How to prepare for the programming interview

The candidate should plan and prepare for the technical interview. As per sscnasscom, more than a third of the organization feel that there exists a skill gap for java, cloud, and testing and database management system.

The software companies always need the talented resource. This article discusses planning and preparation for the technical interview.

Plan interview

When the candidate searches job in the software industry, they should think about preparation. The Human resource (HR) people may fix the technical interview date within few days or few weeks after initial discussion. The candidate may prepare 2 months or 6 months or 1 year to attend the coding interview. If the candidate knows the basic concepts and needs to attend the specific software company, the candidate can choose the interview questions carefully from web or forums and start practice. The interview questions come from a set of employees from the Software Company. The employee’s task is to evaluate the candidate skill set and give the feedback to the company.  If the candidate is working in a busy schedule, they should not apply the job without any preparation. Once company release the job requirement to HR team, the company wants to close the position as soon as possible. So, the HR team search the candidate and schedule the interview within 1 or 2 weeks’ time. If the candidate is working and not having sufficient time to prepare the interview, they should not apply or accept to attend the coding interview. If the candidate attends the interview without preparation, they may miss the opportunity and not able to attend an interview with the same company for another 6 months or 1 year based on companies’ policy.

Choose Programming language

The candidate must choose at least one programming language and learn deeply for attending the technical interview. If the candidate adds C, C++, Java and C# in the resume, the interviewer may not be able to judge the candidate skill set. The candidate may not be good in all programming languages. For example, if the person wants to travel from one city to another city, at a time the travel medium should be only one (car, Train, flight, etc.). The candidate should choose one programming language to complete the task (The project may require different tools and languages. The company or team will find the right resource and add based on the project requirement). The candidate must understand the application programming interface (API) related to the programming language. The candidate should learn the basic syntax and practice with coding to understand the concepts clearly.

Understand concepts

The candidate should understand the data structure and algorithm concepts clearly. They can use books, online portals, YouTube videos or training to learn the concepts. The candidate should be aware of the operating system, networking, HTTP protocols, basic security about the authentication and authorization, the compilers, threads and process concepts. The applicant should be aware of the requirement analysis, design, and testing, program deployment (including all the phases of software development cycle). If the candidate does not understand the concept, they cannot solve the coding problem. If the interviewer gives any problem, the candidate should be able to relate the problem with concepts like data structure or algorithm and solve the problem. If the candidate knows the concept, they can think solution using any of the programming languages.

Practice

The candidate should practice before applying for the coding interview. The following points helps to prepare and get the job in software companies.

Using Whiteboard or paper and pen/pencil

When the candidate prepares for the coding interview, use whiteboard or pen/pencil with notebook model. The interviewer evaluates the candidate using whiteboard or pen with notebook only. If they practice using integrated development environment (example Visual studio or Eclipse), the candidate may face issue during the interview. If the candidate use Integrated Development Environment (IDE), they expect IDE while solving the problems.

Software development tasks are not related to interview questions

The candidate should prepare for the coding interview even if they are working in Software industry. The interviewer questions may not relate to the software engineer day to day activates. The candidate may be working in a big software company and may not be able to clear the interview in another software company. The working professional may not write code for linked list or red block tree from the scratch in application development. The application programming interface (API) provides the functionality for searching or sorting which helps to implement sorting in few minutes. The good candidate should also know about the existing future in the programming language. If the API do not provide any such algorithm, the candidate should think about implementing an algorithm.

Mock interview

Many web platforms and consultants provide mock interview session to interview candidate. If the candidate plans and prepares for the interview, the candidate goes with the mock interview as the final step before attending the interview. The mock interview can be done by candidate’s friend or consultants. The consultant expects to pay money for contacting the mock interview.

Experience

If the candidate is a working professional, the interviewer reviews and ask questions from candidate resume. The candidate should prepare the technical skills mentioned in the resume. If the candidate is not sure, they can remove from candidate resume. If the candidate is not working right now, the candidate should make sure about at least one programming language and mini project working experience.

Prepare resume

The candidate should not explain more about the project in the resume. The candidate must explain the roles and responsibilities for the particular project and measure the output. The candidate should be able to explain the most challenging project and current project information when required. The interviewer may expect to explain the current project and architecture. The good resume should contain the following information.

• Email address, phone number and current location
• Technical skill including programming language, RDBMS, and Operating system
• College detail including GPA
• Projects and companies worked (experience candidate only)
• Mini project details (fresher candidate only)
• Certification (Technical and non-technical)
• Roles and responsibilities for each project
• Should not contain any grammatical or spelling mistake.

Apply through job sites

The candidate can apply the job through the career page of the company or job search portals. The Human Resource (HR) team also uses the social network to get the right candidate. If the candidate searches the job, they should make sure to maintain the good profile in social network sites. If the candidate applies through career webpage or job search portal, they should apply with Microsoft word document or adobe pdf resume with a simple cover letter with appropriate mail subject. The Human Resource team should be able to understand the skill set and experience without opening the candidate resume.

Job requirement

The candidate should review the job description and understand the requirement clearly before applying the job. They can get job description from career webpage, job portal requirement. If the candidate is not able to find more information about the requirement, they can keep in touch with the human resource who handle the particular requirement. If the candidate does not get any response from the company in which they applied, they can start to call the phone. When the candidate calls human resource, the candidate must introduce and confirm his availability for further discussion. If the candidate simply calls HR who is in meeting or any other important work, the candidate can call after some time. The candidate can also use social media contacts and get the phone number/ email of the HR directly.

Know the company

When the candidate gets call from Human Resource team, they should try to understand the company’s business, products and culture. If they are going to work on a startup, they should plan accordingly. The candidate can get information about the company from companies website or employees review websites. The company culture depends on companies’ policy and the candidate immediate manager.

Once HR shortlist the candidate for the interview, the HR would like to get the convenient time from the candidate. The candidate should choose the interview on his convenient day. If the candidate not feeling well or not prepared well, then they have to call the contact person and inform early.

Reference

• 10 Tech Interview Errors
• Interviewing For A Technical Position, Part I: The Preparation
• Preparing for a Technical Interview
• How to Prepare for (and Ace) the Technical Interview
• Skill gaps
• Web developers make less than IT peers, but skills are more in demand
• The skills gap is widening – but here’s how you can close it
• Microsoft A National Talent Strategy
• The Skills Gap and the Seven Skill Sets that Employers Want: Building the Ideal New Hire
• Occupational employment projections to 2020
• To Bridge the Skills Gap, Focus On Improving Computer Science’s Image