I applied for a job as a software developer in an IT company. The next step in the recruitment process after the first interview is a programming interview. This programming interview is said to include a programming-related puzzle to be solved during the interview. What would be the best ways to prepare for such an interview? What experiences do you have of programming interviews?
Remember to always show your thought process and even if you can’t solve it. Most of the time when they “puzzles” they have trickery and don’t expect people to solve it, so don’t worry if you can’t.
leetcode.com has a lot of sample problems that are used by companies for hiring. You can make an account for free and spend the days leading up to the interview practicing problems on there to sharpen your skills, put you in the right mindset, and boost your confidence!
Remember that the interviewer is on your side, they want to hire you so they can be done with the whole miserable hiring process, so don’t be afraid to make mistakes or to ask for help! Be agreeable, if you’re competent enough with the hard skills to quickly learn what they need you to learn, then it’s going to be soft skills that get you the job.
Theres also exercism.org they have equally weird texts/branding and questionable privacy policy but at least they don’t have the commercial aspect.
I had never heard of exercism, but I love it so far. I’d still recommend leetcode for preparing for a job interview, though.
Leetcode is a bunch of one-off programming challenges like you’d find on a test, it is designed to get you ready for a job interview not to teach you the fundamentals of programming. Exercism is series of learning exercises that build on each other, it is intended to teach newbies the fundamentals and to provide practice while learning a new language.
If it’s your first developer job they will want someone who is willing/eager to learn.
They will probably ask about any previous experience you had. Have you done any programming before? Why was it useful? What were the challenges? Did you work with other people?
The programming puzzle could be anything. It could be a leetcode question, a logic puzzle or maybe they will ask you to describe what some code does. They ask you these questions to see your thought process, you can help by explaining your reasoning as you go along.
Getting a job is a numbers game, if you don’t get it then at least it will be good practise. Good luck!
If it’s your first developer job they will want someone who is willing/eager to learn.
Luckily this isn’t going to be my first developer jobs, just second.
They will probably ask about any previous experience you had. Have you done any programming before? Why was it useful? What were the challenges? Did you work with other people?
These kind of questions were asked in the previous interview with HR, so in this upcoming interview the questions are going to be about programming.
The programming puzzle could be anything. It could be a leetcode question, a logic puzzle or maybe they will ask you to describe what some code does. They ask you these questions to see your thought process, you can help by explaining your reasoning as you go along.
This (among the other posts in this thread) is really helpful. I have been really stressed about this programming interview recently. Thanks!
- Know the languages they want
- Re-read your favourite algorithms & data structures book
- Look through some of your code and think about how you would explain it’s workings and the reasoning for your design decisions
The rest is specific to their job description, if they asked for some specific software/library/whatever you should know that at least a bit obviously. Also don’t get nervous when you don’t find a good solution, some interviewers just want to know how you work. Those tasks range from stupidly simple to stuff the interviewer themselve doesn’t know how to solve.
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