Picture this: for every 30 assessments conducted, only one candidate emerges victorious with a passing score. The odds may seem daunting, yet for those at the forefront of IT talent acquisition, it's a challenge worth embracing.
Interview Preparation
Most of our clients are leading companies who are raising the bar for digital and engineering talent in their industry. This makes for an exciting and rewarding consulting or employment engagement that will enhance your marketability. This guide will help you understand the importance of interview preparation and provide some tips and resources to help you succeed with top brands.
Beyond The Resume
Whether we employ you as a consultant or recruit you on behalf of one of our clients, we need to know more about you. Experience, education, cultural fit, core competencies and job skills are all critical to our collective success. We go beyond the resume to ensure you are successful.
Assessments
A key component of the interview process is an online assessment that helps us determine whether you are a good fit for the role. Software Engineers, Data Scientists, Machine Learning Engineers, Data Engineers, Systems and Network Engineers and the like will all need to go through a technical and problem solving assessment to qualify. Key components of these assessments are:
Problem Solving
Critical Thinking
Subject Mastery
Analytical Skills
Many of our clients require coding assessments for engineering roles and set thresholds for passing scores. If you don't pass, you won't be able to interview again for a minimum of 6 months. If you're serious about the position, you will need to prepare. Experienced professionals tend to think they will do OK and will not prepare even when advised. This normally ends in a poor result and the candidate is surprised that he/she did not get hired.
Resources
There are many resources available to you to prepare for assessments. LeetCode is one the most effective interview preparation tools available in our opinion as we see higher success rates with candidates who use it. An account is free to set up and there are many practice tests. Following are a few of the many resources available:
Additional Tips
Cover the basics - it may have been a while since you studied lists, sorting, arrays, algorithms, etc. so be sure to start there so you don't miss the easy ones.
Practice standard-in and standard-out - most of the coding assessment tools like HackerRank and Interview Mocha will require you to pull data in and output it.
Recognize the pattern - assessments are more about measuring problem solving and mastery of core concepts rather than syntax of code. Pay attention to the patterns of the problem as it is likely a representation of a classic computer science topic.
Write good code - we often see sloppy code, the most common of which is not setting up data structures and logic correctly (such as using break statements in if/then/else logic). This is a no-no and interviewers will pay attention to it.
Happy path is partial credit - there are normally multiple input/output scenarios on a coding assessment. You can code up the happy path first, but be sure to complete for all the different inputs/parameters.
Are You Ready?
In a landscape where your talent is the most valuable currency, seize the opportunity to shine, stand out, and make a difference. Are you ready to rise to the challenge?
Let's embark on this exhilarating journey together – one assessment at a time.