I was part of the 2019 university hiring, and the process was quite interesting. It all began with the first round, which consisted of a Codility test and a Skype interview. I passed both.

The Skype interview focused more on concepts and design questions, while the Codility test assessed programming skills, where I coded two out of three problems very well.

Round 2 was an on-site interview, which involved mostly technical questions and whiteboard coding. There were four sessions, each lasting 45 minutes.

The on-site interview was more like a discussion with the interviewer. One thing I did to facilitate this was, given each question, to first describe my understanding of it to the interviewer and explain how I would solve it, then try to optimize my algorithm. During my explanation, if I was going astray, the interviewer could easily bring me back on track by asking a question or suggesting a different approach using a specific type or data structure.

Before the interview, I was really nervous, but as I engaged in this discussion with the interviewer, the fear disappeared. He was able to help me because he was listening and understanding what I was trying to do.

I realized at the end that it doesn't pay to just jump into coding when given a question; you'll likely get stuck. You won't receive credit for finishing in five minutes. Spend time interacting with your interviewer on the question. Talk to them and listen to their input. This also shows them that you can work well in a team. Solving the question alone might indicate you are not a good team player. So, even if you know the solution, discuss it with them first. Explain the algorithm in plain terms.

In the end, I realized that this interview process is quite straightforward. This was my first interview immediately after college, and I nailed it.

My first on-site question was to write a function to determine if a string is a palindrome or not.

Reverse a linked list in place.

Traverse a binary tree in a zig-zag manner.

Implement the string operation execution process used in calculators.