15 Tips I Gave my Mentee to Nail his Coding Interview
“Believe in yourself, and the rest will fall into place. Have faith in your own abilities, work hard, and there is nothing you cannot accomplish.” — Brad Henry.
“Believe in yourself, and the rest will fall into place. Have faith in your own abilities, work hard, and there is nothing you cannot accomplish.”
— Brad Henry
I have been fortunate enough to volunteer as a Mentor in a Mentoring program where mentees receive guidance on career planning, interpersonal communication skills, networking, CV-drafting, job-interview preparation, and leads to open hi-tech positions.
A couple of weeks ago, My mentee and I wrote an impressive resume, and I have passed it to a few friends of mine in the industry; fortunately, it led to two invitations to interviews from two top-notch companies; how cool is that?!
In today’s article, I’m sharing some nuggets of “coding interview” wisdom, which I passed to my Mentee, that helped him nail the coding interview.
Let’s dive in.
Tip #1 — Succeeding to prepare is preparing to succeed
Cracking the coding interview
Gayle Laakmann McDowell has written the bible on coding interviews in a book named “Cracking the coding interview.”
This book is a goldmine of both theory and questions.
Tip #2 — Networking is vital
Using your network correctly, you can better glimpse the current industry standards, like the most frequently asked questions by each company. More technical questions? or maybe more puzzle questions?
Tip #3 — Use helpful websites
Daily Coding Problem
By subscribing to this site, you will start getting a new problem each day asked by one of the industry's top-notch companies.
The HackerRank Interview Preparation Kit
The HackerRank Interview Preparation Kit is a perfect place to get started with practicing coding once you’ve already covered the theoretical parts.
Tip #4 — Train like there’s no tomorrow
Cool! Now that you have all the resources you need. What’s next?!
Brush up your theoretical knowledge first, and make sure you have a solid grasp of the following, data structures, OOP, math/logic puzzles, recursion, sorting/searching, time complexity, scalability, operating system(threads and lock).
Excellent!; now, it should be much easier for you to approach questions; Solving questions itself is an art you’ll need to craft first.
Here are a few tips on that.
Tip #5— Start with the easy ones
Per each topic, try to solve a few easy questions before getting to the trickier ones. It will help you digest the theoretical parts.
I like to start with the sorting algorithms for instance.
Quicksort, Merge sort, Insertion sort, Bubble sort, etc.
Tip #6 — Start with the brute-force solution
A brute force solution is a straightforward solution.
Never start with an optimized solution; start with any solution that comes to your head. Once there, and only then, you can think about optimizations.
“premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.” — Donald Knuth
Tip #7— Start with the pseudo-code
Please don’t jump to the code directly; Sometimes, you’d want to hone an idea slightly before transforming it into code.
Start with a pseudo code—test for correctness. Think about edge cases.
Once you feel the idea is sharp enough. Write the code.
Some interviewers will decide that it is sufficient to solve the question with pseudo-code. But it’s not always the case.
Tip #8 — Solve on white paper but also a whiteboard
During some interviews, the interviewer will ask you to solve the questions on a whiteboard.
I’d suggest you get familiar with whiteboards; a common mistake when you write on a whiteboard for the first time is that your writing is tiny, and the interviewer can barely see it.
Another mistake is jumping all over the whiteboard to write down the code or the solution entirely.
Tip #9— Speak out loud
Whether you are solving the question while sitting or standing, speak out loud.
First, ask clarification questions.
Second, call out assumptions.
Finally, think out loud, and explain your thoughts clearly, before jumping into coding.
The interviewer is very interested in how you think, not only the final solution you will introduce. He might even give you a free hint.
Improve your public speaking abilities and be confident about speaking out loud when there are three or more people in the room.
Tip #10 — Practice your “About Me Pitch”
I’m going to share a little secret with you.
It took me a while to discover that a significant factor in whether an employer will invite you to a second interview is concealed within the first few minutes; let me explain.
In every interview, you will get the chance to introduce yourself during the first few minutes; let’s call it the “About Me Pitch,” make the most of this part, be charming, be confident, use all the good vibes you have, and show the best image of yourself.
You can practice the “About Me Pitch” by talking to the mirror, by recording a video of yourself, or by trying it on friends or family.
Tip #11 — Do some sports a day before the interview
A day before an interview, I’d usually do some sports to reduce the amount of stress and tension (e.g., swimming and riding horses in my case).
“Calmness is the cradle of power.” — Josiah Gilbert Holland
Tip #12 — Dress code matters
You would want to dress in a way that would make you come across as a professional, charismatic candidate; you can even use your clothes to project some qualities such as honesty, which you can achieve with a bluish shirt.
Tip #13—Be friendly, relaxed, and smile
The Interview starts when you enter the company’s gate, and you don’t know who you might bump into, so you want to be friendly, relaxed, smile, and don’t hesitate to start small talks.
Tip #14 — Be positive, be a winner!
“If you put in as much time working on winning as you put into thinking about losing, you already be a champion.” — Giavanni Ruffin
Arrive 10–15 minutes before the interview, drink a glass of water, and be prepared to shine.
Tip #15 — Show them what you are made of
Here is an advanced tip for acing an interview — Humor; yep, a bit of humor in the right places would make you shine; it reveals a lot of self-confidence and a solid grasp of the material.
The End
Always remember.
“Good things are coming down the road. Just don’t stop walking.” ~ Robert Warren Painter, Jr.
In my previous article, I wrote about how to write a striking resume:
