First time performing a technical interview for a company

YOE: 6 months (2 internships)

Applied Oct 31 2024

Nov 3rd 2024 - Online Assessment
3-4 days later, got an OA of 4 questions: 2 easy and 2 medium-hard on Codility.
Took the assignment a week later
Got the first 3 questions down, TLE'd on the last one. 531/600 total score.

Nov 19 2024 - First Interview
2 easy LC questions (to check if you can actually write code), and 1 implementation question. Asked me to design basic logic for a simple board game.
Successfully completed all 3 problems without issue, moved onto next stage of hiring process.

Dec 2 2024 - Second interview
The interview was conducted in the following order:

• 2 LC-styled mediums, with 25 min each
• 2 behavioral questions, 25 min total
• 1 class design question, 25 min total.
• Total interview time: 2 hours (there was downtime in between questions for introductions).

Question 1: Some medium question about a linked list. Got the naive solution down, but was unable to come up with optimal solution until the very last minute after interviewer gave some hints.

Question 2: Question about DAG traversal. Once again, naive solution was easy to implement, but struggled more with designing the optimal solution due to stress and time limitation.

Behavioral questions were centered around leadership and overcoming difficulties in programming projects.

Class design question: Consisted of 3 stages, where each stage led to a more complicated class design. Got the first stage down, while I struggled with the next 2 stages.

6 days later, I receieved an email that I was no longer considered in the hiring process.

Personal Experience - Screwing up during the algorithm problems optimization was the biggest hit. Need to learn more about graphs and how to traverse linked lists. Class design was also a question that I struggled with, so need to touch up on that. Overall, a good learning experience for a first technical interview, all is needed is more practice!