Cracking Technical Interviews; Freshers

This article is primarily based on what you should and should not do in the technical Interviews and how a person should be preparing for the interviews. There are many questions about whether what should be prepared in order to crack a technical Interview. First and Foremost: The interviewer is looking for a guy who can code a little and have done some projects during their college tenure. Have some projects to show that you are passionate about something. What you should prepare for the Technical Interviews: For Product based companies: step1->step2->step3: All the steps are Linked List, now you know that you can't skip over a step to get to another. [;-) Until and unless you are familiar with skip lists Step 1. Good grasp over Programming Language: Gain good knowledge of a programming language. C, C++, Python, Java are some of the best programming language to start with. Step 2. Data Structures: Array, Linked List, Stack, Queue, Binary Search Trees, Hash Tables are some of the fundamental data structures you should study. Most companies will limit their questions to these data structures and most interview questions are very basic. Implementation of data structures will give you a good grasp over pointers if implemented in c, and oops in python. Step 3. Algorithms: Algorithms play a vital role for product based companies and a student should at least be familiar with the basic Algorithms like implementation of Searching, Sorting, and should be familiar with the graph, dynamic, greedy approach of the algorithms. Algorithms are really easy and should not be a problem. ** Projects: You should go over the projects you have done during college as some companies even have separate project rounds and if not, the technical interview would be about your projects for around 30% of it's time. Additional Things to know: Good knowledge of operating system and oops would be helpful in technical interviews. Companies like adobe ask questions from operating systems, cadence ask questions of oops in written tests. Know that: >They are not gonna look for academic records as they know that these things don't matter much to them >They are always gonna ask you questions from data structures and algorithms even if they may make you work on something else as these are the backbones of everything. For Example: >Van Emde Boas algorithm is the reason behind the very fast routing in network >Breadth First Search Algorithm is behind searching of a content on a webpage >Graphs are behind the Google Maps Implementation >I think that Dijkstra as well as Max Flow, Min cut Algorithm is used in the Google Maps >I think that Persistent Data structure is the structure behind the Github >Searching and sorting are the algorithms you see everyday in life >Stack is behind the Undo i am doing while writing this article >Runway Reservation system works on the Binary Search Trees **Just remember that if there are around n**n problems in the world, there are algorithms only to solve n problems and they are looking for someone to work on them along with them **Everything you see has an algorithm working behind it For Service Based Companies: 1. They would be looking for someone with Good Communication skill as they are client based. 2. They would ask easy questions on Data Structures and Algorithms 3. They are gonna look for a good academic record 4. Prepare for Project related questions 5. Prepare for dbms(normalisation), sql 6. Prepare for English comprehension for the written test Just Remember: In Product Based Companies:"You won't be a jack of all trades, but master of one" In Service Based Companies:"You will be a jack of all trades, but master of none" Some Tips: Learn by building: I got a good grasp over C++ by building a game in Unreal Engine Stay Hungry: Don't be limited to the things which can be asked in the interview. Simplify things: There are a lot of things which may scare you as you may be seeing the advancement in recent years but remember that all those advancements are simple algorithms which are executed differently by different people. Just remember that there is always a simple explanation for every thing there is For Example: > You may be thinking that there are a lot of data structures and it's gonna be hard to learn them all but know this, there are only two data structure models: 1. Word Ram Model: Array, Stack, Queue, String 2. Pointer Model: Linked List, Trees There is always a simple and easy explanation to all the technologies in the world, just be patient enough to get to that point when it all starts to make sense and looks easy. Resource: MyCodeSchool Video Channel MIT Algorithms free course Practice for cracking any coding interview