Interview - Soft Skills

A major signal that the interviewer is looking for the thought process you had for coming up with the solution. This comes in the form of your vocalization, pacing/timing, process (eg, knowing when to ask for hints/clarifications)

The most time effective and arguably fun way to practice this skill set is to gather a group of friends or classmates and do mock interviews with each other. The key here is that you don’t need to be strong at interviewing to conduct these among friends. Here’s a rough flow for the kind of questions you should be asking:

• Lay out the sample problem. You can vary the level of ambiguity to test their ability to judge the completeness of the problem. Note their implicit assumptions - especially if they’ve seen a similar problem before
• Ask them to walk through why they believe the algorithm is correct
• Ask them about the time and space complexities
  • Ask them if there are any easy ways to trade time for space, or vice versa.
• Ask what would happen if you relaxed or added a restriction to the problem (“what if the horse could move diagonally as well?”)

The example I provided was about algorithmic leetcode problems, but the same principle applies to other types of technical interviews such as Object oriented design and Systems design as well.