How to prepare for Technical Job Interviews in 2023
Change for the sake of change? Looking for new Opportunities? Spend too much time in one organization? Need to get inorganic growth? Family is growing so should my package? Too much burning hours? My manager doesn’t understand me? I am not being recognized in my organization? or the worst your organization doesn’t need your services anymore.
There may be various reasons due to which you think of starting fresh or changing the organization. Here is my way of preparation and step by step modus operandi to crack any company interview (however my success rate is 25% i.e. cracked 4 out of 10 companies I applied for) but it will make you confident to sit and face any interview of any organization in the world.
Let me explain you how it works :)
- Be Calm, There are Opportunities
- Always Save Consultants Contact Details
- Prepare Resume, Project Descriptions & Cover Letter
- Regular Update of Professional Profiles
- Apply Direct, Indirect & Referrals
- Brush Up your Coding Skills & System Design
- Keep Tech Stack as Separate Learning
- Explain Yourself should be a Story to remember
- Keep 4 Complex Tech Projects Handy
- Keep a Track of your Personal & Professional Stories
- Prepare a practical time table for Prep
- Exercise whenever you get time
Let’s dive into each one of the steps in detail as I will try to be as real as I can be to explain you my personal experience of interview preparation.
1) Be Calm, There are Opportunities
So you have started exploring new opportunities and you are thinking where to start off? Be calm, take a pause and think about what you are looking for from your next encounter basically think about your “Passion and Hunger” for eg. mine is Fintech & Travel. Give a bit of thought on this and prepare a list of companies which falls under your target. Sleeves Up.
2) Always Maintain TA Consultants Relationship
Over the years I have made a practice of saving every consultant number with the name and company name for eg. whenever you are stable in your current organisation and there is a call from some Talent Acquisition team asking for your mood of change or exploring new opportunities, always acknowledge them and thank them for considering your profile. Save the contact details as soon as you hung up with the name and a suffix like “Hire”. These are the people whom you can reach out when there is a need of change.
Personal Tip — I personally added 40+ odd contact numbers with “Hire” as suffix so that it will be easy to find them in your contact list. Life Hacks :)
3) Prepare Resume, Project Descriptions & Cover Letter
This is one of the first things which people do but in haste, this is where you need to give a lot of time and you can use multiple resume builder websites for the same but the most effective is LinkedIn Resume Builder You will ask why? The resume format is acceptable everywhere. If your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date then it will automatically take care of all the sections and build the resume for you. It also has added advantage because sites like indeed.com, naukri.com, michaelpage.com and glassdoor.com recognizes the format and updates your profile in NO TIME using LinkedIn Resume.
Go to LinkedIn > Click on your Profile > Click on the More Option > Choose Build a Resume option
One added advantage is Linkedin Jobs also provides you “EasyApply” option which means if you have already built a Resume using LinkedIn you don’t need to fill all the basic details again while trying to apply for the jobs.
I personally create 2 PDF Files — 1 is the Resume and 2 is the Projects description from current organization and whenever someone ask for the resume, I provide them both the PDFs along with a Cover Letter.
Personal Tip — A Cover letter is the body of the email letter which I used to self promote myself in less than 500 words. This should include your role, growth, capabilities and responsibilities for eg.
Please Note — How I have promoted Medium, Github & SlideShare profiles also along with attached Resume + Projects PDF
4) Regular Update of Professional Profiles
This is a self conscious choice for any professional. Just like your Instagram, Facebook & Twitter accounts you should also try to update your professional social profiles time to time. Currently publishing this blog is one of them :)
Tech Blogs — https://omvikram.medium.com/
Tech Presentations — https://www.slideshare.net/omvikram
Github URL — https://github.com/omvikram/system-design
Some of the Hiring Managers would love to see your work before they meet you for the Exploratory Call itself. Remember the first impression theory.
5) Apply Direct, Indirect & Referrals
So now since you have your Resume, Projects & Cover Letter ready, also you have updated your professional social profiles up-to-date now where to begin with the applications? This is how I proceeded -
- Ping each one of the HR Consultant who reached out to you and send them your resume (9 out of 40 responded to my Whatsapp Messages)
- Reach out to all ex Employees who are in a position to take a call for new Hires (these can be VP, CTO, HOE, CXOs also if you know them)
- Upload your LinkedIn resume to your favorite sites like indeed.com, naukri.com, michaelpage.com, glassdoor.com and instahyre
- You remember you have prepared the list of your favorite companies, go to their company website and check their careers page and Apply. If there is no positions available then find somebody from your connections who work there and ask for referrals (1 out of 20 such referrals will work in my experience)
- If this requires meeting few of the folks offline for after office hours or for lunch breaks, go for it.
- Now is the time to wait and watch, keep the email and app push notifications on for your Job Opportunities _/\_
6) Brush Up your Coding Skills & System Design
I was little rusty on the coding end and thus I started refreshing the memory lane of the coding practice again with one of the simplest and easy to learn language which is universally accepted i.e. Python.
Mostly I used codesandbox.com for online coding practice which included
Udemy course of Python for Beginners by https://www.udemy.com/course/complete-python-bootcamp/
https://github.com/Pierian-Data/Complete-Python-3-Bootcamp
Then I moved to Data Structures
https://www.datacamp.com/tutorial/data-structures-python
followed by Algorithms
You must be thinking 15 yrs of experience and still preparing for Coding Why? Some of the MAANG & FAANG of the world requires Pair Programming even for Engg. Managers as one of their hiring rounds.
I am impressed by GeeksForGeeks consolidated list of DS & Algo
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/top-algorithms-and-data-structures-for-competitive-programming/ (Do check this out once you feel confident)
Personal Tip — For advanced coding challenges + dynamic programming you can also try solving some of them from leetcode.com
https://leetcode.com/discuss/general-discussion/623011/A-guide-for-dummies-(like-me)
System Design I started reading a lot of material from below sites -
and watched Educative.io “Grokking the System Design for Engineers & Managers” and bought a course online. Slowly I started liking system design so much I started writing my own system design problem & solution repo in GitHub > https://github.com/omvikram/system-design
https://www.educative.io/courses/grokking-modern-system-design-interview-for-engineers-managers
Personal Tip — Take the print out of this book and go through each of the use cases and highlight the learnings or unique things which can be useful for you to solve any System Design problem thrown at your way.
7) Keep Tech Stack as Separate Learning
Tech Stack & Infrastructure plays a vital role in explaining System Design dive deep round. So you should be sure about when and which tech stack you are going to discuss about. Mostly try to use the ones which you have played with in your professional experience.
Personal Tip — I started learning more about Infra using Youtube Search Keywords like “XYZ under the hood” or “XYZ Fundamentals” or “XYZ in 5 minutes” You will be able to find some really good explanation of Tech Stack under ByteByteGo youtube channel also.
8) Explain Yourself should be a Story to remember
Mostly Exploratory Calls by Hiring Manager has to be interesting because if this doesn’t go well you might never get another round of calls from TA Team. To make your career story interesting follow the below tips
- Keep it crisp, try telling company wise growth (order by ASC)
- Always mention what you learnt there and which tech stack you used
- Quote some interesting numbers or impact you created during your tenure in each company
- Spend a little bit more time on the current company with more details on team size and your overall role and responsibility also apart from tech stack + impactful numbers.
Personal Tip — Write it down the bullet points in your diary or piece of paper and stick it somewhere so that you can rehearse it again and again so much so that it becomes a story to tell without missing any single details you want to share.
9) Keep 4 Complex Tech Projects Handy
Yes this is very much important because some of the companies might ask you about what is one of the most complex project you have dealt with? OR tell me a complex project from HLD to LLD? Then Why 4? Why not only 1?
I figured out that the complexity and nature of projects can be decided on the fly based on the company you are applying for as well as the interest of the interviewer also (I do check interviewer profile and interest in LinkedIn before the interview)
Company_Profile + Interviewer_Profile => Complex_Project_ChoiceThese problems can have some basic themes for eg.
- Scaling & Reliability Problem
- Customer Focus Problem
- Self Initiative Problem
- Cross Functional Problem
Now of course you can have more themes and more complex projects to share but always take a step back before choosing which problem to choose and explain to the ? interviewer for ? company. You know what I mean :)
10) Keep a Track of your Personal & Professional Stories
This is for Leadership or People Mgmt or Culture Fitment rounds. There is no right and wrong answers to it but you should be ready with some stories from your personal & professional life (its better to note it down somewhere in your diary again) The questions can very from personal to professional fronts in these rounds for eg.
- What are your company core values and how do they apply to you?
- Tell me about a time you’ve been challenged.
- What is the most challenging project you’ve worked on in the last 6 months?
- How do you give back to the community?
- Tell me about a time you had to give someone terrible news.
- What is one thing you’d like to remove from your past?
Personal Note — Keeping a documentation of your stories always helps, Don’t try to make it very filmy, let it be real, crude and the outcome should be positive, motivating or some learnings out of it.
11) Prepare a practical time table
This is one of the most important part in all the above steps once you start preparing for the interviews. You can not do all the things at once so you should have a dedicated time slot to do certain things. What worked for me so far is the below time slots (it may very from person to person)
- Morning — Coding Preparation + System Design (on alternate days)
- Afternoon — Give Interviews
- Evening — Exercise or Walking
- Late Night — Watch YouTube or PDF material
12) Exercise whenever you can
People say “Healthy Body, Healthy Mind” and it is utmost True when you are preparing for interviews also because it can be really exhausting sometimes. Few Success or Few Failures during few rounds in interviews can tire your body and mind. Thus you need a break and physical workout also for the blood to flow and fresh energy to give you extra amount of push.
Personal Tip — I dedicated my evening time for Exercise + Walking every day before closing the day and starting a new day with same curriculum again
I hope these learnings and tips can be useful for many people out there who are searching for new opportunities. I bet you can find some of the tips using ChatGPT but the Personal Tip is something which is my personal touch :) These tips or curriculum may or may not apply to your profile but you can adjust some of the steps according to your working style.
