1. UNDERSTAND the question
The most essential but the mostly missed out step is understanding really what you have been asked. Whether technical or non-technical, this is the most crucial step you should focus on. Pramod Khincha, former director of Engineering at Google highlights this: "I have seen really good candidates failing just because of answering something totally different than I really asked them. Maybe more than a half".
2. KNOW your audience
It's always a good thing to know who will interview you. Most companies send a complete on-site schedule a day before the interview. Use this list, research the interviewers. Understand their background. An interviewer currently in a managerial position might expect totally different than a deep machine learning engineer. Even sometimes you are able to find their personal GitHub repositories with ton of interview questions 🤞.
3. MANAGE your time
Some candidates just jump in and start to code. On the other hand, some spend 10-15 minutes to clarify the problem. Both are red flags. Spend 5 mins to clarify the problem and some edge cases, but not all. Then begin with even a trivial solution. Keep the interviewer involved. It’s always a good signal to provide a working solution in the first 20-25 minutes.
4. NEVER give up
Even you cannot solve the question, surprisingly even you cannot write one line of code, do not get down. Always keep up. This is very important for companies to hire people with positive and optimistic attitude. Tyson Turkoz who is a lead software architect in Samsung Electronics emphasizes the positive attitude: “Sometimes it’s OK for a candidate to not completely solve the problem. But what I value is their positiveness and their trustworthy outlook. I need to rely on them. I need to trust”.
5. AVOID giving bad signals / red flags
Technical interviews are not only technical. Interviewers are looking for someone to spend the whole day together on stressful and complicated problems. Modern problems are technically trivial. The issue begins with culture. Show your best attitude in all sessions. Avoid blaming your previous teammates, getting angry or too nervous, being too opinionated and using buzz words.
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