Any tips for technical phone interviews?

[Ricemarine]

I attended an internship fair (giving resumes, etc.) hoping to land an internship with one of the big major companies (e.g. Adobe, Microsoft, etc.). I never got a call back from any of them. I did however get an e-mail requesting a phone interview from a non-profit wanting a software engineer intern (they were at the fair too). The person stated it will be technical and it will include writing code. Overall, this should be about an hour long process.

Looking at their posting on the university's classified ads, it seems I'm under qualified with the languages, specifically CSS and SQL. I'm qualified with Python, Java, C/C++, JS, HTML, and what not.

So, being that I have a bad record doing well with phone interviews (this will be my first "technical" interview, any tips?

Thanks!

 

[paulney]

For Java questions the favorites seem to be:
- interface vs abstract class
- static keyword modifier: how it is applied, what the effects are
- finally vs finalize
- what do you need to have in finalize
- is it a good practice to have finalize (open-ended, argue why or why not)
- equals vs ==
- shallow vs deep copy
- stemming from the previous question, why do you need to override equals
- if you need to override equals, what else do you need to override and why
- Java generics: what are they, why you want to use them
- Java collections: HashMap vs Hashtable
- What are threading mechanisms in Java and how do they work
- what are the drawbacks of synchronized
- notify vs notifyall
- starvation and deadlock
- maybe priority inversion, round robin and other queuing mechanisms
- common patterns: singleton, factory, visitor
- inversion of control (maybe?)

 

[paulney]

A couple more:
- pass by value vs pass by reference
- what's a primitive and what's reference object in Java
- boxing/unboxing - where you need it and how it affects the performance
- Strings: why you want to use StringBuffer, what happens when you modify a String in Java
- garbage collection: what is it, and what are the scenarios where it may not work properly. How do you resolve those? (see finalize)

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

If CSS and SQL are requirements and you aren't good at that (yet) then personally I'd say mail them back stating that you aren't yet very good at those, but are good at the rest. Lying might land you the internship, but gives you a serious problem if you have to work with those two the first week already. If you are honest they may even give you some on the job training in them if they are needed but not yet on day one.

 

[DanFungus]

I just went through a number of technical whiteboard and phone interviews at some of those "big" companies, and these are some of the resources that helped me:

- Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job
- Steve Yegge's blog
- Joel Spolsky's blog
- TopCoder Algorithm Tutorials to an extent

They're mostly geared towards data structures, algorithms, analysis, and distributed systems, but they'd definitely be useful if you apply to any of those big companies again. I do, however, like the book for more than the above reasons - it has some great (and some obvious) tips on how to talk an interviewer through your code over the phone or at the whiteboard, and it covers a lot of foundational stuff about data structures and algorithms.

None of this is related to SQL/CSS, but it should help on the "general software" side of things.

 

[Ricemarine]

Thanks for the advice so far.
A lot of the topics paulney addressed I'm not fully sure of (which is good). I'll look into those resources too. They seem to be of a big help. Adobe did just create a few more job/internship openings so I might try for them.

As for lying about the internship, I'm not sure if the job opening on the classified ads (I didn't apply for it) and the opening they want me to apply for go hand in hand. Therefore, if they picked me from the internship fair, they probably felt that the programming languages I listed on my resume were enough.

It seems now's the time for job hunting! HAHA! If anyone else has any input, feel free. Thanks ATOT!

 

[BillGates]

Stay away from your computer. My team gives a fair amount of technical interviews over the phone and always point out when we hear typing. That's usually followed by a pause or stuttering, and the proper answer.

 

[yllus]

CSS is more of a... well, I don't know, but it's not a programming language. All that needs to be learned about CSS could be learned in a weekend of studying.

SQL is pretty important. I'd bone up pretty hard and while maintaining truthfulness of your level of knowledge, get across that it wouldn't be a problem if hired.