How to Pass Your Next Coding Interview
TLDR: Take advantage of all the features provided, set aside time that works with your schedule, and consistently practice. It doesn’t matter how effective this tool is if you don’t actually use it.
Study strategically
- If you’re just grinding at LeetCode questions, you’ll likely struggle with coming up with answers, overwhelm and demotivate yourself, and end up procrastinating until a couple days before the actual interview. Or, sometimes candidates practice 200+ problems, and yet cannot solve half of them on their own if asked again. This is why many candidates end up failing interviews — they didn’t come prepared with a strategy.
- Luckily, you found this tool! You can use InterviewCrunch to learn how recognize and apply patterns to solve problems. Once you've practiced enough, you'll eventually be able to identify which pattern to apply to any problem.
- Devote extra time to easy problems so you fully grasp the initial concept.
Put in the time
- Sounds obvious but you’d be surprised how many candidates make this mistake.
- Think about it this way, securing an offer can lead you to an average pay increase of $20,000 or even more, especially if you have competing offers in play. Treat your interview preparation as an investment in your future.
- If you fail an interview, most companies require you to wait for at least 6 months to reapply (if you do get an interview back).
- It doesn’t matter how effective this tool is if you don’t actually use it. Put in the time and effort if you want to reach your goal!
Stop trying to memorize answers
- Interviewers usually like to ask open-ended questions or follow-up questions to assess your problem-solving skills. They’ll notice if you can’t explain your thought process well.
- Understand the patterns and why they work. Then try your best to solve the problems yourself, referring back to what you learned.
- Use the hints sparingly. If you’re still stuck, look at the solution slides and try to code the solution from there.
Understand your own plan before coding
- When under time pressure, some interviewees hastily dive into coding a solution before having a plan. They end up making mistakes and wasting precious implementation time.
- Take the time to understand the questions’ edge cases, identify a simple input/output test case, and explain your approach as if you’re explaining to a child. Make the solution easy to understand, both for you and the interviewer.
- Use the Clarify the problem and Understand the problem sections before implementing for each problem!
Learn from mistakes
- If you fail to solve a question, you’ve identified a weak point. Not identifying and reflecting on this mistake is passing up an opportunity to make yourself a stronger candidate.
- Mark the problem you missed, and save notes for why you missed it! Revisit the question again in one or two weeks to see if you learned from your mistakes.