There seems to be a lot of literature available on the technical interview process for Silicon Valley tech companies but not nearly as much for companies in the Midwest. I wanted to go ahead and post a sample phone screen that I conducted to give my readers a feel for what type of questions they should be expecting when interviewing for companies in the Midwest.
I always, when interviewing candidates for companies, keep in mind their compensation structure, what level of software engineering knowledge they need, and how senior of a candidate they’re expecting. The level of rigorousness of the technical interview will change depending on these factors.
Below, you will find a sample phone screen that I conducted.
Computer Science:
Q: What is a dynamic array in C#?
Q: What is the time complexity of inserting into a dynamic array?
Q: Tell me about hash tables? How are they implemented? What is the time complexity of a “put” or “insert” operation?
Q: What are the searching algorithms in computer science? What are the time complexity of the algorithms?
Q: Tell me the differences between unclustered and clustered indexes?
Q: Tell me the three pillars of OOP?
Q: Talk to me regarding dependency injection and inversion of control?
Q: Have you heard of SOLID acronym?
Q: What are 4 SQL operations?
Q: Sorting algorithms?
I’m not looking for the correct answer to every single question but really just trying to get a feel for the depth of their knowledge.
I hope that helps to clear up what some Midwest companies are looking for.