Hello Friends,
In this post, we will focus on General Preparation for a Technical Interview – Software Developer Position – from an Interviewer’s Perspective, what are you supposed to know?
1. Prepare your resume well. Ensure it is well formatted, there are no spelling mistakes. Also, ensure that details in your resume exactly match your experience/knowledge. Remember that your resume is your mirror – Interviewers often go through your resume in advance and can have a mental map ready to ask you questions based on what you have written. In many cases, if no. of applications received is huge, your resume is first screened and whether you get a call for Interview is dependent on how well you presented your resume.
KEY POINT: What impression does a good, well formatted resume give? – Candidate is sincere, has attention to details and likely to follow the same at work place in deliverables/any documentation etc.
2. Prepare your answer for “Tell me something about yourself” OR “Please introduce yourself”. While answering this question, strike a balance between personal info and your work/skills info. Start with your family background/location, education, work experience and then your current work company/location etc.
KEY POINT: A good/impressive answer to this question speaks a lot about your communication skills, summarising skills and interviewer may connect this to your readiness to face client calls or even internal calls with other teams.
3. Prepare answer for “What are your key skills”, “What is your favourite Programming Language”. For freshers, this question is likely. Experienced candidates, may not get this question as they will be asked questions based on their experience in a particular area.
KEY POINT: It is very likely that you get a next question based on what you answer here. Here, you get opportunity to drive your interview to a desirable direction.
4. Make sure that you are comfortable – writing an executable program on at least one programming language. This could be any one from your resume – C/C++/Java/Python/JavaScript/Swift/Kotlin etc. or any other.
KEY POINT: Interviewer may give you a short programming assignment to assess you on your ability to come up with logic for a particular problem, translate that logic to coding skills, your ability to code under pressure (environment in interview is always similar), whether you pay attention to even small things like – code conventions, formatting etc.
5. Prepare answer for “How do you keep yourself updated with latest in technology”. Your answer should mention – Websites you refer to, any newsletters/youtube channel you have subscribed to, Social media – Any page on Facebook/Twitter you follow etc. If at present, your are blank on this answer, please reach out to your friends/colleagues for resources and inculcate this habit.
KEY POINT: It is very important to stay updated on the Technology. Interviewer tries to assess your learning attitude, eagerness etc.
6. Prepare answer for “What was challenging in your <XYZ> project, how did you solve it”. For freshers, this could be their academic project. For experienced candidates, this could be one of the assignments from their resume.
KEY POINT: Interviewer tries to assess you on your ability to work in challenging situations.
7. Prepare answer for “Why do you want to Switch?”. This is only for experienced candidates and must question in HR interview. But many times, asked even in Technical Interviews.
KEY POINT: Interviewer tries to asses clarity of your thoughts. What are your short and long term goals etc. What is your main motive behind this? – Change in profile, role/responsibility, desired location or compensation etc.
8. Prepare for fundamental questions. If your resume has one more Object Oriented Programming Language (which is very likely), you must be clear on OOPs concepts and explain the same via some real time example like – Banking , e-Learning, e-Commerce Application etc. Please don’t use examples like Shape, Circle, Triangle etc. If possible, take examples from your current or past projects etc.
KEY POINT: A candidate with a good grip on fundamentals is likely to learn anything advanced very fast and organisation may not have to spend time/resources in training the candidate for basics.
9.Prepare for questions on Data Structures and Algorithms. Make sure you can talk about Data Structures in your programming language and answer few likely questions on the same.
KEY POINT: Data Structures and Algorithms play a vital role for a Developer. Interviewer tries to assess you here, to know how well you would perform in Design Phase of your project and how well you will translate Business requirement into Business logic once you get requirement from Customer.
10. Prepare for a specific technology. If you are applying for Android developer position – you must know everything latest in Android (Current Android Version Live, Android Version in Beta, Latest Android Studio Version, Kotlin Version etc.). Also prepare for some common questions for Android developers.
Same for iOS developers – mac, iOS , xCode, Swift etc.
KEY POINT: Your performance here decides whether you will fit for open position in organisation you have applied.
That’s all Folks! I hope you like this post and it will help you in your future interviews, if any 🙂