How To Prepare For Coding Interviews And Actually Get Hired? | Cracking The Coding Interview in 2024
Failure to prepare for coding interviews is preparing to fail — Steve Jobs (probably).
What Is A Coding Interview?
It’s helpful to think of a coding interview as a test. The interviewers are less interested in you and how amazing you are as a human being. All they wanna know is how good of a programmer you are and what value are going to bring to their company.
During a coding interview, you should expect to be asked technical questions and real-life programming problems. You’ll be asked to draw flowcharts, sneeze up complex algorithms on the spot, and do some actual fucking coding.
5 Ways For Grokking The Coding Interview
Grokking the coding interview might look like a hopeless endeavor but I assure you with the right guidance and enough practice it’s just another small hurdle for you to step over.
The job landscape for programming roles has become notoriously competitive over the years and coding interviews? increasingly hard.
Frankly speaking, just picking up a Cracking The Coding Interview book and doing a few Leetcode challenges isn’t enough anymore. The following might help you fully and truly prepare for your next coding interview.
1. Job Interview Coaching
The most straightforward way to go about it is to seek professional help and get yourself a coding interview coach. This is someone who knows the coding interviewing landscape in and out. He/she will figure out your strengths and weaknesses, help you work on your weaknesses, and double down on your strengths skyrocketing your chances of landing a job.
2. Coding Interview Bootcamps
If you have the money and the time why not join a coding interview Bootcamp for a month or two and let experts prepare you for your first coding interview?
A coding interview Bootcamp will likely cover in-depth areas like algorithms and data structures, coding algorithm patterns, system design fundamentals and case studies, distributed systems and architecture, behavioral interview prep and best practices, resume, LinkedIn, job search, and most importantly mock coding interviews.
3. Coding Mock Interviews
The best way to kill impostor syndrome and over-preparedness is to do one of these coding mock interviews. An online one-on-one sit down with an experienced interviewer can help you know what to expect when you go for the real thing.
A coding mock interview if done correctly will highlight your strengths and weaknesses and help you develop a well devised strategy that will put you ahead of your competition.
4. Coding Interview Courses
If you are a course guy like me who likes to binge well-prepared organized material in one go then perhaps a coding interview course might do the trick for you.
The difference between a coding interview course and a regular coding course, if not obvious, is that a coding interview course usually contains common interview questions and their solutions explained in detail instead of just study material.
5. Coding Interview Websites
While not enough anymore as a standalone approach for acing coding interviews, certain coding interview prep websites are still invaluable tools to have in your arsenal. Plus, not everyone has the money to spend on a fancy coding interview course or schedule a mock coding interview.
The usual suspects for top-tier coding interview websites are Leetcode (everyone’s favorite nightmare), HackerRank, Coderpad, Interviewcake, GeeksforGeeks, and Coderbyte — just to name a few.
Final Thoughts
You have come far from the first-day learning print “Hello World” to now being a full-fledged code ninja ready to take on the world and make your corporate overlords a fortune.
The truth however is that getting a job in the tech industry is perhaps one if not the most challenging things you’ll ever face in your career. Thanks to working-from-home arrangements, readily available interview questions asked at Fortune 500 giants on the internet, and recently AI, the competition is and will keep on getting fierce.
Securing your dream job nowadays requires more than just waving your fancy degree or Bootcamp certificate and Tic-Tac-Toe-sque projects at recruiters. You need to put in the work and preparing for coding interviews is a good start.
