Common Technical Interview Mistakes To Avoid
Knowing what not to do can be just as important as knowing what to do, so lets quickly cover a few common technical interview mistakes.
1. Not preparing enough
Seriously, theres no such thing as too much coding interview preparation. The good news is, most candidates dont put in that time. So it doesnt take much to really pull ahead of the pack, says Parker . Its such a bummer as an interviewer to watch a candidate really come up short and just think to yourself, I can tell youre smartif you had just reviewed some of this stuff Im sure youd be able to get this.
2. Jumping into the code without taking a moment to think it through
You might be eager to start solving the problem, but take a few minutes to question your assumptions and make a game plan first! Starting too quickly gets a lot of people into trouble when they could have taken a moment to prevent confusion down the road, says Refael . Some of the most common mistakes candidates make are avoidable. Pause for a moment to think through the problem-solving process.
3. Being too arrogant or opinionated
4. Not making conversation/chit-chat
Can You Tell Us About Algoexpert And What It Offers To Developers
AlgoExpert is a website that offers an organized platform with 77 curated practice interview questions, with more being added periodically. Each question is accompanied by:
- an in-depth two-part video explanation consisting of:
- a conceptual whiteboard overview of the algorithm at hand, covering its inner workings and its space-time complexity analysis
- an entire coding walkthrough of the solution
- a full-fledged coding workspace where you can type out and run your code against premade test cases and look at hints if you need help
Once Youve Got The Job
Congratulations!
Keep learning.
Youre never really done.
**********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************Everything below this point is optional. It is NOT needed for an entry-level interview.However, by studying these, you'll get greater exposure to more CS concepts, and will be better prepared forany software engineering job. You'll be a much more well-rounded software engineer.**********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
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Prepare For The System Design Interview
If you are a mid or senior-level candidate, you may expect system design questions as part of your technical interview. They aren’t covered adequately by LeetCode and good resources are still harder to come by.
The objective of system design interviews is to evaluate a candidate’s skill at designing real-world software systems involving multiple components.
You Only Wrote Your First Line Of Code When You Applied To A Bootcamp Were You Not Intimidated When Applying Considering You Hadnt Coded Before
Not really. I trusted in the process, which claimed that people with absolutely no coding experience could apply to these bootcamps, get in, and be employable in the Software Engineering field. I figured that if anybody could do it, I could, because when I set out to do something, I tend to really go all in.
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Phase : Learn The Realities And Competitive Landscape
If I wanted to tackle Big Tech, from another country, with less than a year of industry experience, and 15+ years in an unrelated career, with no Computer Science degree, I needed to have a very clear view of the realities, especially the competitive landscape.
This means there was room for informed hope, but no room for dreamy-eyed, pie-in-the-sky magical and wishful thinking.
Hard truths . Hard realities. Hard work.
I had to fully internalize and appreciate the following:
Maximize Your Chances Of Being Shortlisted
Do you still have trouble getting shortlisted at some or all of the top tech companies? Your resume could be the issue.
Your resume is the single most important entry point to getting shortlisted in major tech companies like FAANG / MANGA. After getting shortlisted, your past achievements become markedly less important as compared to your coding interview skills – which as we know, can be methodically learnt. Being able to frame your past achievements well enough to get through the screening stage is hence very important.
Unfortunately, even the most qualified candidates I know personally don’t know how to write a good resume and fail to get shortlisted. The truth is that when many of us don’t get shortlisted at top tech companies like FAANG / MANGA, we tend to think that we were under-qualified – but in most cases, it’s probably just the lack of good framing.
If you want to learn how to write a good software engineer resume, I’ve written a step-by-step guide here on software engineering resume preparation for companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Apple, with examples for your reference as well.
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Getting Noticed By Google
Google receives more than two million resumes but hires only around 4000 employees every year so its not easy to get noticed by recruiters for interview calls. Take the referrals through some connections working in these companies or you can take the help of LinkedIn and online coding platforms to increase your chances for interview calls. Below are some points that will help you in getting the call for interviews
How Long Is The Interview Process
Historically, Googles infamous interview process involved 15-25 interviews over a period of 6-9 months. It has since been whittled down to 4-9 interviews over a period of about two months, consisting of a phone screen and onsite interviews.
According to Indeed, nearly 40% of hires are headhunted by recruiters, while 22% apply through online job boards. Some recruiters say over 80% of hires come in through sourcing or referrals!
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Preparing For The Google Interview
In order to improve your chances of acing the Google interview, and to prevent you from having to spend another 6-months waiting to reapply, you should definitely stack the odds in your favor and prepare.
But how do you prepare effectively? There is no shortage of websites like HackerRank, LeetCode, ProjectEuler, TopCoder, etc. that serve as technical interviewing problem farms.
Sure, you could spend your time grinding through every single problem on LeetCode, but is the massive time investment really worth it? Is there a more efficient way you could be preparing?
Everyone has a finite amount of time and energy, and therefore using both resources as effectively as possible is an important factor in optimizing for both. Deliberate, consistent, and targeted practice is integral to successfully navigate the Google interview.
Seeking A Career Change
Remember the part where I didnt get a computer science degree? It has made a difference.
A few years ago, I thought I could get hired anywhere. I thought I was hot stuff: the elusive full-stack web developer. But during my job search in 2013, I realized my skills were lacking. I had spent so much time chasing dollars by running startups in my spare time, that I had let my skills atrophy. I hadnt kept up with technology.
For years, I had learned just enough to get by. I had a wide skill set but wasnt an expert in anything.
Dont get me wrong, I could still get hired, but not in the technologies or areas I wanted to work in. I could get hired for areas where the tech stack was somewhat outdated, like me. Theres big money in there, but I didnt see exciting prospects.
The realization reached its peak last year at a career fair. I was interested in perhaps working for one of the local companies that were startup labs run by venture capital firms. However, the fact that I lacked a computer science degree, and the skills and knowledge that accompany such a degree, meant I didnt have a chance.
I was working full-time on my businesses at the time, and still am today.
At the beginning of 2016, I decided it was time to make a career change from web developer to software engineer. I would need to study hard and practice in order to compress a computer science degree into a few months, but once I did, I could start a new career.
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Practice Like You Play
Effective practice is realistic practice.
In the midst of an interview, you want to be focused and able to spend the majority of your mental energy on the problem given from the interviewer. You dont want to be thrown off by extraneous factors such as not being used to writing code in a non-IDE environment.
Here is a list of factors that you should be mindful of when developing your practice regimen.
Time Constraints
The phone interview is 30-45 minutes, and each of the one-on-one onsite interviews will be roughly 45 minutes to an hour each. In each of these scenarios, you will be presented with at least one question, which, in most cases, is a coding category question.
In order to effectively practice under time constraints, one strategy would be to select one specific problem.
For instance, selecting a problem from one of the book or video resources under the Additional Resources section of this post would be a good place to start. Then, start a timer and attempt to solve the problem without access to an IDE.
Following this practice for a few different categories of questions will give you some signal with respect to how you are faring with time constraints. Getting optimal solutions within the time interval of 30-45 minutes consistently for problems of varying difficulty is the ultimate goal. If you are struggling to hit this goal, use this as an opportunity to tighten up this area is something you will need to work on.
Whiteboarding
Pressure Constraints
How To Prepare For Non
There will also be a few non-technical questions. When I did my first one, a friend recommended that I have answers ready for cookie-cutter questions like
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
Dont bother with that!
They will ask you about your previous work and education, though, and pretty much always ask about a technical challenge you overcame.
If you have a tech blog, refer to it. Ive had interviewers discuss my posts with me . Blogs arent hard to write, and even a few posts on an otherwise barren blog will make you look more thoughtful.
Finally, the absolute best way to prepare for a Google interview is to do more Google interviews, so if you fail, good for you!
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Time To Go Crush Your Own Technical Interviews
With these technical interview tips, youre equipped to begin your own technical interview preparation journey!
The next step is taking advantage of all the amazing resources out there that teach you how to ace a technical interview.
First, head to Interview Cake for extra training, strategies, and practice technical interview questions .
Then, acclimate yourself to live interviews by connecting with your peers on Pramp.
Above all, keep seeking out knowledge, improving your trade, and honing those coding interview skills with practice! Getting your dream coding job means getting through the interview. But if you go in prepared, the technical interview will be a piece of cake.
Utilize The Best System Design Interview Preparation Resources
Some of the best system design interview preparation resources include:
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How I Made A Customized Plan
After analyzing my advantages and “convertible” disadvantages, the next thing I needed to develop was a customized plan. I needed one that was tailored to me, that I could believe in.
I needed a plan that took into account my specific context, which includes my temperament, experience, beliefs, values, goals and skills.
Note that Ive still not talked about the technical interviews, the algorithms and data structures, and so on. When developing my plan, I had to focus on all the many pieces that had nothing to do with my coding skills or technical capability.
It would also need to account for my psychological runway how much time was I prepared to invest in this career change, before Id give up, lose hope, or change my mind? I could not answer that without understanding how long it was going to take me to learn the minimum required skills.
To understand that, I needed to research and analyze what the minimum set of engineering skills that the market would value were.
And to understand that, I needed to analyze the dozens of engineering domains in the market, and which ones would suit my temperament, interest/passion and advantages. And from that analysis Id need to pick the domains that I would focus on and exclude all others.
I’d have to find the overlap between my interests, my ability and what the market valued.
Since I was almost halfway through my career, I was determined not to repeat past mistakes. I was going to be:
Weeks 4 & 5 Practice Simple Data Structure And Algorithmic Challenges
As you are familiarizing yourself with data structures, start practicing relatively simple coding problems associated with these data structures and algorithms.
These questions are typically not asked in interviews at big tech companies. Even if they are, theyre usually used as fizz-buzz type warm-up problems. Such questions are also common during phone interviews. However, practicing these coding interview questions will help you internalize the data structures and help you tackle the harder questions which youll be practicing a few weeks from now.
Brush up your array skills with questions like:
- Remove Even Integers from Array
- Merge Two Sorted Arrays
- First Non-Repeating Integer in an Array
- Find Second Maximum Value in an Array
Brush up your Linked List concepts with questions like:
- Find Length of Linked List
- Search in Singly Linked List
- Reverse a Linked List
- Find Middle Value of Linked List
Brush up your Stack/Queue skills with questions like:
- Sort values in Stack
- Create Stack where min returns minimum value in O
- Implement Two Stacks using one Array
Practice Tree Problems like:
- Find minimum value in Binary Search Tree
- Find Height of Binary Tree
- Find kth maximum value in Binary Search Tree
Practice Graph Problems:
- Total number of words in Trie
- Find all words stored in Trie
Practice basic Heap problems:
- Find k smallest elements in a list
- Find k largest elements in an array
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Dont Study As Much As I Did
Yes, I took 8 months. But I could have abbreviated the process. Like any startup with a big goal, you make mistakes and do things that waste time. There are many things I wish I go back and do differently.
I studied topics I didnt need to, some because I thought I would need them for the interview, and some because I wanted to have the knowledge on hand for when I started working. I didnt want to be a burden on the team Im assigned to. It turns out I simply over-prepared.
I spent 3 weeks reading a 1,000-page book on C++. I dont remember 1,000 pages worth, but I know a good bit about C++ now. As it turns out, Im using Python for the interview, not C++. I had assumed I needed C++, C, or Java, but I was wrong. Its good to ask, not assume.
I read way more books than I needed to. There are only 3 or 4 books I should have read.
I have a code catalog of dozens of algorithms that I review, most of which I wouldnt expect in an interview. You dont need to do that.
I watched many hours of YouTube videos but could have watched far less, and spread out topics over time.
I should have stopped reading books and watching videos earlier and started on coding problems sooner. I would have been able to spend more time applying the topics I learned.
My sense of fear led me to study far more topics than I needed to.
