Phone interview questions for software engineers come in 2 calls, and both are filters.
On this page
The recruiter screen runs 20 to 30 minutes. It checks your level, your timing and your pay.
The technical phone screen is 1 engineer with 1 or 2 coding problems. It runs 45 to 60 minutes.
One weak call ends the loop before the onsite starts.
I have run 100+ technical interviews.
The full FAANG interview has 5 stages, and these are the first 2.
What does the recruiter ask on the phone screen?
The recruiter phone screen asks 5 things, and none of them are technical.
The recruiter wants to know you are real, available and at the right level.
Pay comes up on almost every call, usually in the first 10 minutes.
The questions, in the order most recruiters ask them:
- Why are you looking?
- What level are you at now, and what level are you targeting?
- When could you start, and are you in other loops?
- What are your salary expectations?
- Are you authorised to work in the country of the role?
The salary question is the one to prepare. You do not have to give a number first.
Ask the recruiter for the band instead. My salary negotiation guide has the exact wording.
The level question costs more people than the pay question.
A candidate who says “senior or staff, I am flexible” gets the lower one.
What happens in the technical phone screen?
The technical phone screen is 1 engineer, 1 or 2 problems and a shared editor.
The problems are easier than the onsite ones, and the time is tighter.
The engineer scores your reasoning as much as the code. Those notes travel with you to the next round.
The technical phone screen opens with 5 minutes of introductions.
The problem takes about 40 minutes. Your questions for the engineer take the rest.
Which phone interview questions come up most?
The phone interview questions that come up most are pattern problems in a costume.
Each question is a known pattern with a new story on top. Naming the pattern early is most of the score.
The patterns below cover the phone round at most large companies.
| Pattern | A typical phone question |
|---|---|
| Hash map | Find 2 numbers that add up to a target |
| 2 pointers | Check whether a string is a palindrome |
| Sliding window | Longest substring without repeating characters |
| Stack | Check whether brackets are balanced |
| Binary search | Find a value in a rotated sorted array |
| BFS or DFS | Count the islands in a grid |
| Heap | Return the k most frequent elements |
| Intervals | Merge overlapping meeting times |
AlgoPath trains exactly this naming, in 150 steps across the patterns.
How do you answer a coding question on a phone screen?
A coding question on a phone screen is scored on 6 moves, made out loud. The code is the last of them.
Candidates who type in minute 1 lose the reasoning the engineer came to record.
Say each move before you make it.
- Restate the problem in your own words.
- Ask about input size, edge cases and what “valid” means.
- Say the brute-force approach and what it costs.
- Say why you are not doing that.
- Write the real solution.
- Walk 1 example through it by hand.
Step 6 catches more bugs than staring at the code. Interviewers notice when you find your own bug.
Silence is the most expensive thing on a phone screen. The engineer cannot see your face.
Ninety seconds of quiet reads as stuck. Say what you are checking, even when it goes nowhere.
The 8-week FAANG prep plan schedules this practice week by week.
What gets people rejected at the phone stage?
Rejections at the phone stage come from 4 habits. All 4 are fixable in a week.
The engineer writes each habit down, and those notes reach the debrief.
Interviewers write 4 lines that end a loop at the phone stage:
- Jumped to code before clarifying the problem.
- Went quiet for minutes at a time.
- Could not say why one approach beat another.
- Never tested the code, so the interviewer found the bug.
The scorecard post shows the exact lines interviewers write.
Common questions
Do phone screens use LeetCode problems?
Phone screens mostly use problems of LeetCode easy or medium difficulty, often reworded. The company may use its own question bank, but the patterns are the same. Practising 15 patterns beats memorising 300 problems. Interviewers change the story on purpose, so memorised answers rarely survive the follow-up.
Can you use your own editor on a phone screen?
Most companies send a link to a shared editor such as CoderPad. Expect no autocomplete, and often no way to run the code. Some allow your own IDE with screen sharing. Ask the recruiter which one before the call. Practise in a plain editor for a week beforehand.
What should you do if you get stuck on a phone screen?
Getting stuck on a phone screen is normal. The engineer scores how you handle it. Say what you have tried and why it failed. Then offer the brute-force version and ask whether to code it. A slow working solution with clear reasoning usually beats a half-written fast one.
How soon do you hear back after a phone screen?
Most companies answer within 3 to 5 working days after a technical phone screen. A week of silence usually means the notes are waiting for a second reviewer. Ask the recruiter for a date at the end of the call. A recruiter who gives a date usually keeps it.
What are phone interview questions?
Phone interview questions are the questions asked on the calls before an onsite interview. For software engineers there are 2 calls. The recruiter asks about level, timing, pay and work authorisation. The engineer sets 1 or 2 coding problems and scores the reasoning out loud.
The short version
The phone stage is 2 calls: the recruiter screen and the technical phone screen.
Prepare the pay answer and the level answer before the first call.
On the second call, make 6 moves out loud and write the code last.
Learn 15 patterns and name the pattern early.
For a scored run before the real one, book a mock interview. You get the scorecard a real panel would fill in.