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