Mess up simple phone interviews

Jul 5, 2018 16 Comments

I have done a lot of leetcode. However I get nervous when I see a new problem during the phone interview and sometimes my brain get blank out and come up with a really bad solution or cannot come up at all.

After the call when I redo the problem it appeared pretty straightforward.
How to improve?

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 TOP 16 Comments
  • Microsoft / Eng
    confusing

    Go to company page Microsoft Eng

     confusing
    This is clearly stage fright. Only way to handle it is to interview a lot- both real & mock. Hopefully practice will get you closer to perfection.
    Jul 5, 2018 1
  • Intuit
    poirot

    Go to company page Intuit

    poirot
    I get super anxious when I get a question that I haven’t seen before.. How do you guys study say a week before an interview, a day before? I get a feeling that I am memorizing solutions and never feel confident enough.. I am clearly doing something wrong, any advice on how to fix this?
    Jul 6, 2018 2
    • OP
      You can try summarizing all questions you have done into patterns and write down those code snippets. At least that will help with the phone interviews
      Jul 6, 2018
    • Amazon
      cnnm16

      Go to company page Amazon

      cnnm16
      Some memorization is good. It will help you notice patterns between new questions and ones you already know. Aside from that, the strategy should be figure out the actual problem you need to solve (sometimes this is half the battle - ask the interviewer lots of clarifying questions), then what I do is go through the list of all common data structures to see how far each one gets me. If none of the common data structures alone doesn't solve it, what about using two? What about combining it with dynamic programming? This whole discovery process should play out out loud with notes on the white board so the interviewer can see what you are thinking, not in your head in silence. If you are really close but struggling, your interviewers will likely give you a hint. Always take the hint, they will never be trying to fool you. The best practice for the week before the interview is new questions you have never seen before on a whiteboard in front of a friend pretending to be the proctor. Leetcode or whatever is fine but you want to practice in a realistic scenario and leetcode is not that.
      Jul 6, 2018
  • Amazon
    rookie.

    Go to company page Amazon

    rookie.
    Relax https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aSn1g-6h1OQ
    Jul 7, 2018 0
  • Anxiety. Get some xanax. Can be addictive but okay to use to get through an occasional interview.
    Jul 5, 2018 0
  • IBM
    xdij88

    Go to company page IBM

    xdij88
    What exactly does lot of leetcode mean?
    Jul 5, 2018 4