Ask Others About Their Experience
A helpful way to prepare for your interview is by asking your colleagues and other programming professionals about their interview experiences. Asking others about their experience is especially useful if you speak to someone who already interviewed at the same company. Inquire about complicated questions and how to best prepare for your coding interview. When you ask others about their experiences, think about what challenges you might face, and prepare for those obstacles accordingly.
Review Common Interview Questions
In addition to specific technical questions, hiring managers ask common interview questions to ensure you’re the right candidate for the job. Many of these questions focus on your strengths, weaknesses and overall qualifications. Other questions focus on your job application, resume and cover letter. Common interview questions are not necessarily related to coding but rather evaluate your overall competency.
Create your responses to basic interview questions ahead of time, and review them before your interview. When you practice your answers, think of specific examples you want to refer to during your interview.
Prepare For A Tough Conversation
Maybe your boss will bring up some serious concerns. Maybe you even seen a performance improvement plan coming. Or, maybe itll be a normal review on your managers end, but youre going to have to raise your hand to discuss bigger issues.
For example, nows a good time to talk about the fact that youre bored in your role or youd like to consider an internal transfer.
Having these conversations is hard! But being prepared makes it a little easier.
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Plan And Prepare Your Outfit
Planning and preparing your outfit before your interview will help you look professional. The right outfit depends on the role. Suits are ideal for high-end corporate jobs, while business casual outfits are appropriate for most other roles. Also, a tailored jacket or blazer can dress up most outfits. Dress conservatively, but add a little colour to stand out.
You may like to try on a few outfits and see what looks and fits you best. Ask friends and family members for their opinions if you are unsure. A contact working at the company interviewing you may provide valuable insight into the dress code. As a rule, you should look slightly more dressed up than the average employee.
Once you have settled on your outfit, make sure it is clean and ironed. Suits need dry-cleaning, so leave enough time for this. Put on your outfit just before leaving to keep it wrinkle- and stain-free.
Preparing an interview outfit is essential, even for telephone interviews where you are not seen. Wearing professional clothes can help you feel confident and more in command during a telephone interview.
What Is Managed And Unmanaged Code
Example: Managed code is a code that is executed by CLR . It is called managed code because of the .Net framework which uses the garbage collector internally to clear up unused memory. __Unmanaged code is any code that is executed by the application runtime of any other framework apart from .Net. The application runtime will take care of security, memory and other performance operations.
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Now Youre Ready For The Coding Interview
These are some of the most common questions outside of data structure and algorithms that help you to do really well in your interview.
I have also shared a lot of these questions on my blog, so if you are really interested, you can always go there and search for them.
These common coding, data structure, and algorithm questions are the ones you need to know to successfully interview any company, big or small, for any level of programming job.
If you are looking for a programming or software development job in 2019, you can start your preparation with this list of coding questions and if you are ready for an Interview then you can also take TripleBytes quiz and go directly to the final round of interviews with top tech companies like Coursera, Adobe, Dropbox, Grammarly, and many more.
Tip #: Dont Forget To Make Small Talk
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.
- 10 Weird Ways to Beat Interview Nerves The Guardian
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What Is Code Review
Code review is a process when programmers verify each other code to find any potential problems, errors or deviations from best practices . For the last few years code review is a must-have element of the software delivery process. It gives us great auditability and better code quality but it also enables awesome knowledge sharing people can now teach and learn at the same time, by sharing experiences. But I dont want to convince you to enforce code-reviews in your development process but show you why and how to use code reviews during technical interview.
Dont Forget The Soft Skills
Mastery of coding challenges is only half the battle in coding interview preparation, so dont forget the soft skills. Throughout the entire interview process, including the technical coding interview, there are a lot of things that interviewers are looking for besides your ability to code. These other skills have to do with how well you communicate your thought process, collaborate, talk about the problem at hand, your leadership skills, your drive to learn, and generally speaking, how nice you are. Soft skills are often overlooked by candidates and can be deal breakers for a lot of coding interviews.
A company thats worth applying to will want candidates that have strong soft skills, sometimes moreso than hard skills, because they show how well a person can grow within the company and develop those hard skills over time. This is especially the case for junior software engineers.
When you practice your code challenges, see if you can buddy up with someone and take turns doing mock interview. Practice talking through the coding problem as you work, asking questions, giving each other hints here and there, and revealing your ability to lead, collaborate, and persevere through the coding test.
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What Resources Should I Use To Prepare For A Coding Interview
“Cracking the Coding Interview,” a book by software engineer Gayle Laakmann McDowell, breaks down 189 common technical interview questions and walks the reader through each solution. It also gives tips on how to complete on-the-spot algorithms and how to handle behavioral questions.
You practice your coding skills on LeetCode, a website dedicated to helping tech professionals get jobs. It offers hundreds of test questions and even has a premier membership in which members can filter sample interview questions by specific companies.
Job and recruitment website Glassdoor is a repository for hundreds of sample interview questions that Glassdoor users were asked in their technical interviews.
Applicants can hone their soft skills and get ready for behavioral questions with Educative’s Grokking the Behavioural Interview course.
How To Impress In A Junior Developer Job Interview
This article will go through tips on how to ace a junior developer job interview and is written by Natasha Postolovski, a Graduate Software Developer at ThoughtWorks. You can follow her on Twitter: .
The Junior Developer job interview process can seem a little bit scary. For some Junior devs, this might be their first job interview ever. For others, it may not be their first job interview, but possibly their first software development interview. You might have read horror stories about having to solve really hard computer science problems at a whiteboard, or even over the phone. This may be true of the most competitive companies like Google and Facebook, but for 99% of Junior developer roles, the interview process is more about demonstrating a passion for technology and a great attitude than it is about flexing your technical muscles.
If you love to code and have a solid grasp of the fundamentals, then its time for your first Junior developer interview!
Want to ace your technical interview? Schedule a Technical Interview Practice Session with an expert now!
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Study Your Algorithms And Data Structures
This goes hand-in-hand with the hard skills but deserves its own section. You dont need to be a master of computer science to ace a coding interview, but there are some standard algorithms and data structures that you should feel good about referencing, or at least mentioning and talking about. For instance:
- How does a bubble sort work vs. a merge sort?
- Whats the difference between a stack and a queue?
- Whats a linked list? What about a hash table?
Its likely that youll be asked one algorithm question in a job interview, so becoming familiar with and being able to speak about them to a degree is a good thing. Cracking The Code Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell is a great book covering all of the essential algorithms, data structures, and how to implement and use them in sample code challenges.The coding interview is an opportunity for you to not only show off your skills as an engineer, but also to demonstrate how well you work with others as a data scientist. Its designed to simulate what its like to work with you on a team. So be yourself, study, know the programming language and practice, take a deep breath, and crush that coding interview!
Before The Technical Interviews:
1. Your technical interview will be after the meeting with a Recruiter / Talent Sourcer, so use this opportunity to ask him/her what you can expect during the technical part:
- Who will be interviewing you
- How long will the interview last?
- Will it be only the theoretical part or you can expect live coding
- Should you review any additional materials?
- Additional questions you might be interested in knowing: What are the next steps in the recruitment process? Will I receive some materials from you so I can prepare? How my work will look like? How many Engineers are on this team? Will I work only with them or maybe with PMs, Designers, etc? What technology stack do you use? Do you offer flexible working hours? How does a career path look like?& more. If you forgot to ask your questions, you should always have an option to get back to Recruiter / Talent Sourcer or ask them during the next steps.
- Make sure to choose the most convenient time for a technical interview .
2. Practice, practice, practice
- Review all the additional information youve received. If you have asked for it and still didnt receive any, ask yourself do you want to continue with interviewing . If you want to proceed, visit e.g., the glassdoor.com website, where you can find questions that may appear during the interview.
Below you can read about my first ever mock interview it helped me boost my confidence and understand the areas where I need more preparation
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What To Look For In A Code Review
Its important to go into reviews knowing what to look for in a code review. Look for key things, such as
Structure. Style. Logic. Performance. Test coverage. Design. Readability . Functionality.
You can do automated checks for some of the things e.g., structure and logic. But others e.g., design and functionality require a human reviewer to evaluate.
Reviewing code with certain questions in mind can help you focus on the right things. For instance, you might evaluate code to answer:
- Do I understand what the code does?
- Does the code function as I expect it to?
- Does this code fulfill regulatory requirements?
What’s The Best Way To Prepare For A Coding Interview
Data structures and algorithms will likely be an integral component of the coding challenges, so it’s important to spend time on those topics when preparing for your interview. Try to mimic the actual interview conditions in your prep: Practice on a whiteboard and set a timer to emulate the time pressure during coding challenges. As you write your code, practice explaining your thought processes out loud.
It’s also key to do your research on the company â this will give you a better idea of what languages, frameworks, and other tech it uses. You can also research the company’s current strategies and goals to best identify and articulate how you will contribute to the company.
As the interview processes for many well-known companies are widely discussed, this research could lead you to specific information about your upcoming coding interview. At Google, for instance, applicants must pass a pre-screen and an onsite interview, which includes meeting with 4-6 Google employees for nearly an hour each.
Remember that while much of the interview will focus on technical skills, there will also be behavioral and soft skill components involved. It’s a good idea to connect to the company’s recruiter to get the full picture of the process.
Lastly, run through a couple of mock interviews. Have a friend play the role of the interviewer or use free mock interview sites like Pramp to practice.
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Code Review For Interviews: This Is How I Have Been Doing It
For all the code reviews I have done so far for the interview candidates, I have learned and followed a set of practices. I am going to just put down things that have worked for me. Feedback is welcome.
Code review is a stage in the interview process where the assignment solution submitted by a candidate is reviewed to test out certain criteria and certain aspects of code. If the code fulfills most of the criteria, the candidate deems fit for further rounds of interview.
A code assignment is sent to the candidate to be completed at home. It contains a problem statement, acceptance criteria, expectation from the code , and other general instructions. Some of the expectations are:
a) The code should be elegant and simple.
b) It should have some sort of test.
c) It should be readable, maintainable , and production quality code.
d) It should have a Readme file with instructions for the ease of review.
The candidates submit code in multiple ways. GitHub repository link, zipped files are the most common ones. Since a programming language is a medium to solve a problem, code submitted in most of the widely used languages is accepted for review.
Once a code assignment is downloaded , the following are the things I start looking for in the code.
How easy it is to get up and running?
As soon as the code is in my machine, I would open it up in one of the IDEs or code editors. The presence of a build file is a good sign.
Is Readme present?
Does the code compile and run?
Best Tips To Crack Coding Interviews In 2022
Here are a few of my practical tips to crack your next coding interview. These are hard-earned and I learned from my own mistakes and experience.
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Come Armed With Knowledge
Sites like Glassdoor allow you to gain a peek inside the interview process. Candidates, both successful and unsuccessful, can use the site to post feedback about their interview experience. Reading through the interview feedback for the company youre applying to can help you gain an understanding of the interview sequence. You may be able to learn what kinds of interviews youll go through, and roughly how they will be structured. The point is not to cheat and try to preempt interview questions, but simply to get a broad-strokes picture of what the interview process is like. If you know that the interview process involves a stretch of problem solving at the whiteboard, for example, you can practice this kind of interview with a friend or mentor in advance.
If people do share details of specific questions asked or challenges given, its best to prepare for similar kinds of problems and questions, but not to focus on that specific example. Different interviewers like to ask different questions, and companies regularly refresh the challenges given to prospective employees. How you approach and work through a problem is often more important than getting to a particular solution, and memorizing answers will harm rather than help with this.
