How To Succeed In Technical Interviews [with 99% Success Ratio]

CHAPTER 3

 Pattern Behind Technical Interviews

CHAPTER 6

 How to crack programming interviews

CHAPTER 8

 Interview Questions & Resources

What Is Technical Interview

Programming interviews are full of infinite complexities. In fact, it is much like going to war, where we fight for the survival of our career and ego.

Like no war can be won without a game plan, no job interview can either survive without it.

My whole professional life I have missed such a game plan. I was rejected numerous times, feeling dead on the ground, I was broke and scared.

It took me a long time to get it, but now I get it. And now I want to tell you about the importance of such a game plan.

Following guide has helped me to survive the most terrible and brutal interviews in my career. And I am sure it will help you too, not just survive but thrive in your next interview.

You Must Watch This Video, If You Want to Beat The Competition

• Special Thanks to Tom Bilyeu for this video

Interview Rejection: How To Fail In Technical Interviews 

This kind of failure is worst. You can never learn from it.

And

The second one comes from being overconfident

It is also wrong because it blinds you from looking at your shortcomings.

Below are some of the most important reasons for people failing in technical interviews.

One research shows that candidates who write good code in interviews have 84% more chances of getting hired, whereas bad coders have only 38% chance.

No Followup: Not following up after the interview is another easiest way to get a rejection

Interview Facts

On average, each corporate job attracts 250 applications.4 to 6 candidates get an interview invitation.  And only one gets the job.

(Source: Glassdoor)

BOTTOM LINE:

Failing in interviews is easy. But to ace technical interviews most crucial things are.

Your attitude. Your level of preparation. Your knowledge about the job. And finally how well you follow up afterward.

Keys To A Successful Interview

Have you ever asked these questions to yourself

How can I be successful in a job interview?

How can I improve my performance in technical interviews?

How can I beat the competition?

Then wait no more.

This chapter will teach you about the only success factors that matter the most.

Success Factors in Interviews

Technical Interview Structure

 Types Of Technical Interviews

1) Technical assignment before interview

In this type of interview, companies send candidates with some questions, exercises or a case studies to solve.

Candidates are expected to implement and test a fully working solution and send it to the company before the interview.

Then on the interview day, technical persons will ask very deep and detailed questions about the implementation, design considerations, performance and efficiency of the solution.

2) White board test

It is the most common and widely used method during the technical interviews.

You will be required to solve questions or design and implement an algorithm on the whiteboard.

Google is very notorious for these kinds of questions during their 6-7 on-site technical interviews.

To crack this part, you need some serious skills (Don't worry I will teach you exactly how you can get yourself ready to crack this type of interview at any big company)

3) Asking technical questions  

This is usually the most easy approach and is widely used in telephonic interviews.

They ask questions like what is faster hash map or treeMap, how to sort an array, or how to find the largest or smallest value in an array 

4) Code refactoring/Pair programming  

You will be presented with a semi-implemented solution and asked to complete the implementation or refactor the code.

Like whiteboard test, this part is also tough and usually one of the interviewer's sits with the candidate to discuss the solution.

Following graph shows the percentage of each evaluation method

*Data provided by  http://stateoftechhiring.com/ 

How many Interviews To Get An Offer?

1 = 1% candidates get job offers only after one interview. Which is very rare.

How to prepare for interview?

How you prepare for a technical interview will determine how well you perform during the actual meeting.

But

Before you can prepare efficiently, you need to understand that your level of preparation should depend on two factors

- Which job role you are preparing for

- Which company you are preparing for

For example, Technical interviews at Google and a one-person startup will not be the same.

So your preparation should not be the same as well.

In short, you need to know what is criteria and expectations for the position and company, you are going to interview with, and how much you need to prepare.

Following graph gives you an overview of the technical questions distribution in programming interviews.

In this guide, I have curated a list of interview questions, resources, and tutorials. They can be used to prepare for an interview from Google to startups.

It is divided into five sub parts

1. Do your homework 
2. Emotional preparation
3. Mental preparation
4. Technical preparation
5. Understanding interviewer's perspective

Now we will go through them one by one

1. Do Your Homework

3. How To Prepare Emotionally For The Interview

Technical Interview Preparation

The greatest power you could have in interviews would come neither from limitless resources nor it would arrive by even knowing all the answers.

It would come from explicit knowledge about the expectations of the interviewer.

Given that knowledge, you could anticipate the needs, requirements and thinking processes of the interviewer.

Try to think of yourself as the one, who is going to conduct the interview.

What would you expect?

What kind of answers will you be looking?

What possible questions you will ask?

How will you make sure that you are hiring the right candidate?

Thinking in this way will open up new horizons. You will enable yourself to realize, how the interviewers think, and what they expect.

It will make you cater your responses and answers accordingly.

BOTTOM LINE:

Thinking from the interviewer's perspective will give you ideas about what they are expecting.

It will allow you to prepare and act according to their expectations.

CHAPTER 6:

Cracking The Programming Interviews:

I once had an interviewer.

Who would push his glasses down on his nose.

While I was explaining my solution, and he would look at me above the glasses.

Like my solution was not worth focusing. Like I was an idiot.

He hated me.

And then he Rejected me.

Rejection is hard to deal.

But

If you learn the right tricks.

The tricks to solve and answer all the interview questions.

Then you don't have to deal with rejection.

This is the section where i will show you how to crack the technical interviews.

This part is divided into following sub sections.

• How to answer technical questions
• How to solve algorithms on white board
• How to refactor code in interviews
• How to solve programming assignment and defend it in interview
• What to do after the interview

We will go through these points step by step. 

1. How To Answer Technical Questions

This is one of the most fundamental skill you need to crack the technical interviews. 200 other candidates competing for the same job will answer the same questions. 

So the questions is how you can differentiate your answers from the others?

The answer lies in the onion method

1.1- The Onion Method

"During technical interviews, do not answer a question randomly. Instead reveal your knowledge layer by layer.

 

Just like you are pealing layers of an onion. Where each layer will reveal something new and important.

 

Starting from the most basic layers and moving towards deeper ones, until it reaches to the core of the concept."

BOTTOM LINE:

By using a structured and disciplined approach you will sound like an expert. Better then the other's more appealing to the interviewers, and increasing your chances of success by 10 folds.

2. How To Solve Algorithms On Whiteboard

This is one of the most common and often difficult phase of technical interviews.

Most of the candidates are unable to get past this successfully. 

Following graph shows what four elements interviewer's are interested in and how candidates perform them.

Now here is how you should approach it.

2.1- Understand And Repeat The Question

You will be asked to solve a problem or design an algorithm on the white board. The first thing you need to do is to pay close attention to the question.

Ask the interviewers if something is not clear. Make sure you understood the core of question.

Once you are comfortable with your understanding next thing you have to do is to repeat the question loudly and clearly.

This will ensure to the interviewer that you have understood their question.

2.2- Explain Your Approach/s To Solve The Questions

The No. 1 mistake 95% of candidates make is that they immediately jump to solve the solution on the white board.

This is the wrong approach. Remember that you are trying to win over the interviewer with your solution.

The correct way to do is by explaining them in what possible ways the problem can be solved. Why and by which approach you will solve the problem

There are two benefits for doing this

FIRST: If there is something wrong with your approach then interviewer's will provide you feedback about it or clarify the questions again.

SECOND: Interviewer's will get a great first impression, and they just want to see the solution in action.

2.3- Design A Pseudo Code

Until now you have the solution in hand, but still you should resist the urge to directly solve the problem.  Instead you must design the pseudo code for your solution.  

Understand that most of the problems will be algorithmic in nature, and the best way to solve them is by designing an overall outline using pseudo code.

Again by doing this you will get immediate feedback for your solution and if there is some gaps, you can adjust them even before you jump into the full implementation.

2.4- Write The Full Implementation

You have already explained the solution, Great.

You have shown your pseudo code to the interviewer, Fantastic. And finally now is the time to go with the full implementation on the white board.

Much of the anxiety is already taken away from you, since in your mind you have the solution and a skeleton to follow.

Now your 100% focus should be on the optimal implementation of your pseudo code.

As you will be solving the problem interviewer's will ask you a lot of questions.

These will be about your design considerations, selection of data structures, and most importantly the performance of your algorithm/solution.

They will also discuss alternatives or better ways to solve the problem.

The best way to respond to interviewers questions is by LOA(Listen- Observe- Adjust) loop which is explained below

2.5- Listen- Observe- Adjust loop

LISTEN: The most important skill you need to have is your ability to listen and listen well.

Throughout the interview, the interviewers will be talking, discussing or giving feedback to you regarding your solution.

In order to increase your chances by 1000% all you have to do is to listen to them very carefully.

OBSERVE: You should not only listen but observe. You need to train yourself to read the signals they are giving to you. 

Words like "this is it", "are you sure", "But", "consider a situation like",

"It can be like this or this", "What if " , "OK", all of  these means there is something missing in your solution

Or they want you to consider the other situations as well, or they are keen to find out whether you fully understood the implications of your solution or not.

Similarly If they are saying hmm this solution is good but what if its size is huge etc.

This means that they are keen in listening about the performance of the solution. 

ADJUST: Once you listened carefully and have observed what the interviewers want to see or listen, next step is to adjust your answer or solution according to the feedback.

The best way to do this is by repeating what they are saying and then explaining how would you fix/solve this.

And once they seems to agree then you can actually proceed to  adjust your solution.

2.6- Use Cosmetic Beauty To Standout From 100 Other Candidates

Remember that you will not the only one interviewing for the job. Interviewer's will usually see the answers to the same questions over and over again.

Then the most interesting question will be how you can differentiate your solution from other candidates? 

Are there any factors which will make interviewer's to remember your solution better then the others ?

Simple answer is Yes, and it lies in the cosmetic beauty of your code.  You might be wondering

What do you mean by cosmetic beauty of code?

It means how well your code is groomed, there are certain factors that can make your code standout.

Like naming of variables, classes and objects, Selection of most optimized data structure, How well you refactor your code. 

Are you utilizing any language specific features. Usage of design patterns, Unit testing and simplicity, maintainability and scalability of the code are among the most important factors.

BOTTOM LINE:

You need to listen, repeat, design an algorithm and then implement the solution on the white board.

After you have solved the problem then listen to the feedback, observe the signals interviewers are giving you and then adjust your answer accordingly.

3. How To Refactor Code in Interviews

• What is missing in the code e.g if there are multiple classes with same methods. This would mean that you need to introduce inheritance
• Are there any unit test cases + if yes are they broken or correct
• Are there multiple calls to same methods.Can you use recursion to fix this?
• Is there some wrong algorithm implementation
• How the classes, variables and methods are named
• Are there any variations from the standard coding practices
• Are there any circular links between classes

 

BOTTOM LINE:

Most important thing is to identify what is wrong/missing in the code. Once you know it then think about the solution, discuss it with the interviewer and finally fix the problem.

4. How To Solve Programming Assignments

There are four elements in solving technical assignments and then defending it in interviews

But before we look into these. Let's have a look at how does companies evaluate the technical solution.  

40 % Depth & Efficiency of solution

27 % Propose an alternative solution 

17 % Coding style, formatting, readability

13 % Time to solve the assignment 

Here are the four elements

4.1- Keep It Simple

Sometime candidates refer to larger issues, a great design, or a very complicated solution.

They go for the big picture when simple but concrete solution would have much more appeal.

What they do not realize is that even the most complex problem can be broken down and implemented as simple and elegant solutions.

Which has a much larger appeal for the interviewer. If you make no appeal to him, he merely sees you as desperate or, at best, a waste of time.

The key is to, not only solving the problem, but how well you have solved it. What choices you have made in designing your solution.

Which common pitfalls you have avoided. How well it is tested. How you have thought about the performance, maintainability and readability of your design.

When you are designing any problem keep in mind the following things

• Use standard naming conventions
• If possible stick to clean code principles
• Make sure there are no cyclic dependencies among the classes
• When solving algorithms, always focus much more on simplicity and the performance of your solutions
• At all cost avoid any complex or fancy solution
• Always test your solution thoroughally

4.2- Know When To Stop

In designing your solution never go beyond the goal you had aimed for, and by going too far.

You make more mistake and you end up revealing your weak points.

Solving complex problems has its own merits. Those who succeed at this are the ones, who knows what to achieve and when to stop. Going too far can set you off balance.

The lesson is simple: Keep it nice and clean. Aim for certain depth and know when enough is enough

4.3- Know About The Pitfalls

In interviews defending your solution is more important than its implementation. Never make it too complex, that you neglect to understand it yourself.

The greatest skill is the ability to solve a solution, be aware of its weaknesses and strengths and be able to implement other alternative solutions.

Never assume that your design and solution is perfect. The interviewer will ask you a lot of questions about your solutions, the design choices you have made. 

They will particularly look for what is missing, and will test your knowledge about the solution you have made.

Be ready to know what you have made in deep details, Be ready to explain why you have chosen to implement certain thing in this way.

4.4- Know How To Defend

In the heat of defense, arrogance and overconfidence can push you past your limits and often you end up offending the interviewer.

Never try to go too far with your contradiction.

The problem in trying to prove a point  through argument is that in the end you can never be certain how it affects the interviewer.

They may appear to agree with you politely, but inside they may resent you.

Or

perhaps something you said inadvertently even offended them. Words have that insidious ability to be interpreted according to the other person’s mood and insecurities.

Even the best argument has no solid foundation.

You need to understand that the interviewer has his own views and preferences about how things should be solved and designed.

If you can resonate with the interviewer you can go farther than other candidates. Know about the preferences and tastes of the interviewer and try to talk from that point.

It will make him feel confidant that your are much more aligned with his style of working

BOTTOM LINE:

Message is simple, keep your solution simple and short. Know about all the pitfalls and alternative approaches. And defend it well during the interview.

5. What To Do Right After The Interview

I was feeling dumb, idiotic and retarded. For a few moments i wished that i could escape or hide some where.

They gave me many hints and ideas but i was unable to resolve the issues. 

But then i did something right after i went home on that day and guess what next day i received an offer letter. 

What was it ?

It was no magic, It happens many times that candidates are unable to solve or explain an issue during the interviews and then they feel thats it, Game over. But its not true. 

What i did on that day was that the moment i reached home i search on the Google about that problem.

And then I made a small nice implementation of the algorithm and sent the program to the interviewer.

Explaining what i was not able to explain in interview and then asked them to have a look at the solution.

I also wrote about the explanations and ideas about some of the topics we discussed during the interviews.

And also thanked them for such a deep and good discussions about the various topics.

It clicked and to my amazement they actually liked it and decided to offer me the job.

Since then i have used this trick after every technical interview. And it has always worked wonders for me and you can too apply this and see the results by yourself.

CHAPTER 8:

Programming Interview Resources

In your quest to get ready for your next job interview:

It’s easy to get lost or waste a lot of time, energy and resources in the wrong direction.

In order to maximize your chances of success You have to get yourself ready in a different way.

Your chances will only increase by preparing in a  smart and efficient way That differentiates you from the crowd.

In order to achieve all of this you need a lot of help.

And

In this chapter i have curated a list of "THE BEST" resources.

Consider this list as a manual, Whenever you feel lost or unsure of something consult a relevant resource from this list.

Believe it or not you will increase your probability of success by 1000%. 

That's "THE ONLY" way to beat the competition and get ahead in your career.

Interview Preparation Tools:

Here is list of best technical interview resources

1. Interview Cake

Interview cake is the No. 1 resource for candidates, preparing for Technical interviews at companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon. 

About The Founder:

Interview Cake is founded by Parker Phinney. Parker have worked as an engineer at Google and a handful of startups.

Link: https://www.interviewcake.com

2. Hacker Rank 

About The Founder:

Vivek Ravisankar and Hari Karunanidhi founded Hacker Rank in 2008. When they were tired of spending too much time in interviewing candidates.

Link:https://www.hackerrank.com/

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3. Educative.io 

Educative.io offers a huge library of Interactive Courses for Software Developers. You can find an online course for almost any topic in programming languages and Frameworkds

 

About The Founder:

Educative is founded by two brothers Fahim Ul Haq and Naeem Ul Haq both of them have extensive experience in working as software developers at fortune 500 companies.

Link: https://www.educative.io/

4. Interview Bit

Interview bit is a site which gamifies the experience of practicing for technical interviews.

 

Best thing about interview bit, is its vast collection of  sample problems and company specific Interview questions e.g Google interview questions, Facebook interview questions.

 

Interview bit also offers a service where candidates can get referred to top companies through their vast network.

 

Its worth checking Interview bit.

 

About The Founder:

Interview bit  is founded by Anshuman Singh who has vast experience of interviewing candidates at Facebook. He also leads the course design at Interview bit.

 

Abhimanyu Saxena is co founder of Interview bit and has worked at companies like fab.com. He oversees the technical strategy of the company.

Link: https://www.interviewbit.com/

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5. Interview Kick Start

InterviewKickStart offers a comprehensive job interview training both online and onsite. It had comprehensive curriculum to get you ready for the real interviews.

The best thing about interview kick start is that It offers training with mock interviews on white-boarding, pair-programming & timed-tests.

It gives immediate feedback to candidates and help them improve their ability to solve complex problems

About the Founder:

Soham Mehta has worked at Box as Director Of Engineering. The experiences at Box led him to start interview kick start so that he can teach other people what he has learned in doing so many technical interviews

Link: http://www.interviewkickstart.com/

6. Interview Buddy

Interview buddy offers virtual Face-To-Face mock interviews with industry experts to help you train & prepare for job interviews.

 

Link: https://interviewbuddy.in/

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7. Gainlo

Gainlo offers mock interview with engineers from Google, Facebook and Microsoft. It strives to offer a real interview experience to candidates and offers a near real feedback.

Link: http://www.gainlo.co/

8. Devskiller

https://devskiller.com/ [Read My Review Here]

 

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Java Interview Questions:

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1. Journal Dev 

Journal Dev is my personal favorite website when it comes to Java. It has a wide range of interview questions. There are also a lot of high quality and in depth articles on different areas in Java.

Each Article covers all the elements of the topic from basics to advanced knowledge. And The best thing is there are always code examples. 

I am using Journal Dev from almost 4 years.

Link: https://www.journaldev.com/java-interview-questions 

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2. Java Revisited 

Java revisited is another high quality Java blog. It has a huge list of Java interview Questions and general programming tutorials.

 

I have always consulted this website before any major interview. I recommend anyone to consult this website for Java tutorial.

Link:   http://javarevisited.blogspot.dk/ ,  http://www.java67.com/

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3. Baeldung 

If you are looking for anything related to Java Spring framework. Then look no further then Baeldung. This is in fact the best blog in the world to learn about spring and spring security. 

 Link: http://www.baeldung.com/

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4. Java2Novice 

Java2Novice is another high quality Java blog. It contains java interview programs. The implementation of programs are easy to understand.

Link: http://www.java2novice.com/

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5. Geeks For Geeks

This is another very famous java blog.It has almost a cult following. More and more people are using it everyday to study about algorithms and Data structures.

 Link: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/ 

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.Net (C#) Interview Questions

---

• 52 .Net Interview Questions And Answers
• C# Programming Interview Questions
• C# Advanced Interview Questions

PHP Interview Questions

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• PHP Interview Questions
• Top 100 Interview Questions
• Advanced php Interview Questions

Angular JS Interview Questions

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• AngularJS Interview Questions

Spring Interview Questions

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• Spring Interview Questions

DevOps Interview Questions

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• DevOps Interview Questions

Others 

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• Advanced Interview Questions
• Algorithm Interview Questions
• Java algorithms interview questions
• http://www.codespaghetti.com/interview-questions/

Non-technical Interview Questions

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• Top 15 Behavioral Interview Questions
• Behavioral Interview Questions And Answers
• 45 Behavioral Interview Questions
• Behavioral interview Question

Technical interview Guides

---

• How To Avoid Interview Rejection
• How To Make Great First Impression
• Top Technical Interview Questions
• How to Answer Most Important Interview Questions
• Technical Interview Questions And Answers
• How To Ace Technical Interviews
• How To Prepare And Ace Technical Interviews

Company specific Guides and Questions

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Google interview

• Google's Hardest Interview Questions
• Google Interview University
• Google Interview Questions

Facebook interview

• Facebook Interview Questions
• Facebook Interview Problems
• 10 Things To Know Before Facebook Interview

Programming Interview Books

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• Cracking The Coding Interviews
• Coding Interview Questions
• Programming Interviews Exposed 

Interview Psychology & Hacks

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• How To Avoid Interview Rejection
• How To Have Interview Sex And get the Job
• 5 Questions To Ask In An Interview (Based On Psychology)
• Mastering The Psychology of Interviews
• 7 Psychology Tricks To Nail Your Next Interview
• Psychological Tricks For Interviews
• A Guide To Interviewing
• How To Prepare Mentally For Interview

Interview Success Stories

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• https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-funniest-Google-onsite-interview-stories
• https://medium.freecodecamp.org/software-engineering-interviews-744380f4f2af
• https://medium.com/swlh/this-is-what-its-like-to-fail-your-interviews-at-google-83c772e6e654
• https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/interview-horror-stories/

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