Technical Interviews: Whiteboarding
Practice your whiteboarding skills and learn how to break a technical interview problem down into manageable pieces.
StartKey Concepts
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Technical Interview Problem Clarification
Technical Interview Solution Outline
Technical Interview Solution Whiteboarding
Technical Interview Solution Testing
Technical Interview Solution Efficiency
Technical Interview Input-Output Edge Cases
Technical Interview Problem Clarification
Technical Interview Problem Clarification
During a technical interview, an interviewee will be presented with a problem to solve. The interviewee should clarify the problem with the interviewer so both parties understand the problem definition and its scope. The interviewee should be able to restate the problem in their own words and ask questions to clarify every unknown that comes to mind.
- 1Aspiring developers must pass a technical interview to be hired as a professional. These interviews evaluate the candidate’s ability to write code, articulate their thought process, and problem sol…
- 2Whiteboarding interviews begin with a problem from the interviewer. The interviewee must be confident they understand the dimensions of the problem! Software development is full of ambiguity. Prog…
- 3When the question is clear, we then produce concrete inputs and outputs. These inputs guide a solution for the remainder of the interview so write them on the board! You may still be unclear how t…
- 4It’s time to start breaking down the problem by category. Given a question which requires the use of a stack, what do you know about stacks? Have you encountered other problems that use stacks an…
- 5We’ve finally come to the portion where you’ll write some code! Previous steps improve your odds for success because you have an outline and clear inputs for testing. Writing code on the board is …
- 6With a working implementation on the whiteboard, use the test inputs to walk through the evaluation of your code. Write out any temporary variables on the board and update them when they change du…
- 7You’re satisfied with your implementation and you’ve demonstrated how it works, but you’re not quite done. Analyze the time and space complexity of the solution. With this step you are demonstrat…
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