Technical Interview Prep

Techniques and tools to prepare & land any technical interview

@lizTheDeveloper everywhere on the 'net

👩‍💻 Technical Interviewing:

Wrote the interview prep for all the bootcamps

Karat - Technical Interview Content

CodePath Professor

@lizTheDeveloper

🦹‍♀️ Founder:

Hackbright Academy

👩‍🎤 Founding Team:

Tradecraft Engineering

Galvanize Web Development Immersive

Enki - Series A CTO, EnkiBot, EnkiApp2, EnkiCamp

HipCamp - Seed CTO

Nearly two decades in engineering

You belong here if you want to be here

  • What to cover
  • How to fit it in
  • Industry-expected milestones and skills
  • Practice opportunities and resources
  • Take concrete steps to get started

Let's make a plan, together:

A Typical Technical Interview Gauntlet:

(may contain)

  • Recruiter Screen
  • Recruiter Quiz
  • Whiteboard Interview
  • Coding Interview
  • Take-Home Challenge
  • Culture Fit Interview
  • Behavioral Interview
  • Resume Filter (10%)
  • Recruiter Screen (20%)
  • Recruiter Quiz (50%)
  • Whiteboard Interview (20%)
  • Coding Interview (20%)
  • Take-Home Challenge (5%)
  • Culture Fit Interview (50%)
  • Behavioral Interview (50%)

Let's be realistic about pass rates

Sometimes it really isn't a fit

It sucks to be somewhere your value isn't recognized

highly prepared, or highly experienced

How do you prepare?

A (non-exhaustive) list of topics

Data Structures

  • Standard Language Features
  • Arrays, Hash Maps, Numbers, Strings & how to manipulate those
  • Basic Methods from the Standard Library
  • Advanced Data Structures (Sets, Maps, etc)

Data Structures

Conceptual Data Structures:

 

  • Linked Lists, Trees, Heaps, Tries, Graphs & how to implement those
  • Search, Sort, Reverse & Traverse all of the above
  • When to use, why to use

Algorithms

Beginner:

  • Search, Sort, Traverse ( data structures )
  • String Encoding, Manipulation & Parsing

Beginner-Mid:

  • "Greedy" (make change, activity selection)
  • Dynamic Programming Techniques

Advanced:

  • K-Means and K Nearest Neighbor
  • Backtracking & Dynamic Programming Techniques
  • Bloom Filter, Skip List, etc

How many tennis balls are used in the US each day?

How many cans of baked beans produced in a year go uneaten per year?

The goal is not to arrive at a precise answer, but to find an answer within the correct order of magnitude.

Behavioral Interviews

Tell me a time when you and a coworker disagreed on how to approach a problem.

What do you do when you aren't going to be able to meet a deadline you and a supervisor agreed upon?

Situation - Action - Result

Culture Fit

Do we have "work chemistry"?

Can we talk about things outside of work?

(all the interviews are culture fit interviews)

Do I respect the way you got in?

How will you influence the culture?

1 Hour a day:

~3 months / 90 hours to be 80%

~6 months / 180 hours to be 110%

 

"How am I going to get there?"

100% = Interviewing Skill Accurately Represents Actual Skill

Fermi Estimation

In the top 20% of candidates across N pools

In the top 20% of candidates across (N - X) pools?

N = Number of applications in a month

X = Number of months you wait to start applying

Let's do this

Take the next 5 minutes and open your calendar

Find 5 hours a week for practice

Create a repeating calendar invite

Never delete it- only reschedule it

There are many levels

  • L1 - Internships, Jr. Engineering Roles
  • L2 - FAANG Internships, Jr. Engineering Roles
  • L3 - Jr to Mid-level Engineering Roles
  • L4 - FAANG Mid-level to Senior Engineering Roles

FAANG = Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google

AKA: Who pays hella $$$

Level 1

  • Manipulate sequences (arrays, sets, strings)
  • Transform data from any JSON structure to any other JSON structure
  • Math (recursive sequences, bit math)
  • Data structures (up to graphs)
  • Algorithms (sorting algorithms & graph traversal)
  • One application framework

Your First Internship or Jr. Dev role

Level 2

  • Write an Extract, Transform & Load job
  • Systems Architecture
  • Object Oriented Programming Patterns
  • Networking (protocols, general structure)
  • "What happens when you type google.com into your browser?"

FAANG Interns & Junior Engineers elsewhere

L3

  • Requirements gathering
  • Spec production
  • Data cleaning & tagging / ML Algorithms
  • Experiences with particular systems or frameworks
  • Full-stack or depth on one part of the stack

FAANG Jr, Mid-level elsewhere

L4

  • Team dynamics
  • Change Management
  • Product / Business Models
  • Statistics
  • Framework depth
  • Specialized knowledge
  • High-level planning skills

Mid-level FAANG / Senior elsewhere

How do I get practice?

CodePath.org and CSUMB in partnership with the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative created this course this summer:

https://canvas.instructure.com/enroll/WHR8CT

Hundreds of practice questions

Dozens of solution videos

Take 5 minutes and sign up now!

How do I get MORE practice?

What next?

Take 5 minutes, open it and save it to your google drive

Create a spreadsheet to keep track of your applications

Attach the worksheet and your spreadsheet to your google calendar invite, along with the Canvas link from before.

Stronger Together

Join this discord

https://discord.gg/CaVm96

Form study groups of 4

Commit to a time to check-in with each other & compare notes

5 minutes to create friends 4 lyfe 

Question Time

Ask me anything!

Technical Interview Prep

By LizTheDeveloper

Technical Interview Prep

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