how to prepare for technical interview

i'm sean technology and engineering

recruiter I'm Allison I'm a software

engineer

i'm jess i'm also a software engineer

although this video is going to focus on

the technical interview definitely check

out our partner video on how to prepare

for the business internview as well. it

absolutely applies here without further

ado let's get into some tips

first things first make sure you're

ready to prove what's on your resume

we're going to want some critical pieces

from you including the bread and butter

of software engineering data structures

well you could argue with me on that

data structures and algorithms so we

want things like hash tables stacks

arrays as well as algorithm space and

time complexity we also want things like

be prepared to code on a whiteboard this

is very different from coding on a

computer so it's highly recommended to

go out find a whiteboard or a chalkboard

and try coding something up

it's a little different and finally we

want to make sure that your brush up on

system design as well as object oriented

programming in general you want to show

your problem-solving skills to the

question you are asked if it's a coding

question providing efficient code a

short time frame is key if its design

question work with your interviewer to

create a high level system and if

applicable delving into deeper issues if

it's a general analysis question

sure you understand all aspects of the

problem and if necessary offer multiple

solutions discussing the relative merits

in the end the interview want to know if

they'd be comfortable working with you

on

specifically you should focus your

preparation in the following areas

coding so you're gonna spend the

majority of your time actually writing

code in the interviews we do ask that

you are pretty familiar with at least

one coding language and typically will

interview you in C++ or Java you may use

Python RC in different projects here you

will be expected to know api's

object-oriented design and programming

how to test your code and you want to

come up with corner cases and edge cases

for yours and other people's another big

thing is algorithms i mentioned this in

the beginning and it's coming up again

because surprised it's important

alright so you also want to know how

complex your algorithm is remember time

and space complexity as well as how to

improve or change it if you give me an O

of n algorithm and then you give me an O

ven factorial or over n squared and you

tell me it's better this is going to be

a little awkward so another thing if you

get a chance to study up on other

algorithms like Dykstra's or a star

it'll probably help you to something

incredibly important candidates with

three or more years of industry and

experience should have hands-on testing

experience if you have less than three

years at within the industry

we're just going to test you for your

testing aptitude you can expect

questions such as how would you unit

tops the code you write what interesting

inputs are test cases can you think of

and we may also ask you to design and to

end integration loaded performance or

even security tests for real-world

systems such as Gmail for example data

structures so you should study up on as

many data structures and algorithms is

humanly possible you should know some of

the most famous classes of NP complete

problems like the travelling salesman in

the nap sock you should definitely be

able to recognize some of these very

famous questions when asked in a

slightly different way

also try and find out what np-complete

actually means you should absolutely no

trees some basic reconstruction

traversal and manipulation algorithms

hash tables stocks arrays linked lists

so

also math some of our interviewers will

ask basic discrete math problems

don't worry they will be very relevant

counting problems probability things

that happen in everyday life

so before you come and spend some time

refreshing your memory on these things

or learning the essentials of

probability theory and combinatorial 6u

should be pretty familiar with n choose

K problems and like recursion many

coding problems involved thinking

recursively and maybe coding a recursive

solution prepared for recursion which

can sometimes be tricky if not approach

properly practice some problems which

can be solved iteratively the more

elegant solution is recursion operating

systems you should understand processes

threads as well as concurrency issues

and everything related to that such as

semaphores new Texas locks things like

that you should also understand resource

allocation so what resources a process

or thread might need another thing

context switching just brush up a little

bit on that understand that it's

initiated in the and the operating

system and underlying hardware and then

one last thing

maybe you might want to know a little

bit about how scheduling works system

design Kevin's have been in the industry

for more than five years should have

experience with system design these

questions are used to see your ability

to combine knowledge theory and judgment

towards solving a real world problem

sample topics include feature sets

interfaces class hierarchies distributed

systems and designing system under

certain constraints you should also have

an understanding of how the internet

actually works and be familiar with the

various pieces routers domain name

servers load balancers & firewalls also

understand the basics of houses

now that we've talked a little bit about

some of the knowledge areas that we

expect you to know we want to offer you

three final tips to really be successful

in your first explain and clarify it's

extremely important to talk for your

thought process during the interview as

much better to say what you're thinking

to stay silent even if you're discarding

ideas along the way your interviewer

wants to know your thought process which

ideas you're not going to use and which

I do you finally settle on clarifying

the question is also important that most

of the questions that you are

intentionally big because the

interviewer wants to know what questions

you would ask if you're in a real-world

solutions that have a question

an example of a question you can ask for

clarifying is are there any time or

space complexity requirements

secondly we want you to keep thinking we

know this is really strenuous and

arguing is really long but the first

solution that you come up with might not

be the most elegant so we encourage you

to keep thinking through the problems

think about your current solution and

how you could potentially improve it

finally practice make sure that you

practice physically writing your code

you won't have an editor

no color code for comments no auto crack

be sure to test your code be sure that's

easily readable without bugs fine

problems right code solvent there's no

better way of practicing than actually

riding out code that's it for today and

so much for joining us