How I came across InterviewBit

One day I was scrolling through my Quora feed when I chanced upon a post by Anshuman: http://qr.ae/Rbv6uX

I was about to appear for interviews and I needed a one stop solution for all the programming interview questions. I used to solve quite a few problems on Codeforces/CodeChef, but none of them are geared towards providing a structured approach towards programming interviews. I wanted to practice the interview specific questions from geeksforgeeks but there was no online judge to evaluate my code's time complexity/correctness.

InterviewBit solves all those problems in a single platform. It offers you the ability to solve interview specific programming questions on an editor without the luxury of autocomplete. At the end of the coding session, it allows you to run your solution through an online judge too. And the feature of incremental hints simulates the environment of the interview where you get hints if you're stuck for long.

My experience with InterviewBit

I was excited about trying out the InterviewBit platform. I signed up and was instantly hooked. The gamification of the platform motivated me to keep on solving problems. I felt exhilarated when I reached the top 20 of the leaderboard.

I messaged Anshuman (CEO of InterviewBit) on Quora, not expecting a reply, and complemented their hard work. I asked him for early referrals since I was in the Top 20 of the leaderboard for the next month. Much to my delight, he replied and and gracefully agreed to get me referred. I would not have received interview calls from a few companies if it was not for their referrals.

Now many months of interactions later, he's one of those guys whom I feel I should have known/met in college. I've an incredible amount to learn from the amount of hard work and perseverance he and Abhimanyu put in every day.

Programming interviews are a lot about having solved similar problems before. I've interviewed at Adobe, Amazon, Directi, Flipkart, Microsoft, Google and Zenefits. On an average you could expect a 60% overlap in the programming interview questions. Overlap might be in the form of similar problems, techniques and concepts which you've learnt on InterviewBit.

It is essential that you practice and solve through each of the problem on InterviewBit. Solve the problems which you find tough twice, once by looking at the approach and rewrite the code again without looking at the solution.

How to get the most out of InterviewBit

Preparation Phase

• Start at least three months before the time you want to sit for the interviews.
• Work your way through the problem sets on InterviewBit. They've nicely structured it under key topics.
• Work hard to reach the Top 20 in the leaderboard. You might get referred even if you're in Top 30, but this is for your own good.
• There is a concept called upsolving in Competitive Programming. It means that you should specially solve problems which you're unable to solve. Stretch yourself to solve the difficult problems.
  
• Practice whiteboard coding. Especially for design questions.

Mock Interview Phase

This is very important! You need to practice under interview pressure. InterviewBit will schedule mock interviews with you to settle your nerves before the actual interviews. Work on the feedback you receive from these mock interviews.

Referral Phase

Sit back and concentrate on cracking the coding interviews while InterviewBit does all the grunt work of referring you to the top notch companies across the world.

Interview Phase

Just go in with a constructive mindset and give your best. Even if you fail, don't take it to heart, there will be plenty more opportunities. Use the failure as an opportunity to learn and grow for the future. I've failed at many too. This only motivates to me work harder.

Strike a positive relationship with your recruiter. This will help you in future when you want to apply again.

Offers/Negotiation Phase

This is one of the toughest phase for a relatively inexperienced Software Engineer. Most of them have never negotiated before. No need to panic since InterviewBit will help you through this phase too. They've the accumulated wisdom of knowing the recruitment strategies of companies and will work with you to negotiate and choose the best offer.

Final Thoughts

Both Anshuman and Abhimanyu will get you referred to top notch companies once you are performing well on InterviewBit. They're some of the most hard working/humble guys I've had the pleasure of interacting with. There have been times when I needed help and they would respond instantly to my emails, although I know that as startup founders they're incredibly busy.

Although I could not fully utilize this platform since I discovered it a bit late, I would recommend anyone who is going to appear for interviews to leverage this platform to the fullest.

The way I look at it, InteviewBit prepares you not only for the interviews, but for the actual job too. You will learn to write error free, compilable code in your first attempt without even using your favorite editor's autocomplete feature.