
Ask HN: Who wants to practice coding interviews together? - Kortaggio
Hi guys, I&#x27;m a full-stack web developer who&#x27;s currently applying for full-time jobs, and I&#x27;m looking to brush up on my technical interview skills. Is there anyone in a similar position who would be interested in practicing together? This way we can mock interview each other and offer each other feedback.<p>I find that live problem solving in front of another person is very different from standing at the whiteboard yourself which is why I&#x27;m reaching out to you guys. I&#x27;m currently in Toronto but am open to practicing remotely as well.<p>More about my background: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kortaggio.com<p>Contact me via email: bill.mei [at] kortaggio.com
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matthewrhoden1
Most of the questions in your interviews are not actually technical, unless
your interviewing google or something. Here was my approach and I got a very
large pay bump as a result :)

Sit down and list all your projects you completed at your previous jobs. These
will give you a great refresher and are going to be your talking points. Have
both good and bad points ready. The bad points are for curve ball of questions
like, "whats you're weak point." It will also show you can reflect and
improve.

Go crazy lining up interviews, that's one great thing about our industry, no
shortage of companies to interview with.

A few hours before each interview, look at the job description for clues.
You'll pick your top three things that you feel would make you a great fit for
the company based on your past experience. "Need to be able to refactor", hey
that's all I did at x company for y time and of course the project was
successful based on z metric.

That was mostly it, of course it helps to do a quick refresher of tech
specific interview questions from google. This is mostly to boost your
confidence and to keep you from feeling too nervous.

Good luck!

~~~
horshod
What kind of a job does this apply to? I and every single friend of mine that
went through interviews for tech companies had to go through multiple rounds
of technical interviews that mainly involved problem solving, followed by like
one non-technical interview.

~~~
matthewrhoden1
I applied to full stack positions for mid to senior level. Some do go into
technical questions, that's what the brush up is for, however they usually
target exactly what was in their job description.

If you're an engineer I'm assuming you can usually fight your way through a
problem they give you. A lot of places I interviewed seemed to do the same
thing -> (man I have an interview, better google a few questions to ask them).

The important part is that you look at their job description, you will usually
cover 75% of the interview preparing like that.

~~~
soham
This is true for smaller companies, that hire for targeted roles, take the
time to write good job descriptions and may even think a bit about what they
are doing, because every person they hire makes or breaks the company.

The moment a company enters growth phase and they need a lot of talent, nearly
everything goes out of the window. Most (not all) job descriptions become
generic and less thoughtful and they resort to generic technical questions in
interviews, simply because there aren't that many candidates who have relevant
backgrounds (e.g. I need someone to work on deployment systems, but you have
payment systems background) and they can't wait forever.

Obviously there are exceptions on both sides, but this is generally how it
pans out, in my experience.

(Source: Years of hiring in the Valley, and now running
[http://InterviewKickstart.com](http://InterviewKickstart.com))

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NathanKP
The best way to practice interviewing in my opinion is to just do it. Go to
your LinkedIn and send a boilerplate message to all the recruiters that have
ever contacted you:

"Hey this sounds interesting. I'd love to learn more."

The next week will probably be one of the busiest of your life, but you'll
come out of it with confidence in your interview skills hard earned by hours
of talking with crappy companies that you would probably never want to
actually work for, but are just using for interview practice.

If you are in a high demand job market like NYC or SF it is likely that you
will also come out of that first week with multiple job offers that you end up
declining because you didn't really want to work for those companies in the
first place.

~~~
soham
+1

Also realize the limitation of doing this: You'll get "practice", but you
won't get "feedback". If you practice with a bunch of B and C companies, but
end up getting rejected from As, then you won't know why that is happening. At
that point, you may get tired of interviewing and would end up taking
something that's suboptimal. So guard against that.

If you want to work at an A company, then I'd say at least some of your
practice interviews should also be with A companies.

Even then, you won't get the raw, uncut, deliberate feedback that you want.
For that, you want to practice with seasoned interviewers. Use something like
us ([http://InterviewKickstart.com](http://InterviewKickstart.com)) or what
Aline does ([http://interviewing.io](http://interviewing.io)).

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Ask for the feedback. Sure, you may not get it, but asking costs nothing and
can get you something.

~~~
eru
Facebook for example is actually pretty good about giving feedback. (Google,
not so much.)

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csthrow42
Thank you for posting this. It seems it's easy to find friends to do
interviews with, but it is not. When I was looking for a job, following are
the services I have found. Some of these may help (not affiliated with
either):

1\. Pramp.com: Practice technical interviews

Downside: Not very effective if you find an interviewer that is casual.
Conducting interviews is a skill. The interviewer needs to have a good command
over the problem and its nuances.

Upside: free

2\. [http://Interviewkickstart.com](http://Interviewkickstart.com): Full-on
practice and mock interviewing. Run by a former Director of Engineering.

Downside: Serious cash

Upside: Very effective

3\. interviewing.io: Chatroulette for technical interviewing. Run by a
recruiter? engineer? Can't tell.

4\.
[https://careercup.evisors.com/search](https://careercup.evisors.com/search):
Careercup used to be awesome, but it seems a bit bloated now.

Hope this helps!

~~~
calcsam
Interviewing.io is a company started by a recruiter who used to be an
engineer.

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robrenaud
Would anyone pay real money for technical interviewing as a service? I've done
370 SWE interviews for Google, and I think I am pretty good at it.

~~~
quadrature
People are already paying real money for this.

[0]
[http://www.careercup.com/resources#mockinterviews](http://www.careercup.com/resources#mockinterviews)

[1] [https://www.interviewcake.com/](https://www.interviewcake.com/)

[2] [http://interviewkickstart.com/](http://interviewkickstart.com/)

If you ask me, I think its a bit ridiculous that this industry exists, But as
someone who is actively seeking a job I completely understand the need for it
because you get such little feedback from real interviews.

~~~
ljk
it's like people paying for test prep classes. personally I'd never pay for it
since there are free books available everywhere, but looks like there's demand
for it

~~~
hfsktr
Sure you could get the information for free but it's much more motivation for
me to really learn when I'm spending my money on it.

Books don't give the same feedback that a live person could. Especially when
you have a question and don't have the right terminology to search for it
(that's getting harder with how good searches are getting).

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timsegraves
If you're wanting to practice coding interviews with someone remotely you're
welcome to sign up for a free account on my site to use the collaborative
editor and chat functionality.

[https://interviewer.io](https://interviewer.io)

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fma
I'm close enough with my previous coworkers that I have them interview me.
It's nice, because sometimes I forget talking about something and they can
remind me to talk about X, Y, Z because they are familiar with my work.

It seems like you are a college graduate but have enough relevant experience
to ask those you have worked with before.

I concur with others, too, saying to interview at companies you are not too
interested in. It's as close as you can get to reality. Also, if you do get
offer(s) you can use those as leverage to an increase compensation for the
companies you do want.

You have a lot of experience for someone just out of college - hopefully you
interview at a company that recognizes your work. There are some companies
where the interviewers just fires technical questions one after another, and
do not care about your background. You may want to think twice about those
companies before accepting.

There will probably be people who balk about wasting the time of your
interviewers. To them...meh. Improve your workplace so that you are not on the
list of 'non-interesting' companies. This would also give your company a
chance to impress a candidate and possibly change their mind and take your
offer...or it will reinforce their perception of your company.

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antocv
Work on changing your attitude, an interview is not a challenge for you to
succeed and surpass at.

An interview is a dialog, do you really want to work for those people and with
that product? Can they convince you to spend your time and efforts?

~~~
scarmig
For the life of me, I can't decipher if this comment is actually suggesting
what it seems to be suggesting.

There's plenty to say about technical interviewing as it exists today, but it
seems remiss to suggest someone wanting to practice doing technical white-
boarding beforehand is somehow undermining the process.

~~~
antocv
Practicing technical interviewing is undermining the persons ability to pass
an interview.

You can be 110% technically profeccient, but thats not going to get you the
job.

Just look at any enterprise, big name company, 90% of people employed are not
technical - yet they got a job. Probably more payed than code monkeys.

They didnt waste their time practicing technical questions.

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kevin_morrill
I would love to do this. I am a hiring manager, and would love to be on the
other side of interviews myself so I can learn more.

Anyone that's interested can reach out to me: kevin@mattermark.com

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lazyant
This is an excellent idea. Browsing your site it seems you really can do the
job so if I was to interview you it will be talking about those projects.

