9 useful tips for passing a Developers Technical interview

Going throw the process of technical interviews can be a harsh and draining experience. In most cases, we are talking about 2 hours of feeling them vs you, trying to dodge the bullets coming in your direction as if you are Neo in the Matrix while smiling pleasantly and keeping your cool.

Here are a few tips to try and make this experience more productive:

You are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you

At the end of the day, work consumes most of our time. A workplace should be a place where you can spend your time in a fulfilling manner. The people you are surrounded by are with great effect on your feeling and the interview should reflect hows a typical daily work is going to be. Look for suspicious signs. If the interviewer is impatient with your questions? Do you have a feeling that he is patronizing you? How is the chemistry between you? Is the interaction making you nervous? These are critical questions that one should ask himself – there is nothing more depressing than starting a new job and understanding your gut feeling was true and that this workplace isn’t the one for you. It’s ok to turn down a job offer if you think that something is odd. You will save yourself and the workplace valuable time and lots of frustration.

Are you a team player

Unless you are interviewing for a very small startup where you are the sole developer you will probably need to work with people. When I am performing an interview and giving a technical question I usually still take an active part in the process of seeking the solution. This is an excellent insight into understanding how the candidate works as a team. I ask him small questions trying to help but also to understand how is the candidate during the work day, is he open to ideas that are different than his? Does he listen at all? what is his reaction to my tips? does he embrace them or does he rejects them? All valuable signs I am looking for.

You would be astonished at how many people ignored my comments during the process while I was actually giving them the answer to the current task.

Make sure you understand the question

During an interview, the way a candidate understands the question can indict how he will receive tasks in his daily work. Does he make sure he fully understands the task or does he rush to answer? This is your chance to ask as many questions as possible. Clear any confusion that one may have. It’s more than okay to ask for examples. Run over it and see if the result that the interviewer just gave you aligns with what you had in mind prior to the example. In the daily job, this is an indication of how thorough you are. Are you the kind that does it once and does it right, or are you the kind that needs to repeat the task over and over till you get it right with lots of manager time assisting you? EVERY MANGER wants a “give and forget” employee.

Keep it simple.

The most common mistake usually witnessed is over-complicating the solution. The root of all evil during an interview is optimizing too early. In most cases, the ones that start with the most optimized solution never completes the task since it’s too complicated. Start with a simple yet working solution then acknowledge that this can be done better. and try to improve it if there is time left REPEAT. In most cases, this will be much more impressive.

Think loud

The interviewer is not a mind reader. He has no idea what is going on in your mind. You might be on the right path to success but unless you say it he will never know. He might even point you in the right direction if only he knows what you are seeking. Try to Look at it as a conversation. Sharing your thoughts and the process you are going through. This will also give the interviewee a great indication of how it would be to work with the interviewer – You might not like what you discover and believe me it’s better known now than when you start the actual day-to-day work discovering that this is not your cup of tea.

Once you have a solution – test it!

You have a solution – wait till you shout “DONE!” take the time out loud and test your solution. Run over some examples not to mention the example you asked for before you started. If it works then think about edge cases. How do you handle nulls, zeros, and unknowns? What can fail your solution? It can even be great to start with the examples and the desired outcome before you write the solution and then test them as if you were working in TDD.

What if you already know the question?

This is a tough one. You are tense and there is nothing that you wish for more than to end this interview already and get it done with. Finally, after all the social talking the technical question comes and you know it inside out. Nothing is easier than just spitting the answer and acing the interview but believe me. The struggle with an unknown question is authentic and nothing you can act on during an interview. A good interviewer will know straight away that you a memorizing the solution and he will wait to see if you mention it. It’s better to struggle and fail than to be pointed at as not reliable, JUST say you know it. believe me, you will gain more points than you think.

No more than once a day, better of at the being of the day

Every once in a while, An candidate comes and claims that this is his second and third interview today. This is always a bad sign. The process of an interview is usually 2 hours, , during which the candidate goes through an emotional roller coaster, from excitement to discontentment not to mention the adrenalin rush. Me, as an interviewer, it can be hard to perform more than one interview a day. And in most cases, it takes me time to I can get back to the daily work. If you want the job then no more than once a day and better first thing in the morning and not after a day of work when your brain only wishes to crush in front of the T.V

Don’t disrespect your last/current job

Disrespecting your last job is a huge red sign for an interviewer. something went wrong and it may happen again here. Stay positive and try to count all the good things you learned in the previous job and just skip this hurdle as fast as you can.

I hope this post was useful! please share your thoughts and tips to ace an interview in the comments below.

Read more on technical interviews here

Author: Yoni Amishav

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