People you may know
Design a 'People You May Know' / connection-recommendation system for a 700M-user professional network. Suggest relevant people to connect with based on shared connections, company, school, and interactions. Constraints: refresh suggestions daily, must work for brand-new users with few connections, and avoid suggesting people the user explicitly dismissed.
What a strong answer looks like
Clarify scale and constraints first. Propose a clean component breakdown, then go deep on the hard parts (data model, bottlenecks, consistency, failure modes) and name the trade-offs you are making.
Clarify5:00 left
Estimate5:00 planned
Design15:00 planned
Deep dive12:00 planned
Failure8:00 planned
Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.
Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.