1 month away from my coding interview as a freshman beginner. What should I do to ace the interview?
Posted by tushaar-@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 13 comments
Hi, I am a freshman at uni. I just started with my courses I am not very familiar with all of the algorithms and data structures and all. I have a coding interview in a month. I was hoping for some advice on how I could tackle this situation aiming to get the ace the interview. Anything helps honestly resources, things I need to know, YouTube videos that teach the concepts would be specially really helpful!
0dev0100@reddit
Everyone has given you some pretty good technical advice.
Non technical skills are also important
Technical skills
tushaar-@reddit (OP)
Thanks man!
mandzeete@reddit
You WON'T ace the interview as a freshman. I won't lie to you. Come back when you have completed 2 years in your curriculum and I can consider if you are ready for jobs.
Accept that your first 1-2 years at least go into learning and into building up your portfolio. No one sane in his mind will hire a beginner freshman.
I mean, sure, you can apply. You can experience the rejection. You might see what is expected from an intern or from a Junior software developer. But you most likely won't land a job nor land an internship. Even in internship, at least where I am from, they expect you to be able to build a working stuff. Even when it is on a course assignment level. A freshman does not have this.
What you DO can do is joining in some programming club or in some robotics club in your university. Or participate in different hackathons and build up your portfolio.
tushaar-@reddit (OP)
Totally, but would you have any tips and resources I could use to atleast try to do good on the interview?
mandzeete@reddit
Go into the interview with a goal to LEARN. Be ready to be rejected. Just set your goal to learn how the actual job market functions in the real life.
You will have somebody from a real company interviewing you. THAT is your chance to ask all kinds of questions. He has already booked that time and will get paid for that 30-60 minutes of interview. So, use that time wisely. As questions you can learn from.
Ask him what is expected from a junior software developer. Ask what are the common obstacles Junior software developers, interns and such as facing. Ask the interviewer to give you a constructive feedback you can learn from.
Perhaps ask a list of tools and technologies you should learn to use on a beginner level for you to be able to apply to that company.
You can also ask for different reasons why an intern will not make the internship or why a Junior software developer won't make the probation period (of 4 months or so).
And, you can ask what will be the requirements for getting an internship or getting accepted into a Junior software developer position in said company.
Now, let's step into fairy tales and fantasies. Let's imagine you are a genius. Such people exist. You better have a portfolio with a project that is being used in a real life. Either by you, by your friends, by your relatives or by some strangers. If you manage to pull it out and you can talk ALL about it, then you will have a chance. No other options, really.
Either you have working prototypes of some project and you or somebody is using it, or you have like 1-2 years done in your curriculum. And no, calculator apps will not be sufficient.
Can you build an actual solution to an actual real life problem and present it in your portfolio and during the interview? It should be a realistic problem not "But people might be using my calculator app." No "perhaps"-s and not "maybe"-s.
If you have such project then your chances to be accepted into an internship will be much higher. Companies are hiring people who actually can solve real life problems.
And you should be ready to answer to some random questions about random real life scenarios. For example "What should you consider when you are building an app for booking tickets to a cinema and that app will be used by 1000s of customers?" Random theoretic questions.
tushaar-@reddit (OP)
Thanks a lot for the insights!
mandzeete@reddit
In general, show an interest an a passion towards the field and towards the company (but DO NOT ask the salary number). People like that.
TonoGameConsultants@reddit
I’d strongly recommend doing some LeetCode problems. Start by practicing with a timer so you get comfortable coding under pressure, that’s a big part of interviews.
Once you’re used to solving them, shift your focus to explaining your process out loud as you go. Interviewers usually care more about how you think and how you approach the problem than just the final solution. Walking them through your reasoning is just as important as writing correct code.
tushaar-@reddit (OP)
Thank you dude, any other resources that I could use that would train me for the problems as I haven’t taken the DSA course yet
Anonymous_Coder_1234@reddit
I got into Amazon in the past by going through the book Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle McDowell. Note that I completed a university Data Structures & Algorithms class BEFORE going through that book, but whatever, it's a good review book.
tushaar-@reddit (OP)
Thanks!
Various_Candidate325@reddit
As a freshman I felt super behind too, so I kept it simple and consistent. I did a daily 45 minute block where I picked one topic, sketched a brute force in 30 seconds, then coded a clean pass and only then tried the optimal idea. Saying my plan out loud helped me catch gaps early. What helped most was running timed mocks with Beyz coding assistant using prompts from the IQB interview question bank, then keeping a tiny redo log of questions I missed and revisiting them two days later. Focus on arrays, hash maps, two pointers, and BFS or DFS basics. You’ve got time to make real progress.
tushaar-@reddit (OP)
Thanks!