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4 Things To Remember For Your Next Technical Interview

Posted on 10 November 2011. Tags: Interview, Next, Remember, Technical, Things

class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/image269.png" alt="technical interview questions" />I recently had an href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-youtube-video-channels-learning-basic-job-interview-skills/">interview (for a summer internship) for which I was told beforehand I needed to bring a pencil in case there were technical interview questions to do with coding. I was particularly nervous about the last bit but soon enough, Google winded down my nervousness a bit. I scoured the web for any type of prep material and was glad to find many sources of guidance for situations like mine.

If you’re soon facing a technical job interview, here are a few resources you should probably check out before the big day.

Find Out What NOT To Say Or Do

align="center"> class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/image270.png" alt="technical interview questions" width="258" height="361" border="0" />

This really applies to all types of job interviews, not just programming job interviews. I think it’s safe to say that you should really think your answer through before you blurt anything out or do anything. That’s quite common sense, but when you’re nervous, it’s easy to blank out and forget things. Well, you’re not alone.

There’s a relevant discussion on Stack Overflow called href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11598/what-is-the-worst-interviewee-answer">“What is the worst interviewee answer?” where you’ll see a lot of amusing things interviewees have said or done. Here are samples from the poll:

style="background-color: #d8eaf2; margin-bottom: 15px; border: #c6d7e1 1px solid; padding: 5px;">I can’t tell you how often this happens in href="http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/bettertalking-practice-interview-questions/">phone interviews: Me: [asks interview question about a specific technology] /> Them: [repeats question as I can hear them typing] /> [short delay] /> [I hear a "ding" from IE when Google gives them a list of pages, "click"] /> Them: [reads from a webpage] /> Me: OK, well, thank you for your time. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

That was the top voted poll answer. Lesson to take away – don’t cheat. Surprised?

Here’s another one:

style="background-color: #d8eaf2; margin-bottom: 15px; border: #c6d7e1 1px solid; padding: 5px;">I’ll never forget it. I said… /> “So tell me a bit about yourself… /> and he replied… /> “I recently invented the div inside a span.” /> He had it listed on his resume too – just like that – invented it.

You probably should NOT say you invented invalid markup. Just a thought.

Here’s another simple thing you should not say:

style="background-color: #d8eaf2; margin-bottom: 15px; border: #c6d7e1 1px solid; padding: 5px;">“Will you write out a little function for me on the whiteboard here?” /> “No.”

Not putting a lot of effort into an interview might just bite you back later on. Lying on an interview might also bite you back.

style="background-color: #d8eaf2; margin-bottom: 15px; border: #c6d7e1 1px solid; padding: 5px;">The setup: “I’m an expert web programmer, was a DBA for a few years, lots of background in security, yeah I know all about that” /> The lowball: “Okay, so how would you go about preventing SQL Injection?” /> The fumble: “Weeell, thats not really the type of thing I’ve ever dealt with….what is it exactly?”

For more responses, be sure to visit href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11598/what-is-the-worst-interviewee-answer">the original poll. Though you may feel tempted to mock some of the poll responses, just remember that when nervousness strikes on the big day, it’s not all fun and games anymore. What you can do before the big interview is realize that there are actual lessons to be learned from these funny responses.

Find Out What Coding Questions To Expect

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There’s no guarantee that you will receive a coding href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/8-websites-give-tips-job-interview-questions-and-answers/">question that’s been posted on the web but if you can answer some of the ones that have been asked and shared online, you might have a better chance of not freezing during this part of the interview.

Here are a few sample coding questions:

style="background-color: #d8eaf2; margin-bottom: 15px; border: #c6d7e1 1px solid; padding: 5px;">“Coding exercise: return the summation of a list of line-separated numbers from a text file.”