Cracking the Coding Interview, 4 Edition - 150 Programming Interview Questions and Solutions

At the Interview | Top Ten Mistakes Candidates Make
#6 | Talking Too Little
Psst - let me tell you a secret: I don’t know what’s going on in your head. So if you aren’t talking,
I don’t know what you’re thinking. If you don’t talk for a long time, I’ll assume that you
aren’t making any progress. Speak up often, and try to talk your way through a solution. This
shows your interviewer that you’re tackling the problem and aren’t stuck. And it lets them
guide you when you get off-track, helping you get to the answer faster. And it shows your
awesome communication skills. What’s not to love?
#7 | Rushing
Coding is not a race, and neither is interviewing. Take your time in a coding problem - don’t
rush! Rushing leads to mistakes, and reveals you to be careless. Go slowly and methodically,
testing often and thinking through the problem thoroughly. You’ll finish the problem in less
time in the end, and with fewer mistakes.
#8 | Not Debugging
Would you ever write code and not run it or test it? I would hope not! So why do that in an
interview? When you finish writing code in an interview, “run” (or walk through) the code to
test it. Or, on more complicated problems, test the code while writing it.
#9 | Sloppy Coding
Did you know that you can write bug-free code while still doing horribly on a coding question?
It’s true! Duplicated code, messy data structures (i.e., lack of object oriented design),
etc. Bad, bad, bad! When you write code, imagine you’re writing for real-world maintainability.
Break code into sub-routines, and design data structures to link appropriate data.
#10 | Giving Up
Have you ever taken a computer adaptive test? These are tests that give you harder questions
the better you do. Take it from me - they’re not fun. Regardless of how well you’re actually
doing, you suddenly find yourself stumbling through problems. Yikes!
Interviewing is sort of like this. If you whiz through the easy problems, you’re going to get
more and harder problems. Or, the questions might have just started out hard to begin with!
Either way, struggling on a question does not mean that you’re doing badly. So don’t give up
or get discouraged. You’re doing great!
CareerCup.com
4 0