Hey, what's up?
John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com.
I got a question.
Actually, I'm going to talk about a subject here.
I've gotten a lot of questions on this, but I want to talk about today on coding interviews,
online coding interviews, how not to fail.
If you've ever been in the position, I know a lot of you have, of having to take an online
coding interview and you failed it.
I'm going to tell you how not to, how to prevent that from happening because, like I said,
a lot of people have complained about this.
I've done some videos and you can check out some of the playlists, some of the videos
I've done on whiteboard interviews and coding interviews, and what not.
I've coached and talked to a lot of people that I've worked in.
It's not as difficult of a thing as you might expect.
First of all, the thing to do is to practice.
There's a reason—the biggest reason, I think, that most developers I talked to fail an online
coding interview and get all upset and say it's not fair and complain and whine about
this, is because they don’t know what to expect.
I did this before in school, I remember.
I was taking like an AP US history course.
The first time I took the first test, I was like, "What the hell?"
I read the chapters in the book, but I didn’t know I was going to be asked these specific
dates and stuff.
Like I'm not going to memorize from reading the chapter.
I totally bombed the test.
Then once I saw the test, I was like, "Oh, this is what happened."
I was like, "Whatever is like a pertinent date or fact like that's what they're going
to ask a question on.
Now when I read the chapters I underline the parts in the book and I basically pulled out
a bunch of facts from it and I memorized the facts.
It was stupid.
It didn’t benefit me anything.
This is our dumb, stupid education system in the US that's totally worthless, but I
figured on how to cheat the test.
Not cheat the test.
How to ace the test based on what they're testing me on.
You always have to fit the studying to the test.
Your goal is to pass the test.
A lot of these things, like I said, they don’t necessarily test your knowledge.
Not your actual ability to program necessarily, but how to take the test.
The SATs are a game that a lot of people play and you can get a perfect SAT score.
If you're in high school right now and you're watching this and you're going to go to college,
you check out my playlist on college before you make the decision.
If you're going to go to college, get a perfect SAT score like this is so—to me, it's so
common sense and I'll tell you why because there's SAT prep courses that will almost
guarantee you a perfect SAT score.
They'll teach you exactly what you need to know to be able to pass the test.
It's not going to make you any smarter, but it's going to get you that perfect score so
that you can have the best options for scholarships in college.
It's like very, very common sense to me today to do that.
Okay.
Let's talk more about the coding interview.
First of all, go out there.
There are sites like Codility.com.
I think Euler.net or Euler.com.
There's John Bentley's programming pearls, has a bunch of problems in there.
The first thing is to familiarize yourself with them and take some online test, and to
see what they're like, so that you know what kind of questions that you're going to get.
It's the same thing as doing whiteboard interviews in person.
Go and do that because if you're not prepared, if you don’t know what the test is going
to be like, you're not going to know how to study for the test.
The next step is to study for the test.
Again, the resources that I've recommended you already, they have a lot of information
about how to prepare for a coding interview or for an online interview.
Like I said, my book as well, The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide.
Actually, if you get that book, there's a digital download tool kit while it's still
available free, it might not always be available free, where I walk you step by step and show
you how to solve an interview like a whiteboard interview or a coding interview online.
You still have to solve a bunch of problems on your own.
You have to get to the point where this is not only comfortable but fun.
The people that do the best on these kind of interviews, they're the ones—also, they
have the mindset of "this is a fun challenge and I enjoy doing this" as opposed to, "Oh,
I have to do this and this is stupid, and it doesn’t"—if you have that attitude,
you're probably not going to do well on it.
The key thing, like I said, is to study for the test.
Anytime you're being tested like this, you need to study for the test.
Go and figure it out.
Go and look.
If it's the first time that you've ever seen an online interview, if you get blindsided
because you've never seen one before, that's dumb.
You're not prepared.
You're not going to pass and don’t expect too.
It's hard, right?
You got to go out there and figure out what are they going to test you on.
If you have the opportunity, if you do have a job interview and they're going to have
you do an online test, just ask them.
So many times I've been in interview and I said, "Hey, what are you going to test me
on?"
They tell me exactly what they're going to test me on and then I go and I figure that
stuff out, and I study that stuff and I make sure I know that stuff.
You would think that they wouldn't tell you, but you know what?
If someone asks me—I have interviewed people and I've told them.
I said, "This is exactly what we're going to test and see if you know these things,"
because it's a good test in itself, is if you tell someone what's on the test and then
they still fail it and they still come unprepared, you can just can them right there.
You know that you're not going to hurt that person.
If you do tell them and they prepare, that's great because that shows that they have the
ability to figure out what they need to know on demand, which is the most important skill
as a software developer, anyway, or basically one of the most important skills.
All right.
That's all I got for you today.
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Take care.