How the Hiring Manager Wants You To Prepare for a Software Engineering Job Interview

By Vladimir Novakovski, former VP Engineering at Addepar. Originally published on Quora.

I have so far interviewed over a thousand engineers, data scientists, and quants and hired over a hundred within the hedge fund space, Quora, Addepar, and other companies.

One thing to keep in mind is that you can’t prepare to be a strong engineer or computer scientist. That comes from experience, education, and natural talent and shouldn’t be done in the context of the pressure of the job market. There’s nothing worse than interviewing someone who just memorized some things a few days earlier and doesn’t really understand them.

What you can prepare for is the setting of an interview, where you have to think on your feet and generate discussion, answers, and code quickly. Equally important is to talk to industry experts and understand where your skill sets and interests are a good match, in terms of companies and groups.

For the mechanics of the technical interview before you start talking to companies, I’d suggest Codefights. They have an excellent set of technical problems that map out to actual questions asked in interviews and a robust platform to solve these problems and get realtime feedback with a low time commitment from your end.

Once you’re ready, you need to understand what particular companies are looking for and how your strengths apply. If you are interested in practice interviews and feedback on how you index on these dimensions, I recommend checking out HiDimensional, a new recruiting platform that connects candidates with established industry veterans for technical interviews and referrals. Full disclosure: I am an advisor to the company.

The main benefit in the platform, beyond the personalized feedback interviewers like myself share, is that we write recommendations of candidates who do well and refer those candidates to startups hiring on the platform that match their skill set. It’s an effective way of understanding your strengths and interests and fast-tracking the hiring process with a credible endorsement.

By Vladimir Novakovski, former VP Engineering at Addepar. Originally published on Quora.

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