5 Foolproof Ways to Nail Your Tech Interview

Any job interview is tough. But when you combine a job interview with an actual test, that’s when things get sweaty.

Welcome to the world of the technical interview.

If you want to ace your next tech job interview, we’ve got five great tips that should ease the pain.

Practice

Software engineer Cassidy Williams weekly newsletter Rendezvous with Cassidoo features an “Interview Question of the Week” that should prove helpful in keeping your skills sharp.

Go Inside

It’s essential that you know the full tech stack of any company you’re interviewing with. The tech strategists at CB Insights allow registered users to learn about all the technologies used by their profiled companies.

Cheat

(Not really.) But it’s distinctly possible you’ve grown rusty on some of the fundamentals that might come up during your interview. That’s where cheat sheets come in. InformationWeek has eight ways to be better prepared.

Go Old School

Toolbox.com blogger Puramu offers the following bit of counter-intuitive advice: write some code by hand the night before.

As he explains, “Writing code by hand and writing code by IDE are very different. You won’t have IntelliSense and code completion going for you on a white board. You won’t be able to open up a project template. You don’t want to get derailed on a simple question because you can’t remember the syntax for a command line program in C#.”

Say “I Don’t Know” (In a Way)

Your interviewer is going to be able to detect a BS answer from a mile away. If you don’t know something, don’t be afraid to admit it – but re-frame the question in a positive way. Ask more questions about the problem, explain how you would approach the problem, or simply explain that you haven’t encountered that kind of problem yet. Check out this great video from Flatiron School’s VP of Career Services & Business Development for some different approaches.