Interview Cheatsheet
==
This is a straight-to-the-point distilled list of technical interview Do's and Don'ts. Some of these may apply to only phone screens on whiteboard interviews but most will apply to both. I revise this list before each of my interviews to remind myself of them and eventually internalized all of them to the point I do not have to rely on it anymore.
For a detailed walkthrough of interview preparation, refer to the ["Preparing for a Coding Interview" ](./ ) section.
### 1. Before Interview
|| Things |
|-|-|
|**Do's**|Prepare pen, paper and earphones/headphones.|
||Find a quiet environment with good Internet connection.|
||Stay calm and composed.|
||Familiarize yourself with the coding environment (CoderPad/CodePen). Set up the coding shortcuts, turn on autocompletion, tab spacing, etc.|
|| Dress comfortably. Usually you do not need to wear shirt and tie.|
### 2. Introduction
|| Things |
|-|-|
|**Do's**|Introduce yourself in a few sentences under a minute or two.|
||Mention interesting points that are relevant to the role you are applying for.|
||Sound enthusiastic! Speak with a smile and you will naturally sound more engaging.|
|**Don'ts**|Spend too long introducing yourself. The more time you spend talk the less time you have to code.|
### 3. Upon Getting the Question
|| Things |
|-|-|
|**Do's**|Repeat the question back at the interviewer.|
||Clarify input format and range.|
||Work through a small example to ensure you understood the question.|
||Explain a high level approach even if it is a brute force one.|
||Improve upon the approach and optimize. Reduce duplicated work and cache repeated computations.|
||Think carefully, then state and explain the time and space complexity of your approaches.|
||If stuck, think about related problems you have seen before and how they were solved. Check out the [tips ](../algorithms ) in this section.|
|**Don'ts**|Ignore information given to you. Every piece is important.|
||Jump into coding straightaway.|
||Start coding without interviewer's green light.|
||Appear too unsure about your approach or analysis.|
### 4. During Coding
|| Things |
|-|-|
|**Do's**|Practice good coding style. Clear variable names, consistent operator spacing, proper indentation, etc.|
||Defensive coding. Check for nulls, empty collections, etc.|
||Explain what you are coding/typing to the interviewer, what you are trying to achieve.|
||Type/write at a reasonable speed.|
||Write in a modular fashion. Extract out chunks of repeated code into functions.|
||Use the hints given by the interviewer.|
||Practice whiteboard space-management skills.|
||Demonstrate mastery of your chosen programming language.|
|**Don'ts**|Remain quiet the whole time.|
||Spend too much time writing comments.|
||Use extremely verbose variable names.|
||Copy and paste code without checking.|
||Interrupt your interviewer when they are talking. Usually if they speak, they are trying to give you hints or steer you in the right direction.|
||Write too big (takes up too much space) or too small (illegible) if on a whiteboard.|
### 5. After Coding
|| Things |
|-|-|
|**Do's**|Scan through your code for mistakes as if it was your first time seeing code written by someone else.|
||Check for off-by-one errors.|
||Come up with more test cases. Try extreme test cases.|
||Step through your code with those test cases.|
||Look out for places where you can refactor.|
||Reiterate the time and space complexity of your code.|
||Explain trade-offs and how the code/approach can be improved if given more time.|
|**Don'ts**|Immediately announce that you are done coding.|
||Argue with the interviewer.|
### 6. Wrap Up
|| Things |
|-|-|
|**Do's**|Ask questions. More importantly, ask good and engaging questions that are tailored to the company! Pick some questions from [this list ](../non-technical/questions-to-ask.md ).|
||Thank the interviewer.|
|**Don'ts**|End the interview without asking any questions.|
||Ask about your interview performance. It can get awkward.|
