How to nail your Coding Interview

Here are some tips while giving your coding interviews.

1. Never try to jump to the optimal solution first

WHenever interviewer asked you a question. Normally candidates jump to the most optimal solutions straight away. Never do that, even if you know the answer. Manytimes it happens that people just remembers the optimal solution, and when asked in interview on how they come up to this solution, or what are your thought process? They have no clue.

Remember, always start with the brute force algorithm. You can just discuss with your interviewer that this is the simplest approach, and there can be better solutions to this. Discuss them one by one. When you give issues in the naive solution, your interviewer understood that you have knowledge about the topic.

2. Clear the problem statement first before starting solving

Always try to speak the problem statement and clarify any confusion. Do not assume anything. Speak everything, whatever you are assuming. Many candidates just start writing solution, and when asked about specifics. They messed it completely. Not everything is implicit. Try to expand the problem and clear every single details before solving the problem.

3. Bug free code

Interviewer often asked about writing a production ready code. You should be able to come up with an error free code with almost all edge cases handled.

4. Speak your mind

Interviewer loves to hear your thought process. They don’t like a perfect solution with no explanation given. Often candidates failed to explain their solution which clearly states that they have memorize the solution.

5. Most Important, Don’t give-up

It is very important to keep thinking, and speak your mind out. Never ever, give up. Keep up the thinking ON. Interviewer is there to give some hints too. Many times, interviewer gave a super hard problem, and want to see how you are thinking about it. Its not always expected to come up a super optimized solution.