How to ace coding interviews for jobs ?

When looking for technical jobs, whether the jobs are in AI companies or remote engineering jobs technical interviews are a critical part of the hiring process for many engineering and technology roles. They assess your problem-solving abilities, coding skills, and understanding of system design. To excel in these interviews, it's important to be well-prepared, practice regularly, and understand what interviewers are looking for. This guide will help you navigate technical interviews successfully, drawing on insights from industry expert experience.

Once the resume is selected and recruiter call, the first round is a coding round. The round could be to solve questions in hackerrank or a live coding round.

The live coding problem are done via screen sharing on coderpad or hackerrank tool. The interview round for Software Engineer or IC roles consists of 1-2 questions focused towards Data structure and Algorithms. For FAANG companies and companies which are popular like Stripe, Airbnb etc. Typically the coding round is 45 minutes and first question is generally simple and should be taking 10-15 mins. The second question can be medium or hard and is expected to taking 20-30mins.

Tip #1

For big companies the technical coding bar is high and in my experience and talking to other folks from the industry the expectation is to solve both the problems with the optimal solution or have been able to solve first one and second one too but the solution may not be optimal.

Tip#2

If you are able to solve the problem, the follow up question is to talk about the Time complexity and Space complexity of the problem.

How to approach the problem?

• When the interviewer gives the problem, take few minutes to read through the problem.

• Try to correlate with a problem you have seen in the past.

• Take the same example and work through the approach demonstrating your ability to understand the problem and showing problem solving skills.

• Don't spend too much time in above step because you have to spend time writing the code too.

• One you finish writing code, run through some examples and edge cases.

How to practice coding interview questions?

While preparing for interviews one need to be clear with the basics in data structures, algorithms and a programming language. Key areas to focus on include:

• Data Structures: Arrays, linked lists, stacks, queues, hash tables, trees, graphs, and heaps.

• Algorithms: Sorting, searching, dynamic programming, recursion, and graph algorithms. (DP, graphs are expected mainly at likes of google, facebook.)

• Programming Languages: Be proficient in at least one language commonly used in technical interviews, such as Python, Java, or C++.

There are lot of source available online to practice coding questions, couple of my favorite and helpful ones are :

Leetcode : Recruiters and probably every software engineer would recommend practice the questions in Leetcode. Depending on your interest and the company you interview for, chances are that one of the questions would be from the question bank in leetcode. This is great news for lot but then the website boast of having more than 300+ questions. So it may take a while to be comfortable. If you are looking for FAANG companies then you really need to be good in solving the questions from the website.

Interviewing.io : A great platform for engineers to practice live coding interview rounds. The platform provides an opportunity to have mock interview sessions with someone available on the platform. You can find a buddy to interview you for free but if you want an expert and someone with experience from FAANG, they you have to pay on the website to book a session with an expert. At the end of the session the interviewee will give you the feedback. There are lot of mock interview videos present on the website and it will help you to understand the expectation and get feedback.

Practice Regularly

Regular practice is crucial for success in technical interviews. Utilize platforms like LeetCode, HackerRank, and Interviewing.io to solve problems and simulate interview conditions. Practice both timed coding challenges and untimed exercises to build speed and accuracy.