| Hi, I have recently been through this myself as a newgrad and consider myself successful in my goal: get a job in a specific BigTech co. Here are my two cents based on what I've learned and have been telling my peers (mostly successful also): The most important thing in any interview is to treat it as a conversation between two colleagues. No one is there to fail you as a candidate (or most of them aren't). They are looking for people to hire as much as you are looking for a job. As you are looking for a entry-level job, they look specially for people that fit within their culture. Of course, you must know the basics, but most importantly you must be someone ready to talk and listen. Be open to discuss your solutions and other aspects of the code, but managing your time. From your own self-analysis, I imagine you know the drill of what they expect from code interviews, you know how to solve the questions, and you can see what you could have done better. With that in mind, I have one single piece of advice that I consider the most important one: train interviews. Before my successful interviews, a friend and I were doing mock interviews basically every single day, for weeks. We really didn't care for the questions, they were mostly easy/medium. What we cared was that they were new and we would focus on how to answer them, how to properly communicate, etc. I could recommend Pramp but I haven't had any luck there at the time. Find people in the same situation as you, such as friends, and train with them following the "recipe for interviews" to the letter. That's all, you can contact me if you'd like to talk more about it, email is in bio |
Actually training under real/mocked interview settings is something I haven't done before, I will prioritise that from now on because it does sound like something that would take that stress off.
I really appreciate that you are taking the time to help and won't be a bother via e-mail. Will keep it saved and let you know when I do finally succeed. :)