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
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!