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Realize that the interviewer wants you to succeed! For an interviewer, a candidate that does great and gets hired is a much better outcome than another hour wasted on a rejection. (I'm sure they are some toxic interviewers and dysfunctional companies where that's not the case, but you don't want to work there anyway so it doesn't matter.) A lot of good things flow from there. First, you should feel a little more relaxed. This generally helps think more clearly, talk more naturally, avoid panicking, etc. Second, you should shift your mindset to view your relationship with the interviewer as based on cooperation, not antagonism. This generally helps act more friendly and less defensive. Third, if you were at home cooperating with a friend to solve a difficult problem, would you stay silent, or would you run your ideas off each other? Probably the latter. The same applies here. Unlike your friend, the interviewer is limited in how much information they can give. But again unlike your friend, the interviewer already knows exactly how to solve the problem! So leverage that. Ask them whether your proposed solution makes sense. Ask them whether the time and space complexities of your proposed solution are good enough or if you should keep digging. By the time you start implementing the solution in code, you should be fairly confident that you're going in the right direction. (Sometimes the interviewer won't give much away. Don't panic, it happens—in that case just go for it and hope for the best.) |