How to Pass the Software Engineering Interview
When people interview for software engineering positions most of their preparation places emphasis on some variant of doing 200 leetcode questions and picking up whatever system design blog or book is out there. Coding and design are only one piece of the pie to nailing the interview. Today, I want to talk about the behavioral portion of the interview which is often overlooked and can make or break you for the position and level you are interviewing for. Sometimes people wonder why they knock out the technical portion of the interview but still don’t land the job or why they didn’t get the level they were hoping for. “Someone must have coded up the optimal solution faster”. Maybe. Or maybe there’s another reason.
First, what qualifies me to talk about this subject? This is afterall my first Medium post and who trusts strangers with advice? I have a B.S. in Meteorology and Math. Oh you don’t have a C.S. degree? Nope. I’ve worked at NASA and currently at Amazon as a software engineer. I’ve interviewed 70+ candidates for software engineering roles.
Caveat: My opinions on this subject are my own and don’t reflect the views of my employer.
The behavioral portion of the interview can be used to assess:
- What type of problems the candidate is exposed to
