Tips To Crack A Technical Interview.
1. Strengthen Your Fundamentals
Once you walk in through that door, there would most definitely be tough situations; problems which you would never have faced earlier in your life. In all such cases, your fundamentals would back you up and definitely help you get close, if not solve the problem altogether.
It’s important for you to get the basics right if you falter with fundamentals, it is certainly going to leave a bad impression on the interviewer.
2. Know Yourself
3. The Team Player
No matter how efficient you are as an individual, companies prefer team players over lone wolves. Try to emphasize on how well you will work in a team. If you can give an example of how well you did as a team in your recent projects or internships, it will definitely earn you extra points in the mind of the interviewer.
4. Think Aloud
When a technical question has been rolled out to you, chances are that you need to think and come up with a proper approach in order to solve it. If you are unable to solve it, and that’s the first thing that you speak, you would probably leave a bad impression! The trick here is to think aloud- mention what is going inside your head, so that the interviewer knows your thought process. Taking the correct approach is always more important than blatantly solving problems.
If you are asked to write a program, let the interviewers know how you plan to go about doing it. Try and explain your steps and why you are taking those! It’s good to write some pseudo code before writing the actual program, but make sure you let the interviewers know. Always remember to test your code for bugs.
5. Be Honest, They’re Smart!
There might be a point in an interview where you could be asked about your role in a specific project. Although, you may be tempted to exaggerate your contributions, it’s generally advisable to stick to the reality. Always keep in mind that the panel has interviewed hundreds (if not thousands) of candidates and they will be able to guess if you were to tell something beyond your capabilities. Similarly, if you have seen a problem before, it’s recommended that you let the interviewer know.
6. Be Honest, They’re Smart!
There might be a point in an interview where you could be asked about your role in a specific project. Although, you may be tempted to exaggerate your contributions, it’s generally advisable to stick to the reality. Always keep in mind that the panel has interviewed hundreds (if not thousands) of candidates and they will be able to guess if you were to tell something beyond your capabilities. Similarly, if you have seen a problem before, it’s recommended that you let the interviewer know.
7. It’s all about your attitude
8. Follow-up
Although in campus interviews, you are given the results almost immediately, it is not the same in the case of the off-campus ones. Make sure you ask questions, ask about the team and its culture to leave the impression that you are actually interested in working for them.
Smile, and look positive, even if you’ve screwed it up!