Tell a friend to tell a friend

August 4, 2018

Introduction

It is a good idea to join interviewing.io for mock interview practice. I choose to be an interviewer on the platform since this January, 2018, I have more than 60 mock interviews as an interviewer. It is so nice to get on the platform and meet and talk about algorithms. Tell a friend to tell a friend is the title of my blog.

It is most rewarding job to be a mock interviewer. I like to showcase one of my mock interview as an interviewer here.

One showcase

Yesterday I had chance to interview a new graduate from Waterloo,  and I learned from his performance how good he can perform. He enjoyed the multiple solutions and then took hint to go for the optimal solution based on minimum sliding window.

After we finished 30 minutes interview, I talked about my favorite algorithm last 3 days. He gave me his analysis, such great sharing.

Sharing feels so good 

I like to take some time to write notes for this mock interview 60 minutes. I had recording, transcript, code. I like to document how good it should be. I will work hard to get myself there. It is on interviewing.io, we do not choose to share the video as showcase this time.

The peer does not advocate too much to practice a lot of Leetcode algorithms. Just work on basics subsets of problems. I can tell from his talking and analysis and he has good talent. Of course, he can improve a lot in terms of coding and other things if he invest a lot of time to complete a lot of Leetcode algorithms.

Sliding window minimum

I like to talk about things I learned from his analysis of sliding window minimum algorithm.

The problem statement I wrote is here.

Here is the transcript to show the algorithm to get range sum using dynamic programming.

Extended algorithm is to get the minimum value of the sliding window.

Here is the blog with more detail, I will work on and make it complete.

Second algorithm - Iterator for list of iterators 

We did talk about the iterator, and what is size of minimum heap? If all iterator's lists are not sorted, then the minimum heap will load all elements into heap or binary search tree.

Here is the discussion of transcript. The main idea is that all lists are sorted then it is easy to use a minimum heap with size of count of iterators. If all lists are not sorted, all elements in all lists can be put into the list first.

Here is the blog I wrote for the discussion.

The advice from the interviewee

It is better to study leetcode by the tag called design. Here is the link.

Two more links:

//https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPumyEKs86w-GtWDd2XQYtg
//https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDHkPnEcrEf3B9-isB4jXIw

Learn dynamic programming

I chose to learn dynamic programming using Leetcode 10: regular expression matching over 10 round of mock interviews.

The interviewee suggested me to work on 10 dynamic programming on elements of programming interview, and then work  on easy level dynamic programming on leetcode.com

Summary

I had chance to meet a strong undergraduate student on mock interview. I learned from his performance. We had discussion over one easy, two hard level algorithms. And also we had exchanges of ideas how to work on interview, and how to prepare.

One of statement May be an argument or fact:

Waterloo undergraduate computer science students, all they do are working on algorithm problems and prepare for interview.

References

Feedback from the interviewee

Interviewer feedback