Hacking Android Interviews (Intro)
Passing job interviews …
For some, it’s stressful, for some may be “not”.
But in general passing interviews is a skill, and to build this skill you need to start passing as many interviews as possible. Each time you will learn something new and that learning could be used in the next interview, life, job.
Syndrome of the Beginner (2% knowledge, 98% confidence)
When I just started searching for a new job and passing my first interviews, I was super confident in my “knowledge”, I knew “everything” 😋 and everything was just 2% of “everything” 🤭, about the existence of other 98% I even can’t imagine 🤓. But with this, my confidence was 98% which was giving me power and courage to start failing interviews and learning.
The key here is the word learning.
Syndrome of the Intermediate (43% knowledge 57% confidence)
As much as your level of knowledge grows you start realizing that you know nothing, and there is an ocean of knowledge that you still need to learn.
I know that I know nothing
— Socrates
At this point, confidence starts going down, which pushes you to increase the knowledge, by learning on the failures and by trying to increase the level of confidence again.
This process will unlock your potential, there are no limits for your knowledge, you never can reach the limit, that’s the amazing part of the learning process, it’s infinite (with some degree of course 💀 ) …
Professional
After years of pain and fails, your level of knowledge finally reaches 56% and your level of confidence at this point is that you clearly know your strengths and weaknesses, you know exactly what you know and whatnot. At this point, you are professional with years of experience behind.
To reach this point you need to go through a lot of “pain”, but don’t be scared this “pain” will only make you stronger.
Success is a journey, not a destination…
Here I want to share my learnings and give a few tips which are based on my experience.
😱 Don’t afraid to fail
We all are failing, and that’s quite normal, for each job position there are hundreds of candidates applying and only 2 will get that job. And the fact that you were not selected for that job, does not mean that you are you “don’t know anything” or “you are looser”, most probably the company is just searching for someone else. Or your current level of knowledge is not what they are looking for.
😵 It’s not your last chance
Don’t treat the opportunity of passing the interview as your last chance, even if it’s Google, Facebook or Apple, come on those are just companies, yes good companies, but still they are on the earth and employees ate human beings 👽. And if you fail once you can try again later.
🧐 Prepare yourself for the interview
Prepare yourself for the interview, read about the company, about the team in which you are going to work, prepare some questions to ask. Don’t spend time on learning something which you didn’t know (especially 1 day before the interview), repeat the things about which you already know and can discuss freely.
😇 Be Honest
Be honest while the interview, don’t try to pretend that you know something if you don’t. Tell clearly that you don’t know. Not knowing something is not a shame, pretending that you know everything is a shame. Be honest about your expectations.
🤐 Don’t cheat
Cheating, in my opinion, is the worst thing that you can do, especially when it comes to technical interviews, hiring someone to solve technical exercise for you ☠️, come on … Also, some people when they are given homework (which is very common for Android devs, write an awesome app), they just copy-paste code from GitHub and pretend that as theirs, without even any effort to understand what was written there… Don’t do that, please …
🤖 Learn from your failures
Create a document and start writing there all the questions which you were asked while the interview. Try to find the right answers, be sure, someone will ask you the same question again. Discuss with your friends the questions, try to go deep in other directions from the question, this will increase your knowledge.
🦾 Practice / Do Kata (http://codekata.com/)
In most of the companies when it comes to Android interviews, you will be asked to write an app which downloads data from “The Movies DB”, “GitHub”, “Wheather Service” or move the Queen on the chessboard.
With Kata technics, you write the same app, again and again, this is quite useful as each time you concentrate on something and try to improve it. This helps me a lot, I was writing a weather app for 7 years, each time throwing it away and starting from scratch.
🤓 Clarify your task
When you are given homework to write an Android Application, first clarify which technologies you can use, which 3rd party libraries, which language, do you need to comment the code, do you need to write Unit Tests and/or Instrumentation Tests, how fast the app should be written, should it work offline, should it support landscape mode, etc. Some companies whats you to use all modern libraries and technologies, some want you to deliver clean and tested code, some fast and dirty, ask in the beginning to not spend time on what company does not expect from you.
📚 Read Books and Articles
Start reading books
- Clean code architecture
- The pragmatic programmer
- Design Patterns
- Algorithms and Data Structures
- Object-oriented Programming
Read articles, Blogposts, be aware of new technologies, be aware of what’s coming next, learn technics like Agile, Lean, Kata, Pair Programming, MOB, etc.
🤗 Be motivated
Motivation is the key to success. A motivated employee is key to the company's success.
So, touse all are my tips for you… Next, I will share with interview questions that I was asked during my Android interviews.
