Study Group Schedule

Objective:

Efficiently prepare for DS & Algo, System Design and Behavioral interviews. Learn as a group to accelerate the learning and sharing of info/knowledge. Share interview experiences and act as sounding board for each other

Meeting Cadence:

Weekly schedule:

Week of 28th March 2022:

Monday (03/28)

• Suresh:

  ✔️ 1) Paint House II (DP)

  ✔️ 2) Check completeness of Binary Tree (Tree)

• Reza:

  ✔️ 1) First Bad Version (Binary Search)

  ✔️ 2) Find Missing Version (Cycle Sort)

• Mir:

  ✔️ 1) Meeting Rooms (LC 252)

  ✔️ 2) 3Sum (LC 15)

  ✔️ 3) Dutch National Flag (IK Problem)

• Suja:

  ✔️ 1) Two sum problem - Presorting

Wednesday (03/30)

• Suresh:
  • Shard/Reshard
  • When was the last time you thought “outside the box” and how did you do it? Why?
• Reza:
  • Consistent Hashing
  • What would you do in your first month of working here?
• Mir:
  • Message Queues
  • Tell me about a situation where you had a conflict with someone on your team. What was it about? What did you do? How did they react? What was the outcome?
• Suja:
  • Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision without all the information you needed. How did you handle it?

Checklists

Checklist for sharing coding problems

• Identify problems upfront and share with the group in discord a day or two before the study session.
• Update problem sheet with the relevant details after the study session so that it can be considered for the weekend coding test.
• For every problem discussed in the study group:
  • Provide video name, link and starting time stamp inside the video
  • Explain Omkar’s thought process for the selected problem
  • Provide working code snippet in one’s preferred language
  • Explain Complexity and design alternatives in detail
• After the study session, provide documentation to update hugo portal

Checklist for discussing behavioral questions

• Identify motive behind the question. What does hiring manager want to hear for this question?
• Identify what should response contain?
• Identify what should not be said for this question. Any sub optimal examples?

Example: When was the last time you thought “outside the box” and how did you do it? Why?

Motivation for this question:

✔️ Hiring managers want to know your past experiences and see if you can think on your feet to solve problems

✔️ Do you have pitching skills to sell yourself

✔️ Innovative enough to think of alternative solutions

What should response contain?:

• Showcase lateral thinking skills
• Is the response interesting or robotic?
• Story format. STAR, SOAR, or CAR format
• Relevancy Response should not only be valid but should be relevant.

Sub optimal responses:

❌ Negative examples. Avoid picking your own weakness/negative example and how you turned it around. We do not know which part of the story sticks with the interviewer.

References

• Tammy Kabell on Behavioral Interviews