The Technical Interview Landscape in 2024

As technology continues advancing at a rapid pace, technical interviews are becoming increasingly rigorous. Based on the latest trends, here is what candidates can expect when interviewing for top companies in 2024:

The LeetCode Bar Keeps Rising

Many companies have now standardized on asking LeetCode hard questions. Expect at least one LeetCode hard in a 45 minute coding round. Some companies are even asking candidates to solve two hards in 45 minutes – an immense task under time pressure. Brushing up on techniques for solving complex algorithmic problems is essential preparation.

Interview Format and Expectations

A standard 45 minute coding interview usually follows this rough format:

• 5 minutes: Brief introductions
• 5 minutes: Interviewer explains the problem
• 30 minutes: Coding time
• 5 minutes: Q&A

During the coding time, the expectation is that candidates verbally communicate their approach, write clean code, test their solutions, and optimize if there is remaining time. Interviewers want to understand problem solving ability and coding skills under the constraints of an interview setting.

Key Technical Areas to Focus On

Here are some key data structures, algorithms, and coding concepts to study:

• Data Structures: Arrays, Lists, Stacks, Queues, Trees, Graphs. Understand how to implement, traverse, search, insert, delete.
• Algorithms: Depth First Search, Breadth First Search, Recursion, Dynamic Programming, Backtracking. Know how to identify when to apply each technique.
• Techniques: Hashing, Bit Manipulation, Prefix Sums, Merging Intervals. Know common tricks and subtleties.
• Code Implementation Skills: Object Oriented Design, System Design, Coding best practices. Interviewers will assess organizational and maintainability of code.

Resume

go on to google and search this —> site: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ “companyName” “view my resume”

Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT
- what are the top 5 keywords in this job description, copy over job role and responsibilities
some useful prompts you can use with ChatGPT to improve your resume:
- Optimize my resume for [position] role at [company]. Focus on my most relevant skills and accomplishments.
- I'm applying for a position as a [position] at [company]. Review my resume and write a strong opening summary that grabs attention.
- I don't have enough experience in [skill] for the [position] role I’m targeting. Suggest content to add to my resume to showcase relevant transferable skills.
- What skills and technologies are trending for [position] roles that I should feature more prominently on my resume? Update the skills section accordingly.
- I feel my current resume bullet points under my [position] role at [company] sound bland. Rewrite them to use powerful action verbs that quantify my accomplishments.
- I’m struggling with explaining a [duration] employment gap on my resume. Please generate a couple reasonable explanations I can use.
- What certifications aligned to a [position] role would you recommend I complete to strengthen my qualifications? Add them to my resume.
- Review my resume and suggest formatting, phrasing and organizational improvements to optimize content for applicant tracking systems.
- Does my resume strongly demonstrate excellent communication, leadership and collaboration skills needed for a [position] role? What can I add or improve?
- Generate a few potential Q&As tailored to my background that I can practice to excel at interviews for [position] roles.

1. Optimize Keyword Targeting Have ChatGPT review your resume and identify keywords that align with the jobs/internships you are applying for. ChatGPT can tell you which skills and experience to emphasize in your resume to appeal to algorithms and hiring managers.
2. Enhance Accomplishment Statements
   Ask ChatGPT to rewrite and strengthen the achievement statements in your Work Experience and Project sections. Quantify your accomplishments with metrics.
3. Fix Resume Gaps
   If you have employment gaps in your work history, have ChatGPT generate personalized explanations you can add to briefly justify them.
4. Improve powerful Action Verbs ChatGPT can audit the action verbs in your resume and suggest new ones that are more compelling and dynamic.
5. Modernize Formatting
   ChatGPT can ensure your resume format follows modern best practices with consistent structure, readable fonts, appropriate white space and other enhancements.
6. Create a Targeted Cover Letter Use ChatGPT to draft a tailored cover letter for each application that specifically highlights your fit for the role and company.
7. Practice Interviewing Practice answering potential interview questions tailored to your background. Refine your stories and pitches.
8. Build Your Professional Brand Have ChatGPT review your LinkedIn/GitHub/Website/Portfolio and make improvement suggestions to showcase your personal brand.

Beat the ATS

Here are some tips to help a job seeker beat the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and get their resume in front of human eyes:

1. Use a Simple, Readable Resume Format: Use a standard template and avoid unusual formatting like columns, graphics, tables, or text boxes. Stick to standard structure, fonts, headings, and bullet points. These are easiest for an ATS to parse.
2. Optimize Keyword Usage: Research keywords from the job description like skills, tools, duties and include those most relevant throughout your resume, not just in a keyword section. Use abbreviations and alternative terminology as appropriate.
3. Highlight Relevant Experience and Quantifiable Achievements: Tailor the content to the target role and company. Feature metrics and numbers that convey the impact of your work rather than general duties. Order content with priority info first.
4. Use a Standard File Name with Appropriate Format: Save your resume as yourname-resume.doc or .pdf, not something overly complicated or unrecognizable to a computer system. Avoid special characters.
5. Carefully Triple Check Contact Info: Ensure any phone numbers, email addresses, websites, handles, etc. featured on the resume do not have any errors which could cause difficulties in contacting you.
6. Submit Appropriate Candidate Application Forms: Be diligent about fully completing a company’s career portal form responses which integrate with their ATS rather than just uploading your stand-alone resume if possible.

Make your resume both human and machine readable to proactively pass through ATS screening tools while still effectively communicating your value. Adjust factors above appropriately to outsmart the system!

Elevator Pitch

Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT
generate an elevator pitch for " Enter keywords and describe your past work experience "

With over 10 years of expertise designing, developing, and scaling high-traffic backend systems, I have a proven track record of delivering robust, scalable products consistently on time and exceeding performance goals. My depth of experience with Java, Python, Go, AWS, Kubernetes, REST APIs, and database optimization empowers me to rapidly develop and iterate production-grade systems.

As an enthusiastic team leader, I thrive in fast-paced environments with a passion for mentoring talent, solving complex problems, and championing engineering excellence. My electrical engineering and business analytics education coupled with my skill delivering low-latency, maintainable code make me perfectly suited to optimize your development lifecycle.

Whether modernizing legacy systems or building future-proofed architectures from scratch, I have the technology breadth and leadership capability to manage critical engineering initiatives from conception through launch and beyond. If innovating quickly at scale is your goal, let us connect to discuss where my backend systems expertise can take your engineering organization.

Walk me Through Your Resume

Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT
"write a walk me through your resume/ tell me about yourself based on the below <paste your resume>"

With over 10 years of experience designing, developing, and leading backend systems and APIs for high-scale mobile and web applications, I have cultivated specialized skills in languages like Java, Python, and Go as well as cloud platforms like AWS.

In my most recent role as a Staff Software Engineer at TikTok, I spearheaded numerous projects to boost key business metrics and user growth. My technical accomplishments included innovating video compression algorithms using deep learning that improved streaming by 25%. I also built visualizations to benchmark performance and mentored over a dozen engineers.

Prior to TikTok, as a Team Lead at BlueMatrix, I built a $3.5M recommendation engine to personalize financial research content. And at Cisco, I architected a chatbot that reduced infrastructure costs by 30% and prevented $5M in fraud losses. My record of shipping quality products on tight timelines has hinged on my leadership capabilities as much as my engineering skills.

With advanced degrees in Electrical Engineering and Business Analytics, I leverage my analytical mindset to continually optimize system performance. I thrive in fast-paced environments where I can mentor talent and quicky iterate solutions to solve complex problems. My passion is championing engineering excellence through a culture focused on quality and continuous improvement.

With my track record of success leading high-performing teams to build innovative backend systems, I’m excited to bring my technical and leadership experience to grow your engineering organization.

Preparation Still Matters

While interview difficulty has increased across the industry, coming prepared with strong fundamentals and practice still makes a huge difference. The key is regularly sharpening core data structures and algorithms skills along with practicing questions under real interview conditions.

Though the technical bar continues rising exponentially, you can stand out from the competition with diligent preparation focused on mastering key knowledge areas and simulating the interview coding environment. With persistence and commitment to continual learning, software engineers can thrive under the intense scrutiny of modern technical interviews.

Preparing for System Design and Behavioral Interviews

In addition to rigorous technical interviews, adequate preparation for system design and behavioral interviews is also key to overall interview success.

How to Prepare for System Design Interviews

System design questions assess a candidate’s ability to design complex, scalable software systems like distributed computing systems. Here are some tips to prepare:

• Study architectural diagrams and principles of existing large scale systems like Facebook, Uber, Netflix. Understand their core components and how they interact.
• Practice discussing system requirements and tradeoffs involved when scaling a hypothetical system to handle increased traffic, security concerns etc.
• Memorize guidelines for partitioning databases, handling redundant tasks, security best practices.
• An outline of important concepts to prepare for a system design interview and a brief description of each:
• Scalability and Performance
• Understand how systems scale vertically vs horizontally. Know techniques like load balancing, database sharding, caching, CDNs.
• Availability and Reliability
• Know reliability metrics and different redundancy techniques at different levels like multi AZ/region, replication etc.
• Networking
• Understand networking layers, protocols (TCP/IP), port numbers, OSI model, latency vs bandwidth.
• Storage
• Understand SQL vs NoSQL, types of NoSQL databases, partitioning, indexing, replication.
• Caching
• Understand caching techniques, cache eviction policies, cache invalidation, cache aside.
• System Design Patterns
• Client server, proxies, gateways, brokers, leader-follower, master-slave patterns.
• Consistency and Replication
• Understand consistency models – weak, eventual, strong consistency etc. Know CAP theorem.
• Load Balancing
• Types of load balancing algorithms, hardware vs software load balancers, sticky sessions.
• Disaster Recovery
• Understand different disaster scenarios, recovery time vs recovery point, backups and geographic redundancy.
• For each area, focus on design principles and tradeoffs instead of product specifics. Brush up on fundamentals with examples before your interview. Prioritize concepts based on position and questions asked.

Having broad knowledge of how real world systems are built and scaled enables better discussion of hypothetical design problems.

Getting Ready for Behavioral Interviews

Behavioral or “soft skills” interviews evaluate how you collaborate on teams, resolve conflicts etc. Most use the STAR framework when judging answers:

Situation – The background of the scenario Task – Your responsibilities in that scenario Action – Steps you took to complete the task Result – The outcome from your actions

To prepare:

• Recall situations where you successfully led projects, overcame conflicts etc and structure using STAR.
• Identify strengths and areas of growth from past experiences.
• Practice communicating clearly and confidently.

Along with technical excellence, strong behavioral performance is imperative for overall interview success leading to coveted software positions.