DEV Community: Kiara Contreras

How to Prepare for a Technical Phone/Video Interview

Kiara Contreras — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 15:09:33 +0000

After doing more interviews than I'd like to admit, I thought I'd share things that I've done to set myself up for success. Having set actions that you complete prior to the interview can ease anxiousness by creating routine. Each time I have a video/phone interview I learn something new about my personal interview style and what makes me comfortable.

This post includes information about actions that are meant to be done within the hour before your interview.

Take Notes Before the Interview

Write down the name of your interviewer, their position, and questions you'd like to ask them. Interview brain can go blank so having this on-hand and close is always helpful. It's one less thing you have to worry about!

Get Dressed

Be sure to wear something that you'd be confident in. It doesn't have to be business causal attire but get out of your pajamas. Getting into interview clothes can help your energy and that translates virtually to the interviewer.

Even if it's a screen-share, get dressed. It's better that they don't see you and you're prepared vs. having to turn on your camera to reveal bedhead. (Seriously, I almost didn't get dressed once and it was the only screen-share interview I've had where they wanted to see me.)

Alert Others of Your Interview

If you're at home and live with other people, let them know you have an interview! Doing this can create the quiet space you need for the interview, which leads to my next suggestion.

Find a Quiet Spot

Be sure to pick a quiet spot. A quiet space will aid in keeping concentration on the most important aspect, the interview.

Test Camera & Audio

Use your computer's built-in camera or your webcam in order to see what you would look like in the interview. This will help in determining if you're sitting in the best spot!

Try to place the computer/webcam at eye level. Doing this will help with your posture and you can speak directly without turning. Take time to find a neutral background. I usually have my back to a white wall so that my surroundings aren't a distraction to the interviewer.

Make sure to use wired headphones! Having your bluetooth headphones die during an interview isn't fun, trust me. Test them by listening to your favorite music or by watching a funny video.

Check Internet Connection

Visit a few websites to make sure that the internet connection is working properly. I like to watch something funny to get me laughing.

Have Resume & Job Description Accessible

Being able to speak about the position while referencing the job description can be an incredible asset. Having them open gives you the option to use buzz words referenced in the job description!

You may get questions about your resume, so rather than attempting to memorize your wording, have it readily available.

Silence Your Devices

I've been interviewed without silencing my computer's notifications, what a mistake that was. I got messages from my mom during a screen-share and the interviewers saw popups, it was very distracting!

If you're using a cellphone, silence notifications once the call has started.

Clear Your Space

Take a moment to remove items from your space that aren't needed. These items can provide a distraction and can physically get in your way if you move around. I find that having a cleaner space makes me feel more calm.

Gather Your Essentials

It'll take some time to figure out what you like best but here are things that I need to have during video/phone interviews:

Water (ideally in a sealed container to avoid spilling)
Paper & Pen (includes notes taken beforehand)
Lip balm
Wired headphones
Laptop connected to power throughout the interview

Stretch and Take Deep Breaths

Getting your body moving can help with energy and nerves. Try taking slower breaths, doing this can aid in controlling your heart rate. Read more about it here from Harvard Health Publishing.

Take a Bathroom Break

I get pretty nervous before an interview so even if I don't have to use the bathroom I do it anyway.

What if the interview runs long? What if I chug too much water out of nervousness and have to wait until the interview is done to go? Try not to set yourself up for distraction by going before the call starts.

Conclusion

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this! I truly enjoy writing about interviewing and will continue to do so. Leave a comment if there's something specific you'd like me to write about!

I'd also love to hear about how you prep! Feel free to provide suggestions below for other devs.

How To Tackle A Technical Interview By Using Soft Skills

Kiara Contreras — Sun, 17 Nov 2019 23:36:57 +0000

Cover photo by Mark Rabe

When I was asked to present to high school developers on the subject of technical interviews I did what any professional developer does to prepare, I turned to the internet. It's been about a year since I've done a technical interview and as I researched I revisited the idea that there was more to the technical interview than just answering a problem on a whiteboard.

What is the purpose of a technical interview?

Horror stories of developers having to answer brain teasers are still passed around and can definitely be spooky. Thankfully, it seems like the community is moving forward as interviewers are getting better at wanting to see your skillset and work-related abilities. These interviews are mainly an opportunity for you to show your thought process when faced with a new, sometimes difficult problem. I discovered that one particular soft skill was referenced over and over as being the most important part of the technical interview.

What is the most important part of the Technical Interview?

The best thing you can do as an interviewee is to communicate with your interviewer. They're there to get to know you and your problem solving skills. The more pertinent information you give, the more insight they have about you as a professional developer.

1. Talk out your reasoning & problem solving process

Ask Questions:

Be sure to ask any questions you have about the problem before you even start coding. Write down important information like the input/output expected, validation of the inputs, or if spacial/time complexity is important to the solution.

Explain what you’re thinking:

It’s easy to go silent when confronted with a difficult problem and while this is natural, it is not very helpful for the interviewer. You speaking about your thoughts helps them understand your skills and critical thinking.

Describe what is your process:

How do you break down the different components? How do you arrive at a solution? Writing in pseudocode after you've written your notes will help with breaking the problem into smaller pieces and can be converted to actual code once you're comfortable with your logic.

Example of Explaining Your Reasoning

“I’m going to store this data in an array.”

Cool, you've heard of an array, but expand on why you're using it.

“I’m going to store this data in an array because I already know that the input given is sorted and lookup would be efficient with this data structure.”

Great! This answer shows what data structure you're planning on using and why you believe it's the best one to use.

2. Solve it Twice

I know, you may have a hard time solving it just once but hear me out.

Few problems only have one solution and focusing on one way to solve a problem misses a major opportunity to prove your know-how. Most likely the first idea that comes to mind will be a brute force answer. Open up the conversation by mentioning your initial thoughts, an idea about a more efficient answer, and your plan on returning to the problem for refactoring later. This is extremely valuable as it shows that you recognize the solution can be improved upon.

Let's say you're able to answer the problem with a brute force method. Once complete, test it with edge cases that come to mind. Ask your interviewer if there's time for you to refactor and if not then explain how you would if you had more time.

If you can't think about a secondary answer then that's ok. Continue practicing answering algorithmic questions and study when you can. Interviewing is a skill on its own and practicing will only make it easier.

3. Answering with “I don’t know”

Try not to answer the question with "I don't know". You're a human, it's ok to not know everything. The interviewer (hopefully) doesn't expect you to be perfect, what they do want is someone who doesn't quit on the problem.

A better answer would be “I don’t know how to do that, but here’s how I would go about figuring it out”. This gives you the chance to explain your learning process and that is valuable information for the interviewer to know!

4. Breaking down the interview into steps

No matter the company, from brand new startup to Fortune 500, these steps are integral to communicating your knowledge in a technical interview. Here's a simple process on how to go about answering the question.

If you can, practice whiteboarding with a friend! This can be beneficial for you improving your communication skills and practice the above steps while coding in a safe space. I believe that our greatest resource is our peers and there's no better way than to learn from each other.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for being on this platform. dev.to is really my favorite and I'm so happy that I get to contribute. I couldn't have written this post without the plethora of resources I found online.

Resources

There is so much material available that I've made a list of my favorites. I've included different mediums such as articles, videos, and practice questions. I hope that one of these will match your best learning style.

Practice Questions
The Ultimate Guide to Acing Your Technical Interview
The Best Whiteboard Interview Advice I Ever Received
Decoding the Front-end Interview Process
5 Smart Moves to Make in a Technical Interview (That have nothing to do with coding)
Leetcode
Hackerrank Interview Preparation Kit
How To: Work at Google - Example Coding/Engineering Interview
CSDojo - Coding Interview Questions & Answers Playlist
6 Dynamic Programming problems and solutions for your next coding interview
The Interview Study Guide For Software Engineers
My Google Technical Interview Cheat Sheet
11 Mistakes to Avoid On A Technical Interview
Cracking the Coding Interview Playlist

Why I Don't Use Foo/Bar/Baz

Kiara Contreras — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 20:58:28 +0000

As a beginner developer, I was always confused as to why others would use foo, bar, or baz. When I approached these words used in examples I assumed that they were pertinent to the code I was reading. I quickly learned that these names did not hold any weight and were often used in teaching examples as a placeholder for a better name.

While learning how to program, I've both picked up and discovered my own naming conventions. I've found that taking an extra moment to think up a clear name has been better for my understanding of the code presented, my peers reading my code, and future me, who doesn't vaguely remember what said code does.

Let's look at an example using foo/bar/baz:

How can this be improved for future programmers to read? If I take an extra moment to rename the variables then the function becomes easier to understand because each variable is pertinent to its data.

This is definitely a basic example, but all programmers start somewhere. I believe that naming examples with words or phrases can:

Help a person grasp a concept more easily when learning to program
Begin to teach them how to name data clearly
Create a better programmer from the start

Thanks for hearing me out. If you're interested, here's a cool Stackoverflow post about foo/bar/baz's history.

JS == vs ===

Kiara Contreras — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 21:29:17 +0000

This post expects prior knowledge on data types.

Javascript gives two options for testing equality that look really similar. Together we'll walk through the difference between == and ===.

Triple Equals / ===

Using Triple Equals tests for strict equality, meaning, both the type and the value have to be the same.

Here are some examples that return true:

10 === 10 // true : both Integers and values match

true === true // true : both Booleans and values match

'hello world' === 'hello world' // true : both Strings and values match

Here are some examples that return false:

100 === '100' // false : comparison of an Integer and a String

'red' === 'blue' // false : both Strings with different values

false === 0 // false : both different types and different value

What if we wanted to test loose equality where only the value mattered? Then we can use ==

Double Equals / ==

Using Double Equals tests for loose equality. Here only the value has to be the same. Javascript makes this possible by completing type coercion which will actually try to convert our values into a like type. Let's return to one of the previous examples that returned false.

100 == '100' // true : comparison of an Integer and a String

false == 0 // true

The example of false == 0 can be confusing. This example returns true because 0 in Javascript is described as being falsy.

In Conclusion

When testing equality using Triple Equals is preferred. Testing the type and value ensure true equality testing.

Both experience and this article provided information on the topic and describes in detail what falsy means.

Understanding JS Ternary Operators

Kiara Contreras — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 15:09:39 +0000

As a beginner dev, seeing code like this can be a tad bit, well, overwhelming.

let person = { name: 'John', age: 25, legal: null };

person.legal = person.age >= 21 ? 'Yes' : 'No';

Not to worry! Conditional (Ternary) Operators can be easy to use and will simplify your code, even if it's just a little bit.

What do Ternary Operators represent?

Ternary Operators are used as a shorthand for if else statements. if else statements check a condition and usually have this syntax:

if (condition) { value if true; } else { value if false; }

So, if I wanted to determine whether the above person was above the legal US age for drinking I could write an if else statement like so.

if (person.age >= 21) { person.legal = 'Yes'; else { person.legal = 'No'; }

In the example above I'm able to determine whether the person is legal and assign a value to person.legal. But we can also accomplish this by using the ternary operator! Below is the syntax:

condition ? value if true : value if false

Instead of using an if else statement let's return the the first example given.

person.legal = person.age >= 21 ? 'Yes' : 'No'

Here I'm assigning person.legal to be either Yes or No by checking their age. If person.age >= 21 then Yes is returned. Otherwise person.legal is set to No.

Things to know

The condition is what's being tested, whether it be an if else statement or ternary operator.
A ? separates the condition from the true value. Anything after the ? and the before the : is what is executed if the condition is true.
If the condition evaluates to false, any code after the colon is executed.

In conclusion, I appreciate you reading this and hope that you can now use ternary operators! Besides experience, I got most of my information from this awesome article which goes on to explain advanced ternary operators such as Nested Ternary and Multiple Ternary.