UVA ACM Interview Tips

Given in November 2013, mirroring on Speaker Deck

Transcript

1. Technical Interview Tips @jasdev, @binroot
2. Interview Types • Phone (Are you the right fit?) • Skype, G+ (Stypi, collabedit, Codility, GDocs) • In-person (white board / pair programming)
3. The Phone Interview Google Voice. Think aloud through problems. Have a notepad or editor ready. Wear normal clothes (it makes a difference!) Reserve a UVa room.
4. Skype / G+ Interviews • Reasonable Skype ID (with exception of ‘yoloSwagMaster') • Practice in collaborative editors • Test call with a friend
5. The On-site • Write in the language you're most comfortable with. • You will likely whiteboard some code (with testing). • On-sites are typically done in loops with a lunch interview.
6. How to Prep Books, practice sites, and mailing lists
7. Books we recommend • Cracking the Coding Interview • CLRS (Focus on 4102 topics) • Bloomfield’s Lectures
8. Coding Sites • glassdoor • GeeksforGeeks • Project Euler* • TopCoder • HackerRank • --Insert shameless plug for UVa ICPC here--
9. One of the best mailing lists I've joined Coding for Interviews (check out their LinkedIn group to be extra pro)
10. Let’s jump into some problems
11. After the problem statement...! • Talk the problem through • Clarify input/output of functions • Any assumptions? (for possible simplification) • Any runtime requirements or scaling issues? • Pseudocode (especially for on-sites) • Start coding (don't sweat minor syntax issues)
12. After your first pass at the problem! • Take a step back. • Try some sample test cases • (if asked to try a specific one, you might have missed something). • Look for common pitfalls (floating point precision, string concatenation cost, off-by-one errors in indices)
13. Sample Problem Let’s write a min-stack
14. Ending the Interview • Will likely be given a chance to ask questions • Definitely have some ready, either personal or about the product / company • Be sure the end the interview by verbally thanking the person by name, this detail goes a long way