Technical Interview Preparation
Technical Interview Preparation
The Process
Most high paying companies have similar interview interview process which looks something like this:
- A coding challenge
- One or two questions. Mostly less than 4
- Companies use platform like hackerrank etc
- Question difficult vary from company to company
- Phone interviews
- One or two phone interview.
- Usually 45-60 min long
- One or two questions asked.
- Onsite Interview
- Usually day long process
- 4-5 Interviews with one hour lunch break
- All interview can be coding (like in google) or one interview can be with manager (non coding but technical)
When to apply
You should apply a semester before you graduate. Eg. if you are graduating in spring, then you should applying beginning of fall (August-September).
Resources
- Unfortunately, most high paying jobs are gated by “Leetcode style” coding interview.
- You will be given a problem and you have to write code to solve the problem in the language of your choice
- Irrespective of your level of expertise, I will suggest you to start with “Cracking the Coding Interview”
- Once you have complete this book practice questions on Leetcode
- Select Top interview question problem set
- Sort the problem set by difficult
- Go through questions one by one
- Doing easy and medium should be sufficient
- You can use this list if you want to practice for specific question using this repo
- Practice mock interviews with friend using white board
- Usually system design questions are not asked to new grads but it depends on the specific role you are interviewing. Some resources to practice the same
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA8lYuzFlBqAy6dkZHj5VxUAaqr4vwrka
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzLMhqg3_Wc
Miscellaneous
- Apply to as many companies as you can. It is a numbers game.
Go to career fair/recruiting event
- Bloomberg asks questions during the career fair and based on it starts the interview process
- Most companies give a school id which helps your resume to reach the right recruiter
Ask for referrals
- Easiest way to get past resume screen and get at least a phone screen
- Your resume should be one page long.
- Have interesting projects in your resume
- Get your resume reviewed by a technical person if possible