This week I had a practice mock interview with a teammate to prepare for the future.
Also, related to this, I’ll review some of the basic concepts of computer science and the more common topics asked in IT interviews.
Technical problems approaches
Last week I listed some approaches to solve algorithm problems, regarding that I want to expand a little more on some of the aspects of some steps.
If nothing comes to your mind
It’s normal to feel overwhelmed or blocked in an interview, or you just have bad luck and you are faced with a problem that you’re not good at.
In any case, there are some tricks to do when you feel lost in an interview.
First, is the Do It Your Self method, just forget about the programming language and try to find a solution to the problem on a whiteboard in plain text to visualize the problem better.
That one is my favorite approach and I personally start every problem with this.
Then, is the “case base”, just focus on a single case of the problem and try to write the code for that specific case, and once you have made it, start generalizing your answer.
And finally, the thing about a data structure that can fit in the problem, for example, a stack for reading the characters or a heap for having a sorted list where you can find easily the min and max value.
Optimization
A pretty common question after solving an algorithm problem is, how can you optimize the solution for this problem?
For this I learn the BUD method, which stands for:
- Bottlenecks.
- Unnecesary work.
- Duplicated work.
Mock interview
After having this week my mock interview, I have a lot of feedback and points to improve for myself.
One of the most important points in my body language.
It’s difficult to see (or at least for me) because I’m more focused on the reactions of my interviewer than my own camera, how do I look, or what I’m doing.
But it is very important, little details, like playing with your hands, with the chair or thing surrounding you can denote anxiety and lack of security in yourself.
Also, with this you can experiment some mind blockers, have the answer in your mind but can’t just respond properly to the question. In those cases is better to ask the interviewer for a hint instead of just leaving the question with some “I don’t know” answer.
Speaking of which, answer that is not bad at all when you honestly don’t know the answer for the question.
