What's the expectation out of the second phone interview? I gave optimal solutions to both of the problems along with their follow-ups in my 1st phone interview, but the recruiter follwed up they didn't had much coding signals. I am not sure what is expected beyond the optimal solutions. Can anyone help how to improve?
They are unsure of what they are looking for. Thats also a “no signal” to them.
Second phone screen - bad signal
Disagree. Anytime you’re still in the process is a good thing. Would you rather have a second phone interview or a rejection?
I know couple of guys who were asked to have second round and both of them were not invited to onsite :)
The expectation is the same as for all the phone screens, that you can talk about the problems, solve them, write clean code for them quickly, respond to feedback from the interviewer on how to improve it, and handle simple extensions and follow ups. Maybe your code is bad and you aren’t aware, or maybe your solution isn’t as optimal as you thought. Hard to tell whether you screwed up or if your interviewer is evaluating you unfairly without knowing the question and seeing what you said and wrote.
Questions were both from LC, which I had already solved.
^ common mistakes I've encountered were when the candidate knew about the questions and jumped pretty fast to the solution, sometimes it could bite back. Not saying that you're this type.
Update: I made it to on-site after the 2nd phone interview. Got 2 problems again from LC, solved both optimally. Did nothing different from last time. Makes me realise how random the interview process is!
Did you eventually get an offer?
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What do you think is wrong with a kid who got rejected by 9 colleges?
Speed. Discuss tradeoffs.
Discussed all of them and solved timely also. But still this feedback. To be honest it was one of the best phone interviews I had given.
it's difficult to explain when seeing things from your perspective. Do you interview candidates for amazon? if you do, I guess you would probably be able to spot the problems. Interviewing is also a good skill to help you be a better interviewee. Also the way you approach a question/ask clarification questions/discuss trade-offs and the reasoning why you choose your approach were probably what they were after. Or sometime you got bad luck....