Preparing for a technical interview - January 2016

Saturday, January 16, 2016 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm EST (GMT -05:00)

Women In Computer Science will be running a new event this term, to help students prepare for technical interviews (in advance of co-op, summer-internship, and employment interviews).

Saturday, January 16, 1 - 4 p.m. QNC ground floor and second floor atriums (presentation room to be announced).

Please register!  

Bring your own copy of Cracking the Code Interview (or other) book!

Details

Many of the top tech companies conduct what are called "technical interviews" when interviewing candidates for technical positions. You can think of such interviews as oral exams about your technical knowledge, and questions can cover details about programming languages, OO design, data structures and algorithms. It is best to prepare for such interviews in advance rather than go into them cold. As a UW CS student, you know your stuff.

But it helps to have practiced answering interview-like questions:

- so that you can answer questions quickly and confidently
- so that you are up on content covered throughout your studies here (and not just on content from this term’s courses)
- so that you demonstrate to the interviewer that you cared enough about their interview to prepare for it.

One of the best ways to prepare is to work through typical problems, as exemplified in preparation books like Cracking the Code Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions.

And one of the best ways to work through a preparation book like Cracking the Code Interview is to form a small study group of two to four students who get together regularly and *work through* all of the problems in the book.

On Saturday January 16, 1 - 4 p.m., WICS will run a kick-off event for students who want to prepare for a technical interview. The event will start with speakers from SAP and Google, who will talk about:

- what a technical interview is like at their company (for junior students, for senior students)
- advice on how to prepare for such an interview
- some interview tips
- Q&
A

After the presentation, we’ll run a clustering exercise to group attendees into initial study groups, to start working through the Cracking the Code Interview book (or another book of your choice). We’ll hold the study groups in the QNC ground floor and second floor atriums. We’ll have tables and chairs set up for study groups. We’ll provide whiteboard pens and erasers for writing on the walls. And we’ll provide snacks.

Please register, indicating what courses you’ve taken (so that we have a sense of what the clusters of study groups will be like).

Hope to see you there!