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1 Week Technical Interview Prep Crash Course (SWE Internships)
Hi! I hope you are doing well and keeping healthy. Today, I have compiled some of my favorite resources, videos, and questions for interview prep in a time crunch. You’ve got around one week to get all you can in your head — let’s get started.
Content to Know:
- Review the most common Data Structures and Algorithms — since we are on a time crunch, let’s focus on picking up patterns for now and focus on what the best solutions look like. I like this video from NeetCode for an overview of popular Dynamic Programming Patterns. Also, please test in your most proficient language (it may not be your favorite!), but if you keep switching languages you are going to get confused.
- Understand Space and Time Complexity — some people think knowing complexity is not make or break. I definitely think I have been rejected from roles since I guessed (wrong) on complexity. The truth is, knowing the efficiency of your code is extremely important. Saying complexity also makes you look good and shows you know how and why it impacts programmers. (If you don’t know why it’s important… definitely watch the video.) Back to Back SWE’s guide on complexity is by far one of the best explanations of it.
- When in doubt — hashmap :)
LeetCode Guides & Patterns:
Do as many of these as you can. If you don’t know how to tackle a problem quickly enough, find the explanation on YouTube, and redo with their optimal solution. The second link is super helpful because you can filter by company.
I’ve been asked questions extremely similar to ones here so try your best to get through at least a couple per type!
Behavioral Portion:
For most technical interviews this will be short but still a great place to wow your interviewer and potentially push you over.
- Search up Company X and go to the news tab on Google a couple hours before your interview — Did something mind-blowing happen at the company recently? A product release? Anything new and exciting? All of this is great to try throwing into your “why Company X” answer and shows you…
