In addition to preparing a portfolio of awesome projects to show off to your future employer, you’ll also need to be prepared for technical interviews. In this course, we’ll help you prepare by asking you to solve a series of problems on algorithms and/or data structures. You may find some problems easy and others incredibly difficult. Don’t worry - this is normal. It takes time to get used to solving these types of problems.
Before we get into how to approach progressing through this section, let’s talk about the two types of technical interviews.
Your technical interview may be held asynchronously or synchronously. During an asynchronous technical interview, you may be asked to solve algorithmic problems in a timed environment by yourself. For a synchronous interview, you will likely be asked to whiteboard and solve the problem in front of your interviewer.
Async technical interviews typically require candidates to problem solve alone. Once the solution is submitted, the hiring team will review your solution and determine whether you should move forward in the hiring process. At this point, they’ll likely require that most or all problems be solved and will also consider the quality of the solution/s.
During synchronous interviews, the interviewer is likely looking to see how you:
- Work in a team
- Handle feedback
- Talk technically
- Handle obstacles
- Approach solving a problem / think
- Evaluate different approaches to solving a problem and make decisions
At this stage, you may be able to move forward in the hiring process if you demonstrate good communication skills, logical thinking, perseverance, calm under pressure, and graciousness towards your interviewer’s feedback even if you are unable to solve the problem. Asking good questions to fully understand the problem or get unstuck are normally welcome. Interviewers also typically expect you to come up with your own test cases to ensure the problem is actually solved. This portion of the interview might require you to largely solve the problem alone on a whiteboard or IDE, or through pair programming where the interviewer is either the driver or navigator. Many interviewers are forgiving of syntax errors, and they generally don’t expect you to have every piece of the core language memorized.
In this course, we will be preparing you for both types of interviews, so it’s important to take the time to solve as many problems as you can alone and to complete the paired assignments, if applicable.