Top 5 strategies to prepare for a coding interview

As someone who’s been on both sides of the coding interview process, I know how nerve-wracking it can be. Whether you’re a fresh grad or an experienced developer transitioning to a new role, getting ready for a coding interview requires more than just strong technical skills. Over the years, I’ve seen candidates excel by focusing on strategies that go beyond practice problems.

Here are 5 strategies for success that I’ll share today:

1. Research the company and role
2. Brush up on technical fundamentals
3. Practice problem-solving
4. Do mock interviews and get feedback
5. Call upon communities
   

Before covering these strategies, let’s first discuss different coding interview formats and how they might influence your preparation.

Understanding the coding interview process

Understanding the various types of coding interviews can help you prepare more effectively for each scenario. Some frequent modes of coding interviews are listed below:

• Phone screens: The coding interview process normally begins with a phone screen. These preliminary interviews, conducted over the phone or through video calls, evaluate your basic technical knowledge and problem-solving skills. Usually, the phone screen interview is conducted using online coding platforms, such as LeetCode or HackerRank, which offer a range of coding challenges that mimic actual interview settings.
  
• Technical on-site: Technical on-site interviews take place at the company office and are typically quite in-depth. They frequently involve several rounds in which you use a whiteboard or online coding platforms to solve coding problems, explain your strategy, and respond to follow-up inquiries. They assess your proficiency in writing organized, effective code without using an IDE.
  
  
  • Preparation tips:
    
    • Practice whiteboard coding to become comfortable expressing your code without an IDE.
    • Examine algorithms and data structures in great detail.
    • Practice writing code by hand, paying attention to logical and concise explanations as you code, and breaking problems down into smaller steps to solve them gradually.
      

Top 5 strategies for coding interview prep

1. Research the company and role

When I interview candidates, it’s always clear who did their homework. Beyond technical prep, researching the company and role helps you stand out and proves you want the job.

It’s best to establish a strong foundation for your interview preparation before considering the organization and position you’re looking for. This involves a few important steps to ensure you are technically and mentally ready for the interview.

• Understand the job description: Go over the job description in detail to learn about the qualifications the employer seeks. Highlight the essential responsibilities and duties that correspond with your areas of competence. This will enable you to modify your answers to highlight your most pertinent qualifications and experiences.
  
• Understand the company’s tech stack and recent projects: Find out what tools and technology the company employs. Review its most recent projects to gain insight into the issues it is resolving and the solutions it is creating. Not only will this information make your technical responses more accurate, but it will also demonstrate your sincere interest in the business.

• Familiarize yourself with the company’s culture and values: Learn about its beliefs, mission, and culture by visiting its website and social media accounts. Read employee reviews on websites such as Glassdoor to gain insight into the workplace. Understanding the corporate culture can assist you in structuring your responses to behavioral questions and proving that you are a good cultural fit.
  

2. Brush up on technical fundamentals

A solid technical skill set is necessary to do well in coding interviews. This involves being able to use data structures and algorithms under pressure in addition to comprehending the theory underlying them. In my own experience, the candidates who performed best were those who had a firm grasp of both the theory and practical applications of key concepts.

Here are some important aspects to pay attention to:

Data structures

Data structures form the backbone of programming. Solving complex coding challenges requires understanding how to use and manipulate data structures. Make sure you know the following data structures:

• Arrays: Review operations like insertion, deletion, searching, and common algorithms that use arrays.
• Linked lists: Understand different types of linked lists (singly, doubly, circular) and their operations.
• Stacks: Study stack operations (push, pop, peek) and common problems like balancing parentheses.
• Queues: Learn about different types of queues (regular, circular, priority) and their use cases.
• Trees: Understand binary trees, binary search trees, AVL trees, and tree traversal techniques (inorder, preorder, postorder).
• Graphs: Study graph representations (adjacency matrix, adjacency list), traversal algorithms (BFS, DFS), and shortest path algorithms (Dijkstra’s, Bellman-Ford).
• Heaps: Learn about binary heaps, heap operations, and heap sort.
  

Algorithms

Algorithms are necessary for effective problem-solving. You can confidently approach various coding problems if you understand diverse algorithms. Make sure you know the following algorithms:

• Searching: Understand linear search, binary search, and search algorithms on graphs and trees.
• Divide and conquer: Understand how to break down a problem into smaller subproblems, solve each subproblem recursively, and combine their solutions. Classic examples are merge sort and quick sort.
• Graph algorithms: Get comfortable with algorithms like Dijkstra’s for shortest paths, Prim’s and Kruskal’s for minimum spanning trees, and Floyd-Warshall for all-pairs shortest paths.
• Dynamic programming: Practice problems that involve breaking down complex problems into simpler subproblems. Understand memoization and tabulation techniques.
• Backtracking: Study backtracking techniques used in problems like permutations, combinations, and solving puzzles.
• Bit manipulation: Learn common bitwise operations and tricks for binary representation problems.
  

3. Practice problem-solving

Coding problem practice is an important component of technical interview preparation. It broadens one’s understanding of problem types and improves problem-solving ability.

Practice common problems

Numerous problems on online coding platforms such as Educative, LeetCode, and HackerRank are similar to those in interviews for coding positions. By practicing on these platforms regularly, you can become more accustomed to the structure of coding challenges and learn how to solve problems under time limits.

Focus on patterns

Many coding problems share underlying patterns. Learning these patterns helps you recognize solutions faster by applying them like templates across multiple problems.

Some key patterns include:

• Two-pointer technique
• Sliding window
• 0/1 knapsack

You’ll be more equipped to handle difficult situations during the interview if you become proficient with these patterns.

4. Do mock interviews and get feedback

If you’re aiming for confidence, mock interviews make a world of difference. They offer useful criticism and an authentic practice setting, allowing you to raise your game.

Take mock interviews

• Do online mock interviews: Participate in simulated interviews using websites like  Educative , Pramp, and Interviewing.io, which pair you with seasoned interviewers for practical practice sessions.
• Ask mentors or peers for help: Request that your mentors or peers perform simulated interviews.
• Be sure to simulate real interview conditions: During practice sessions, emulate the interview setting as much as possible. Utilize a whiteboard or coding platform, keep track of your time, and avoid distractions. This will help you become more at ease and self-assured on the big day and get used to the pressure and structure of genuine interviews.

Analyze feedback

• Review mock interview recordings: If the mock interview platform provides recordings, review them to analyze your performance. Pay attention to how you approached problems, communicated your thought process, and handled any mistakes. This self-assessment will help you identify patterns and areas that need improvement.
• Learn from mistakes and iterate on feedback: Use the feedback from practice interviews to improve. Determine the areas in which you were weak and concentrate on improving those particular abilities. To improve your performance and approach, practice iteratively and ask for feedback.
  

5. Call upon communities

You can get a lot of support, information, and feedback from communities.

Join popular communities like Educative, Stack Overflow, Reddit, and GitHub:

• Educative Discuss Forum offers comprehensive discussions and in-depth answers to all your coding queries.
• Stack Overflow is an excellent place to ask questions and find answers to specific coding problems.
• Reddit has several subreddits dedicated to programming and coding interviews where you can participate in discussions, seek advice, and stay updated with the latest trends.
• GitHub is a platform for sharing code and a place to collaborate on projects, review others’ code, and learn from open-source contributions.

You can also join local or virtual study groups for coding interviews. Participating in a study group can help you stay accountable and motivated while offering new insights into problem-solving techniques. Groups such as Studyverse and Studytogether offer a cooperative setting to share resources, discuss tactics, and practice coding challenges.

Preparing for the big day

Coding interviews require thorough preparation, a strong understanding of technical concepts, and lots of practice. I hope these five strategies will help you build confidence and succeed on the big day.

As a reminder, Educative provides comprehensive interview prep resources for all stages of the tech interview (and in various languages). From the AI Mock Interviewer tool to the best-selling Grokking Coding Interview Patterns series, featured below:

Happy interviewing!