Tuesday, April 30, 2024

How To Get Better At Coding Interviews

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Make A Routine And Stick With It

How to solve coding interview problems faster

Tips to make the best use of these Interview Coding Questions:

  • If you want to master any programming language, move to a Linux system for coding practice.
  • I have mentioned the list of programs you should practice. We are writing a solution for each of the programs listed here. I keep updating this space. You can bookmark this page for anytime reference.
  • I need your help. You can also write the program for any of the programming questions. Submit your program or even you can send an email at . I will publish your article on our portal. Along with your practice, you are helping other programmers.
  • Make a schedule and challenge yourself to solve n coding questions every day.

Some Points Foryour Preparation Strategy For Coding Interview

1. Mock Interviews With Friends: You can form a mock interview group with friends to interview each other. You can give feedback to each other and improve your technical skills as well as communication skills together. Always make a group of people who motivate you to improve yourself and gives you the right advice.

2. Create aList To Track Your Mistakes: Create a list to track mistakes you have made while solving any problem so that you do not repeat the same mistakes during the interview. Also, keep track of mistakes youve made while making projects and how you resolve them so that if the interviewer asks about them, you can easily explain. Many companies take behavioral rounds and one of the famous questions is to tell about your mistakes/failures, so you can also write down the answer to these questions as it is hard to come up with the proper answer at that time.

3. Start Timing Yourself: You should be able to solve the problem under a given timeframe in the actual interview. You can improve your efficiency by solving as many problems as you can.

4. Solve Targeted Questions: Solve questions of the company youre interviewing for, using sites such as Glassdoor, GeeksforGeeks, etc. Talk to friends who may have interviewed at that company before.

5. Make Cheat-sheets and Flash Cards for Revision: Make short cheat sheets for problems you have done before and concepts with which youre not very comfortable. Use them to revise problems quickly later.

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How Do I Know If Im Whiteboarding Correctly Or Well

As with any skill, it takes diligent practice. Whiteboard coding with peers and doing mock interviews is a fantastic way to get practice so that you can master whiteboarding.

That sounds great but how can I even practice? A great resource would be to use Pramp or join a computer science club at your school. Pramp can be a valuable resource for you to practice interviewing with many software engineers from various backgrounds. Youll receive plenty of feedback on how well youre able to talk through your solution, work through examples, and write up code. You will face a variety of questions of different difficulties, a diverse range of interviewers with different interview styles, and come to understand your style as an interviewer.

My experience with Pramp has been fantastic. Having the opportunity to mock interview with engineers, established interviewers, students, and recruiters have enabled me to experience the coding interview in so many different environments and situations. Each person has their own way of approaching a coding interview, which directly affects how you perform. And more importantly, the skill set to perform well. It has developed my communication tremendously and fixed many of the mistakes I previously made during onsites.

Overall, whiteboarding is an effective method to couple with your explanations to provide the interviewer visuals so that they can create a mental map of how you solve the problem, and for them to follow along step by step.

Also Check: Design Interview Preparation

Tip #: Memorize A Quick Sales Pitch On Yourself

At the end of the day, an interview is about selling your skills to an employer. You need a polished, brief, and memorable pitch that explains who you are and why a company should hire you.

As you cycle through interviewers, youre probably going to need to explain your qualifications and intent multiple times so it will help to have some talking points in mind! This speech might include non-coding details such as your past employment history, soft skills, goals, and independent projects.

Coding Interview Tips:

  • Take some time to brainstorm your pitch before an interview. It may help to write out talking points!
  • Try to memorize what you can. You should have your pitch down pat so that you dont fumble or leave out important information during the interview.
  • Workshop your pitch with a friend to ensure that youre striking the right tone as you introduce yourself.

Additional Resources:

How Would You Handle Working On A Team With People From Other Departments

How to do well in a coding interview

During a programming interview, youll take technical tests or complete technical interviews. You can use these opportunities to showcase your soft skills as well, such as providing examples of your interpersonal and communication skills.

ExampleI work well on teams, including ones with non-tech members. I find that these groups can produce products and solutions that a team of like-minded people may not consider. I also enjoy meeting new people and considering other angles to the projects we work on together. I have worked on teams with only programmers and mixed teams in the past, and feel the mixed groups were often more innovative. I would welcome an opportunity to work on this type of team.

Read more:

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Write Code On A Piece Of Paper Or Whiteboard

From my experience, most companies will have you write code on a whiteboard during the onsite interview.

If youre not used to coding on a whiteboard, its quite awkward at first. You have to write out every single character, you cant easily insert new lines or delete whole blocks, and you dont have the helpful highlighting youre used to from your favorite code editor.

So iron out that awkwardness before your interviews. Run a few practice problems on a piece of paper or, if you can, on a real whiteboard.

Once you have the code hand-written, try debugging it. Run through what it does, step by step, and look for errors. Then, type it up and actually test it.

How Do You Begin A New Project

When you respond to this question, emphasize your planning process and show that you can stay organized aside from your technical abilities. Use this opportunity to practice the STAR method again.

Example:When I begin a project, I like to choose the technical aspects first like the language and library Ill use. Then I plan the features and use visuals to fully develop these plans. After that, I will consider how to best implement them. Last, I like to plan a timeline and schedule for completing the project. I have used this system at work to stay ahead of schedule.

One project I planned from start to finish was the addition of a user wiki. I first decided to implement the Scrum method and chose Python to code the wiki. Python is a fast language that would be highly accessible for my team. I considered the team members needed to implement and did requirements gathering. Finally, I planned and completed a sprint. Using this practical method of thinking through projects allowed my team to complete the wiki quickly and efficiently.

Related: What Is Scrum Project Management?

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Collecting The Best Resource For Learning

Cracking the coding interview is not easy, so one of the best ways to enhance your coding skills is with learning! Learn coding with the help of books, youtube content, blogs and courses.

Here is the list of top five books that can be a great resource to crack the coding interview

  • Programming Interviews Exposed by John Mongan, Noah Suojanen Kindler, Eric Giguère
  • Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
  • The Algorithm Design Manual by Steven S Skiena
  • Elements of Programming Interviews by Amit Prakash, Tsung-hsien Lee, Adnan Aziz
  • Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley

Some of the free online courses to crack coding interviews are listed below:

  • Techinterview
  • Effective Ways To Improve Communication Skills

    Problem Solving Techniques – For Programming Problems & Interviews

    If you feel your communication skills are weak, then dont worry. Here are some practical tips that will help you improve your communication skills and interview performance.

    • Public Speaking: public speaking is one of the best and the proven way to improve your communication skills. Speaking out in public will help you know your weakness and help you to articulate your speaking in a well-structured manner. You can take part in debates or various speaking in-public activities. This will not only help you in improving speaking skills but will also remove stage phobia.
    • Active Listening: A good communicator is always a good listener. Always practice active listening. Make the interviewer or speaker feel that you are actively listening to him/her ask some follow-up questions and doubts.
    • Focus on non-verbal communication: Communication is not only about the things that we speak verbally but also deals with your body language and facial expressions. Therefore, always pay attention to your body language and expression. You should also try to maintain eye contact and avoid unnecessary hand gestures or too many hand gestures.
    • To improve your communication skills, you can teach your junior or batch mates in college about any technology or concepts you are good at. Teaching is one of the best ways to improve communication skills as you will be getting active feedback and making sure that everybody gets to understand what you are trying to explain.

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    Focus On Getting Your Thoughts First Then Worry About Details At The End

    Yes, thats correct!

    • Dont waste your time with that part of the algorithm that you cant think immediately how to implement. Say what you believe should be done, skip it, and down the road youll probably find out either a way to implement it, or that it was actually not necessary.
    • Dont worry about syntax. Even convert to the English Language if you need to, and say youll get back to it later.
    • Leave yourself plenty of room. If youre using a Whiteboard, leave room for further comments or code in between your rows. If youre using an IDE, you can always go back to any row and add whatever is needed.
    • Check minor details in your algorithm at the end. Just leave a checkmark to remind you to get back there, and keep your code flowing.
    • Use descriptive variable names. This may take time, but it will prevent you from losing track of what your code is doing, especially on a Whiteboard, and it will also help your interviewer to keep track of your logic.

    List Of Interview Coding Questions

    Here Im listing basic programming questions you should practice to master any of the programming languages.

    We also have a list of coding questions categorized by the data structure.

    Basic Coding Questions

  • Write a program to print the day of the week based on the given number using the switch case.
  • What is the Harmonic Series? Write a program to generate the Harmonic Series.
  • Write a program to find the average of consecutive n-Odd numbers and n-Even numbers.
  • Print the Triangle as follow, using for loops. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 N
  • Create the class having a member variable of employee detail and getter and setter function for each variable.
  • Write the program to read and write a file.
  • Find the longest line from the file.
  • Take the students Mark as User input and check the range of Mark.
  • String Handling

    If you are learning Python, check the bitwise operators in Python.

    Advanced Coding Questions

  • Write a C program to upload the file to another PC connected to the network?
  • Write a C program to download the file from the network?
  • These two questions are more related to network programming. If the job profile is related to networking, you have to prepare for such questions. These questions were asked in the Persistent coding interview as per the experience shared by the candidate.

    Dictionary

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    Write Down Your Mistakes

    Grab a fresh notebook. After each question you try, look back and ask yourself, What did I get wrong about this problem at first? In other words, what did you learn? For each question, take the time to write down 1 or 2 things you learned.

    After each practice session, read through your whole running list of learnings. This adds a nice layer of rigor to your practice, so you remember things to fix for next time. Youll be less likely to repeat the same mistakes and, eventually, checking for those things will become second nature.

    How To Make Progress While Studying For Coding Interviews

    How to do well in coding interviews !  Mastering Software ...

    Getting stuck is never fun. Especially when youre working really hard. And yet, I find that this happens to people preparing for coding interviews all the time.

    You put in consistent work. Youve gone through hundreds of practice problems and block out an hour every day to study. But youre just not progressing.

    Even after all this prep work, you still feel like every problem is a new challenge that you dont quite know how to solve. You can solve the problems most of the time, but it doesnt feel like its getting that much easier.

    When I work with 1:1 coaching clients, this is exactly the situation that I often find them in. And in almost all of the cases, once we identify the thing holding them back, they experience major breakthroughs. Resolving these issues has gotten my clients jobs at Amazon, Bloomberg, Uber, and more!

    So what exactly is it that is holding you back? What is preventing you from making the progress you want? In this article, I will show you the ten most common problems that people struggle with. Fair warning, though: it can be really hard to identify these issues in yourself. If you really want to break through your issues, I recommend working with a coach.

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    Understand Basic Body Language Cues

    With social and professional interactions with other individuals, body language can be a window to the soul. Always maintain good posture, avoid distracting behavior, and use hand gestures appropriately. Donât forget to smile! If you can, notice body language cues in your interviewer. For example, you may find your interviewer clear their throat or become impatient during a long-winded answer. If you can dial in on the interviewerâs body language cues, you can keep your interviewer engaged, maintain good momentum, or even turn the tide of a poor interview.

    What Does A Coding Interview Generally Entail

    Typically, interviews for a tech job start with a casual phone call from the company’s recruiter. Then, the applicant moves on to a technical interview, which usually lasts about an hour and often takes place over Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Hangouts. It includes a series of technical questions and allows the interviewer to watch the applicant code in real-time.

    Questions may focus on the applicant’s ability to build or debug, or prompt the applicant to demonstrate their competence with data structures and algorithms.

    This is a chance to show off your coding skills and how you work with others. With the interviewer present, you can talk through your thought processes for completing the challenge, which gives you an opportunity to demonstrate problem-solving skills.

    While the interviewer is evaluating your competence in completing the challenge, they are also watching your diligence in checking and correcting the code. The interviewer may assess your logical reasoning, use of best practices, and communication.

    In addition to the coding challenges, applicants are typically asked different behavioral questions. Questions might cover the applicant’s experience with various programming languages and development tools and what skills the applicant would bring to the position.

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    Inside Tips On How To Ace Coding Interviews In Top Companies

    Get insightful articles from the world of tech recruiting. Straight to your inbox.

    Heres what you can do next. Learn more about HackerEarths

    Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering. Bill Gates

    In college, I wanted to learn to build things that would have a significant and positive impact on mankind. I looked around and saw that there were people and organizations out there that were doing this on a daily basis. They were pushing the human race forward with their numerous contributions to society. But unfortunately for me, I was not able to find anyone/anything that could show me the path to these organizations or offer me the necessary guidance toward cracking their coding interviews. I discovered how to ace coding interviews the hard way, by getting knocked from one resource to another, finally securing offers from HackerEarth, Microsoft, Airbus and GeeksforGeeks in my final year. This was why I wanted to share my learning with whoevers now looking for that guide. They can invest their time and energy in the right direction from the very beginning.

    A lot of people who are job hunting want to know just how to land a great job at a swanky company. They want to know what are all the types of questions asked in their interviews and the topics that they should prepare for. If you are one of those people, you are in the right place. We hope that we will be able to help you prepare and ace your coding interviews!

    Tip #: Dont Forget To Make Small Talk

    How to Get Better at LeetCode and Crush the Coding Interview

    Yes, the focus of a coding interview is on a candidates programming savvy but the conversation will drive quite a bit of an interviewers impression.

    Interviewers are as human as the rest of us. They laugh, they share experiences, and they think highly of the people they like. When youre in the interview room, you should make an effort to push aside your nerves and make a connection with the person on the other side of the table.

    Chris Lee might have put the matter best in an article for Learn to Code With Me. An interview is not just about answering questions correctly, but also about a conversation. Ask good questions. Laugh and make jokes at appropriate junctures. At the end of the interview, even if you missed a few questions, the overall feeling the interviewer has about you should be positive. If you know that you are not a great conversationalist, make sure to focus on improving this.

    Interpersonal interaction matters so dont let small talk fall to the wayside!

    Coding Interview Tips:

    • Come up with a few good questions to ask your interviewer about their experience with the company.
    • Make a few jokes .
    • Make small talk.

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