This document provides an overview of cracking the technical interview process. It discusses how interviews are structured, what companies look for, and how to prepare. Key points include: - Technical interviews typically involve an initial phone screen, followed by 4-5 on-site interviews with both general and technical questions. - Companies evaluate candidates based on their experience, personality, and problem-solving aptitude rather than specific technical knowledge. - Strong preparation involves practicing common data structures and algorithms, preparing examples of work experience and soft skills, and getting feedback through mock interviews. - During the interview, candidates should communicate clearly, think out loud, thoroughly test their code, and avoid red flags like arrogance or poor communication

1. Cracking the Technical Interview Cracking the Coding Interview Gayle Laakmann Founder / CEO, CareerCup.com

2. My Background CS undergrad and masters degree from UPenn Ex-Engineer at Google, Microsoft and Apple plus Offers from Amazon, IBM and others 3 Years on Google Hiring Committee Interviewed 150+ candidates Founder of CareerCup.com Author of Cracking the Coding Interview and The Google Resume

4. How are interviews structured? How are you evaluated? Process

5. Technical Interview Process Initial Screen (Phone / Campus) 4 - 5 on site interviews 10 min General 40 min Technical 10 min Closing

6. Big Company Evaluation Experience Personality Testing aptitude, not knowledge

7. What are red flags? and… No Red Flags Arrogance Communication Issues Arguing (too much) Dishonesty

8. Smaller Companies Tend to look for broader skills Care more about experience / personality Might ask to see “portfolio” but… It varies!

9. What do companies look for? Applying

10. What can you do? Get project experience! Course work Open source Part-time job Start a business! Know C++ or Java well Good grades are nice – but not enough! Skills Passion Work Ethic Creativity Initiative

11. But unless you show this on your resume, it really doesn’t do you much good. So what should a resume look like?

12. Resumes – The Most Important Thing Glanced at, not read You have 15 – 30 seconds to make the best impression possible. Show That You “Get Things Done”

13. Resumes: Structure One Page Short Bullets: 1 – 2 lines “So short that you can’t NOT but read it” Nice Resume Format Use tables, not spaces. Use a REAL resume format.

14. Resumes: Content Accomplishments, not responsibilities Quantify! Understandable, but specific To be read by both recruiters and engineers PROJECTS! Anything (esp. coding) you did – for class or not

15. How do you make yourself look good? Interview prep – SOFT SKILLS

16. Research the company / team Prepare questions (around 10) Prepare for questions about yourself But how? Soft Skills Prep

17. Create Preparation Grid for Projects + (maybe) Behavioral Grid Soft Prep – Yourself

18. How to handle “soft skills” questions Interview – soft SKILLS

19. Communication Tips Be specific – not arrogant “Yeah, I did all the hard work for the team” “I implemented the file system, which was considered one of the hardest components.” Be concise and structured Nugget First S.A.R.: Situation, Action, Result

20. Lead with your “thesis” / nugget Nuggets grab the listener’s attention, and tell them where you’re going Q: What accomplishment are you most proud of? A: The time that I convinced the engineering school to switch to paperless time logs. Structure 1: Nugget First

21. ituation ction esult Structure 2: S.A.R. S What did you do? What should I care? A R

22. How do you prep for coding questions? What do you prep? Interview prep – Tech SKILLS

23. Write code on paper Put away the compiler Study the basics: CLR algorithms book is great – but too complex for interviews Look up sample interview questions Focus on the topics you’re struggling with How to study

24. How to implement When to use (pros / cons) Data Structures

25. Implementation Space vs Time Complexity Algorithms

26. Concepts Not just a concept – know how to code!

27. How do you tackle hard tech questions? Interview – tech SKILLS

28. Interview Coding

29. Mastering the Coding Questions Ask Questions! Questions are more ambiguous than they appear Talk out loud Show us how you think Think critically Does your algorithm really work? What’s the space and time complexity? Code slowly and methodically It’s not a race Test your code You’re not done until they say you’re done!

30. What does a “good coder” do? Be methodical, not speed Reasonably Bug Free Thorough testing (and careful fixing) Check for error conditions Clean coding Uses other functions Good use of data structures (defines own if useful) Concise and readable

31. Solving Interview Problems

32. 3 Main Question Types Standard Coding and Algorithms “Reverse a linked list” Object Oriented Design “Design a parking lot” Scalability “Design a program to crawl the web”

33. Algorithms Question Type #1

34. How To Solve Algorithm Questions Pattern Matching What problem is this similar to? Simplify / Generalize What if the data was a different type? Base Case & Build Can you do this just for element 1? 1 and 2? … Data Structure Brainstorm Go through all data structures – can they help? #1 Standard Coding and Algorithms

35. Algorithm Generation Pattern Matching Write code to reverse the order of words in a sentence. Example: input: “she ran to the store” output: “store the to ran she” #1 Standard Coding and Algorithms

36. Algorithm Generation Simplify / Generalize Design an algorithm to figure out if you can build a ransom note (array of strings) from a magazine (array of strings). #1 Standard Coding and Algorithms

37. Algorithm Generation Base Case & Build Design an algorithm to print all subsets of a set (e.g., the power set) Example: input: {a, b, c} output: {{}, {a}, {b}, {c}, {a, b}, {a, c}, {b, c}, {a, b, c}} #1 Standard Coding and Algorithms

38. Algorithm Generation Data Structures Brainstorm Design an algorithm to figure out if someone has won a game of tic-tac-toe. Make it as fast as possible. #1 Standard Coding and Algorithms

39. Object Oriented Design Question Type #2

40. Core objects what are the core objects? Relationships what is their relationship to each other? Interactions how do they interact? Algorithms what are the tricky / interesting algorithms? Object Oriented Design Steps (C.R.I.A.) #2 Object Oriented Design

41. OOD Example #2 Object Oriented Design Design the data structures for a restaurant

42. Core objects restaurant, host, employee, server, table Relationships each party has many guests, server and host are a type of employee Interactions HOST assigns PARTY to TABLE Algorithms How is a free table selected? Object Oriented Design Steps (C.R.I.A.) #2 Object Oriented Design

43. Scalability Question Type #3

44. Simplify pretend there wasn’t a lot of data. How would you solve it? Identify the problems what goes wrong when you have lots of data? Fix the issues solve the issues that come up Iterate new problems may have come up. How do you solve them? Scalability Questions #3 Scalability

45. RELAX! Interviews are supposed to be hard! Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone!

46. (eg, things that wouldn’t fit in elsewhere) FINAL THOUGHTS

47. The Interview: Ending It Smile, be positive If you think you bombed, don’t worry Follow up with your recruiters (sometimes they forget)

48. My Red Flags: People who… … didn’t test their code … found mistakes and would make random fixes … messy code (lack of data structures / redundant code) … didn’t consider the impact of their algorithms … were scared to try

49. Other Resources Books (sold today - $20) Interview video Mock Interviews Resume Review Slides posted at CareerCup.com/slides