3 Simple Tips to Crush Your Next Live Coding Interview
You probably know what live coding interviews are.
You may be preparing for one right now or maybe you’re just practicing Leetcode problems to stay prepared for the next time you’re on the market. You could be an experienced engineer or someone interviewing for their first job. The point is you’re probably someone who cares about live coding interviews.
The following tips will help you 10x your chances of success next time you’re interviewing for an engineering role in a tech company.
Tip #1: Don’t run your code to see if it works.
In an actual interview, you almost always write your code in a simple editor — sometimes even in a Google Doc! No IDEs.
Manually run examples through your algorithm to make sure the logic works. Consider any edge cases you can think of. Once you’re confident in your solution then run your code. If your code fails don’t use print statements to debug it. That’s also not gonna happen in an interview! You have to debug manually.
It’s okay to do all this if you’re getting started. But as you solve a few problems and become more proficient you need to drop these habits to simulate the real interview setting.
Tip #2: Talk to yourself when writing code.
Explain your logic to an imaginary friend. This is useful in 2 ways:
- It helps you find flaws in your logic.
- It prepares you for the actual interview where you’ll be communicating with the interviewer as you’re solving the problem.
Tip #3: Take notes on your solutions.
Once you solve a problem, summarize your solution in one short sentence.
Write down one or two hints that helped you solve the problem. For example, if the key to the optimum solution was to create a hashmap then make note of that. You can’t possibly memorize the entire solution, but with one-sentence notes, you can quickly review them and recreate the solution.
This also helps you capture all the patterns you come across when solving problems. Later on, when you review your notes you can observe all the patterns you’ve used in past solutions and use them to solve future problems.
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