Acing Programming Interviews for Beginners

Programming interviews are notoriously difficult. But it doesn’t take a genius to ace the interview and land the job you want. This 6-post series, written for beginners, provides a simple step-by-step way to help you understand and solve programming problems. We’ll start with an introduction to why your resume is broken and then dive into how you can stand out as a candidate.

For each of these posts, we’ll:

• Introduce what the interviewers are looking for
• Evaluate what success looks like
• Outline steps you can take today to improve your chances
• Summarize what we’ve learned

At the end of the series, you’ll have a better understanding of how you can land the job you want.

Background

This series requires some experience with programming. However, background in the following topics may be helpful:

• Python - basic familiarity with the language will help you move through the series faster.
• Experience with any other programming language, like Javascript or C++, will help you understand the context better, but it’s not required.

The Series

Without further ado:

What Next?

Still eager to learn? Some more things you can do include:

• Watch my talk on how to ace your programming interviews at University of Washington.
• Learn the framework for how to solve any programming interview.
• Try your hand at using solving actual interview problems on LeetCode.
• Learn data structures and algorithms using free online resources.

I plan on writing more about Interview Prep in the future, so subscribe to my newsletter if you want to get notified of new content.

Thanks for reading!