#technical interviews

[curiosityandcode]

I got interviewed for a entry level software dev job and i completely failed it. I’m so embarrassed and disappointed. Like i barely answered any of the technical questions correctly. I didnt even know what a delegate was. Idk how to get over this failure and get back on my feet. Cuz i feel like if i dont even know the basics, whats the point of applying.. i’m such an idiot

While searching for an internship last year, I went to multiple interviews. I had an impressive resume - side projects, volunteer work, high GPA, previous work experience. Basically any job I applied to, I got asked in for an interview. I also didn’t getting any offers for the first 3 months.

Does this make me stupid? Was my resume a lie? Was I a failure? It sure felt like it at the time. But the truth was I wasn’t good at interviewing. For example:

At my first white board interview I got a very simple anagram questions. I spent half an hour solving it because I kept doubting my self and my approach. I didn’t get the job. 

At another interview I had a take home assignment  and my solution didn’t compile without errors and was more complicated then it needed to be. I didn’t get the job. 

At another interview, I got asked questions about trees where the edge case had to be spoon fed to me cause I couldn’t think of it on my own. I was asked back for a second interview but still didn’t get the job. 

At another interview I struggled to answer the question and I got all the java questions wrong. But at this point, I was getting a bit better at interviews so I illustrated my thought process better and was honest about what facts I knew confidently and which I was a bit uncertain about. I was nervous the entire time since my interviewer never once smiled at me. I got a job offer but it was a month later (I’m pretty sure that I was not their first choice).

I was devastated. My friend had managed to get an job offer on her first interview and it was at one the companies that rejected me.  What good was my resume if I was a terrible at coding?

At this point, I applied for a position for a company that I didn’t find that interesting (it was fintech) but I decided to apply anyway. I went to the interview and I talked about my side projects a bit. My interviewers were nice and asked me some questions about what I was interested in. I answered, told some jokes, they laughed. I asked some questions, they answered. We laughed. I did an technical question - I made some mistakes but I explained my process. We talked some more, we laughed a bit. I left that interview thinking that the people who interviewed me were great but I had no expectations for an offer. That night I got an offer. The next day I got that other job offer I mentioned before. I took the fintech offer - I wanted to work with people who I could laugh with.

I’m 8 months into my internship. Remember how I wasn’t interested in the company? Well, everyday I love coming to work. I work with people who help me become a better coder. I get so many opportunities to work on projects vital to the business. I’ve met so many cool and interesting people. These are the things I’ll mention about on social media - not all the struggle that came before. (I also don’t post about my failures at work - like when I break something in production, or code reviews with a million changes.) People tend to only post their success - but don’t think that means they have never failed.

So, how did I get to the point where I could get 2 job offers? Well, I tried to improve after each interview by reflecting on what I did wrong and improving on these skills so I could do better next time.

For me, the big thing was that I stopped trying to get the right answer the first time.  Normally, I would sit silently and try to come up with the correct answer really fast. So I started practicing walking the interviewers through my thought process - I would point out things I knew were wrong or edge cases that I was going to ignore for a moment while I figured something else out. If I didn’t know something, I would say that but then also proceed to give my best educated guess.

Before each interview I also reviewed a list of my experiences and what I learned from them. That way, they were fresh in my mind and I could bring them up while answering questions about my skills, strengths, weaknesses etc.

I reviewed my data structure knowledge and did practice leet code questions so that I could get better at technical questions.

Basically, I built my skills to be better at technical interviews. It was hard work but at least I got a job in the end. And you know what? Even with these tips you can still fail at an interview. The point is that you have to pick yourself up and try to do better next time.

Anyway, the point of this terribly long answer is that “yes failure sucks but everyone fails. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

(Oh, and that great resume I mentioned at the beginning? I got that through six years of learning to program which had its many failures along the way. Failures that I definitely didn’t put on the resume. )

[blackprogramming]

Interview Practice Problem #1: Strings

Problem Description: 

Given a string s, find and return the first instance of a non-repeating character in it. If there is no such character, return '_'.

Example:

For s = "abacabad", the output should be firstNotRepeatingCharacter(s) = 'c'. There are 2 non-repeating characters in the string: 'c' and 'd'. Return c since it appears in the string first.

Try solving the problem first before looking at my problem analysis & solution!

Problem Analysis:

The first thing that I try to do when I look at a problem is see if there is a corresponding data structure that can get me closer to the solution. 

Bells starting ringing for me when I read “first non-repeating character.” To me, that meant that a set** could be useful because, ultimately, we are not looking for non-unique characters.

**In case you are not aware, a set is a data structure that holds unique items. For example, if the series of numbers [2, 3, 4, 4, 1, 2] were inserted into a set, the set would contain [2, 3, 4, 1]. 

On second glance, if the duplicates did not exist in the string, it would be hard to determine which character(s) is NOT repeating. Therefore, I decided to work within the existing string and use string methods to construct a solution. 

Here is the final solution + explanations on GitHub.

Do you have another (or even better) way to solve this problem? Let me know!

[blackprogramming]

I’m Lissy.

Hello everyone!

I’m a third-year software engineering major in university. I’ve been tumblr-ing for a while now, but I really have a passion for what I’m studying and would like to share my experiences as a black female in the technology industry as well as some tips that have allowed me to experience and discover some pretty cool opportunities.

Additionally, I would love to provide any programming help to anyone who would live to delve into this field as well as go through some sample coding interview problems found on the web and elsewhere. I am not an expert by any means, so I am interested in learning as well!

Feel free to follow -- I’m just getting started, so expect some more content in the next couple of days! 

[lanismood]

Passed my second technical interview. Thinking about treating myself to a new pair of sandals...

[getbreaded]

Girlies, is it normal for a summer internship recruitment process to require 3 technical interviews??

I'm scared

[etekisocial]

Here’s What Tim Sackett Has to Say About eTeki - Resource Center

In his popular blog Tim Sackett, a well known name in the HR Tech industry stated that “There are some ‘test’ type technologies on the market, but those are really difficult to actively select from and the tests are usually super generic.”