTok's VO has another trait: he likes to dig deeper down his resume.
The interviewer asked three questions:
- How is your database model designed?
- How do you scale with high concurrency?
- How do you guys locate errors in the front and back end interfaces?
The trainee has usually prepared for this, but he or she stops when he or she gives a generalized answer, such as "MySQL is used for the database". We immediately gave them a voice prompt:
- "Plus transactions and indexes."
- "Mention horizontal scaling + caching."
So he added, "We actually use mostly MySQL and index the table design to ensure query efficiency. If there's a lot of concurrency, I'd consider doing horizontal scaling and adding caching."
This filler made the answer level completely different. The interviewer asked a few more questions and the participant topped them all.
TikTok VO - Interview Experience: Real vs Stable
The whole thing takes about 50 minutes.
A little nervous to start, but our real-time voice alerts helped steady him.
The BQ is polished throughout with the STAR method, and the answers are concise and results-oriented.
Coding was not buggy, and follow-up answered the key ideas with an assist.
The project digging deeper could have fallen out of the hole, but our backstage tips helped him fill in the points.
The interviewer was very friendly and ended with a "thank you for your detailed answers". Feedback came back in a few days and the overall assessment was very positive.
The Road to Offer Doesn't Have to Be a Lonely One
TikTok's VO is not just about writing a piece of code, but an all-encompassing examination: expression, logic, thinking and reaction, and stress resistance. You may have brushed up on a lot of questions, but when you get to the interview site, being nervous, getting stuck, or forgetting a few details will make you fail.
weVO Assistcan help you in critical moments:
- Get your thoughts straight and don't run away from them.
- When you hit a stuck point, you're given a point of view.
- Incomplete answer, fill in the blanks for you.
So if you're also preparing for TikTok or other big players, you don't have to go it alone. We've taken dozens of TikTok VO and have a proven methodology and a complete question bank to keep you solidly on track when it counts.
