How to prepare for coding interviews

While many steps in the employment process are universal to any role you may apply to, applying for a role as a software developer, or any coding-related job for that matter, you may be expected to do a coding interview. 

This article explains what a coding interview is, what you might be expected to do in them, why you might be expected to do them, and some resources to help you prepare for them. 

What is a coding interview? 

At some point following an initial interview, you may be asked to do a coding interview. This is notorious for being one of the hardest parts of the interview process. During a coding interview, you will be given a task to do within a limited time frame. You might be observed by an interviewer as part of this and expected to explain your programming choices as you go. 

Why do I have to do a coding interview? 

While the purpose of an interview is typically to get a feel for who a potential employee is as a person and if they will fit within a team, a coding interview does the same but to get a feel for who you are as a programmer. It helps determine what your skill level and programming style is like. This is essential as they will want to know what kind of code you might be contributing to their projects. 

Coding interview resources 

There are numerous different resources to help you prepare for coding interviews, the only issue is that for many of them you must pay to use. I’ve collated some free resources that I recommend checking out to hopefully lend a hand when this stage of the interview process comes knocking 

Codewars 

Unsurprisingly, one of the best ways to practice for a coding interview is to code. But rather than working on your larger projects, it is important to try to solve lots of “bitesize” coding problems.  

An excellent resource for this is Codewars.  

Codewars is a platform that helps you learn, train and improve your coding skills by solving a range of tasks at varying difficulty levels. These challenges are called Katas and are specific to the languages and areas you want to focus on.  

You can find these challenges on the Codewars page or if you subscribe to their Weekly Coding Challenge newsletter, you will receive weekly emails with a selection of tasks to solve. 

All the challenges can be completed within the IDE provided on the Codewars website so you could complete them while on the go without your computer. Here is an example of one of their challenges: 

This is a relatively easy problem but nicely lays out how Codewars works. You see what your task is, and some examples of what solutions would be.  

You write your solution in this window before pressing Attempt to see if your solution is correct. If it is, you can then go and look at other people’s solutions to get an idea of how other people attempted the problem! 

This is a great resource to consistently practice your coding skills, and the range of challenges you may encounter will help you prepare for coding interviews. 

If this seems like something you are interested in, find more information here

InterviewBit 

Another great resource for coding interviews is InterviewBit. It works in much the same as Codewars with different challenges you can complete but also has some more supplementary content you can use if you so wish. 

There are three main categories to InterviewBit: Practice Problems, Fast Track Courses and Interview Prep.  

You can solve practice problems of varying difficulties much like with CodeWars but you also get to see what kind of companies ask these questions. 

You can also spend time learning the fundamentals of different languages, perfect for when you want to train or revise a certain skill ahead of an interview. 

Another excellent resource on InterviewBit is the Technical Interview Questions. These are guides not only on how to secure roles at large companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft but more generalised roles that would require you to code in certain languages. 

Coding Interview University

Another excellent resource is the GitHub repository Coding Interview University This was created by Josh Masham for interview preparation. It was using these resources that he was able to get a job at Amazon. This repository is jam-packed with details, resources and links that will be sure to help anyone in their journey to employment. 

These are only three different resources you can check out to get that edge when it comes to a coding interview but there are many more out there and not everything will work for you, so just experiment! 

targetjobs Undergraduate of the Year Awards Update!

AI and Robotics with Ocado Group

The lucky winner will win a 12 week paid Summer Internship plus the chance to have a 121 career conversation with a senior member of the Technology Leadership team.

Software Engineering with Skyscanner

Students could win a paid Skyscanner 12 week internship in London or Edinburgh, plus exclusive one-to-one networking opportunities with senior colleagues and £300 to spend on travel.

ICAEW100

We also have the ICAEW100 which is open to all students, and is a 30-minute, case study based online exercise. Every student who completes it receives a bespoke feedback report outlining their strengths and weaknesses which could be helpful in their career search. If a student’s score lands them on the leaderboard and they can stay on the leaderboard until the end of the competition, they’ll also be in with the chance of winning £1500, alongside prizes from the competition partners.

Employment on the UI and UA design of Foodiez a Mobile Food App

Job description: UI and UA design of wireframes for children mobile food app.

Start date: December 2022- March 2023, exact dates to be arranged. Trial of the food app prototype will be during 2023 school summer term. Further work will be required until launch of the food app autumn term 2023

No of hours: Approx 3-4hrs a week, hourly rates to be agreed.

Payment: by bank transfer for monthly invoice.

DBS checks might be required.

Location: remote location with Microsoft 365 SharePoint.

The mobile food app is intended for “Food, Learning &Wellbeing” a collaborative case study on tackling childhood obesity with Charlton Manor primary school www.charltonmanorprimary.co.uk

Background:

Charlton Manor developed and published Now We’re Cooking! Delivering the National Curriculum through Food, Ofsted approved/food based curriculum teaching children how to grow food, prepare and eat healthy meals.

These are few digital pages from the curriculum https://www.blurb.co.uk/books/7981527-now-we-re-cooking

The primary objective of the case study is to identify the causal impact of food based teaching on children eating behaviour (KS1and KS2/ 5-11yrs old). The mobile food app is intended for use by the children to keep a daily diary of food intake and physical activities, as part of their home work in the evening.

Currently we are preparing the wireframes for the food app and looking for assistance with the UI and UX design.

I welcome questions and look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes

Samira Salbi/Digital Editor

samira.salbi@thefoodiez.net

www.thefoodiez.net

+44 208 347 5302/+44772 993 3280

Placement Opportunities with DSTL

Applications are now open for both summer placements and 1-year industrial placements at DSTL (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory). To find out more about the opportunities at DSTL, we interviewed Nic Ingram who has just returned from a year in industry with DSTL to complete his final year at Newcastle University.

Who did you do your placement with? And what does the company do?

I did my placement with DSTL. They sustain and grow science and technology capabilities that must remain in government, and help develop capabilities that are managed elsewhere, for example, in industry and academia.

How did you apply for the placement?

I applied through the Gov.uk website.

What was your favourite part of the placement?

We did some fun hacking events which allowed me to develop useful skills and try something new.

How was the overall experience of doing a placement?

Overall, I really enjoyed the placement and made lots of new friends and contacts, all whilst developing my own personal skills.

Find out more about DSTL placements and apply here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/graduates-students-and-apprentices-at-dstl

If you have any questions about applying for a placement, you can email Nic: n.a.ingram1@newcastle.ac.uk

Interview – CyberSoc

Newcastle University Students' Union

We interviewed two committee members of Newcastle University’s Cyber Security society, CyberSoc, to get some insight into what the society does and the different ways it can help you. 

Who are you and what are each of your roles in the society? 

Eddie: I’m the president of CyberSoc, so my role is to guide the general direction of the society as well as lead the committee and manage their work. This includes things like making sure our technical officers have events prepared with enough time to spare, chairing committee meetings, representing the society at external events and finding new and exciting opportunities for our members. 
 
Last year, I ran many of the society’s technical events as I was one of our technical officers. While I’m in a different role this year, I’m continuing to do so unofficially because it’s a part of the society that I really enjoy. I’m taking a slightly less significant role in the writing of tech events nowadays as we have so many great new technical officers (and the role of president comes with its own workload!), but it’s definitely something I want to keep doing within CyberSoc. 

 
Sophie: I’m secretary of the society so my role is more on the admin side of things. I’m in charge of taking notes at committee meetings, making sure deadlines are met, making sure our members are kept informed of news and events, and that sort of thing. 

 I do sometimes help out with other aspects of the society outside of my role. My background in cyber security has meant that I’ve been able to get involved with the planning and running of some of our technical events. I also enjoy designing posts for our Instagram page. 

What is your society in 10 words or less? 

Eddie: A great way to have fun learning to hack safely! 
Sophie: The society for all things cyber security 

What do you do in your society? 

Eddie: In short, we teach people how to hack. Even if you’re a complete beginner to cyber security or even computer science and programming in general. Of course, when we say hacking, we really mean ethical hacking – all our tech events such as workshops, demos and talks take place in safe, isolated environments where you won’t be causing any damage to the outside world. It could be attacking a server we’ve set up with specific vulnerabilities, attacking each other’s code or taking part in dedicated hacking competitions (often called Capture the Flag competitions), and our Technical Officers are there to teach and help you at every stage. We also run occasional socials for those who want to take a break from the tech side of things! 
 
Sophie: We run technical events that aim to teach people about cyber security and ethical hacking in a fun and safe environment. These events include workshops, talks, demonstrations, competitions and more! We aim for all of our technical events to be suitable for all skill levels so there’s something for everyone. We also run social events from time to time to allow our members to get to know each other and make new friends. 

What do you want to do when you finish university? 

Eddie: I’m interested in the security of embedded systems, things like smart appliances, industrial control systems, network equipment, entertainment devices and many other devices that aren’t just general-purpose computers. I could see myself working in something relating to IoT device security, perhaps. 
 
Sophie: I don’t have anything specific in mind just yet, but I definitely want to work somewhere within the field of cyber security as that’s the area of computer science that I’m most interested in. 

What makes your society different from something like NUCATS? 

Eddie: At least in my opinion, CyberSoc runs mostly technical events with occasional socials, whereas at NUCATS it’s probably more the other way around. NUCATS is the general computer science and tech society. While we at CyberSoc do focus mostly on cyber security in our tech events, there’s often overlap with general computer science and programming since we teach everything from the absolute basics with no prior tech or programming experience required. 

If you’re mainly looking for socials in a society then you might be best suited to NUCATS, whereas if you’re keener to explore the tech side of things then CyberSoc is probably the society for you! That being said, there’s no reason you can’t join both – in fact, we do share a lot of members and occasionally run joint tech or social events together. Neither one is objectively better than the other, so it just depends on what you enjoy! I’d recommend anyone thinking of joining either society to check out both our Instagram pages (@newcastlecybersoc and @nucats_) to see what kind of events we’ve each run in the past. 
 
Sophie: NUCATS is more about general computer science and technology, whereas we are specifically focused on cyber security and ethical hacking. In practice, NUCATS tends to be more of a social society for computer science students, whereas we tend to attract members from a wider range of courses who are interested in cyber security and want the opportunity to learn and gain hands-on experience in the field. There is some cross-over between us and NUCATS and we do sometimes work with them and run joint events, but in general, we tend to fall more on the technical side of things whereas they are more on the social side.  

Do you have any Corporate Sponsors, and if so, what do they help you do? 

Eddie: We do! Our corporate sponsors vary from semester to semester, but they always have great opportunities for our members like industrial placement schemes, graduate schemes, careers events and mentoring opportunities to name just a few. We’re always careful to ensure our sponsors are relevant to our members’ needs and interests so that there’s always something great to engage with! 

Membership to CyberSoc is only £5 per year, but it’s our additional funding from sources like sponsors who really help us provide so much more value than that to every member. Our society wouldn’t be what it is today without having the funding for the tools and equipment at many of our workshops, so it’s something we really value. 
 
You can find specific details of our current sponsor(s) and the opportunities they’re currently offering on our Instagram page (@newcastlecybersoc). 

How do you think CyberSoc will help you get a job? 

Sophie: Being on the CyberSoc committee has allowed me to improve my employability skills such as teamwork, communication, and leadership. Furthermore, it gives me the opportunity to attend (as well as help at) events on a wide range of cybersecurity topics which helps me to gain a broad understanding of the field. 

Eddie: In terms of running the events, my public speaking skills have really improved. When I first started, I was really nervous any time I had to speak in front of everyone, basically just sticking to a pre-written script. But now it comes naturally to me! 

Committee work has also been a great experience for me in project and time management. Ideally, we usually have around 4-6 weeks between the idea for an event and the day it runs, so we’re always working to a deadline and re-evaluating different parts of the event if they become unreasonable to complete in time. Since we’re all students, this is especially important as we’ve got to plan around our studies too. There are many different elements that go into planning an event and delays (often beyond our control) are to be expected – it’s down to us to handle these without having to reschedule or cancel events wherever possible.  

What three things do you think your society brings to help improve employability? 

Sophie: Our society allows members to learn about a wide range of cybersecurity topics, which they may not have otherwise encountered. Many of our events provide the opportunity for members to try out various ethical hacking techniques in a safe environment, allowing them to gain hands-on experience with tools and methods that are used in industry. Furthermore, we have also run events that allow members to create their own artefacts that could be used in a programming portfolio. For example, our OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) top 10 hackathon taster event gave members the opportunity to find and fix security issues within a website that we created. We then gave participants detailed feedback on their submissions, as well as presented them with a certificate to show their achievements.  

Eddie: We think in the 21st century, cyber security awareness is a critical skill to have in any role, but especially those within large organisations or national infrastructure.  

For the computing students among us, it’s great to know about security risks, attacks, and defences to help protect the software you’re developing. CyberSoc allows you to work with these fundamentals even if you aren’t on a security module or degree specialism, as we feel it’s important that all developers understand the basics of cybersecurity. 

For those not on computer science degrees we think participating in CyberSoc events still greatly improves employability, as these days detailed knowledge of cyber risks and defences can be critical in any role in any industry. They say humans are the least secure part of any system, so it’s no good for the developers to secure their applications if the end users can be phished or use insecure passwords! Therefore, participating in CyberSoc events can help anyone stand out to employers. 

Have you got any events coming up? 

Eddie: We do! On Tuesday the 22nd of November we’re running an “Introduction to Cyber Security Tools and Concepts” workshop, and the Tuesday after on the 29th we’ll be hosting a reverse engineering/buffer overflow workshop (both beginner-friendly!). At the time of writing, we’re yet to have the exact times and venues of these events confirmed, but they’ll likely be from around 6:30 PM in a computer lab in the Urban Sciences Building, as is the case with most of our tech events if they’re running in person. Additionally, some of our events are run online so there’s something for everyone. 
 
We have even more events planned that we’ve yet to announce, so be sure to take a look at our Instagram page (@newcastlecybersoc) or the events tab on our Discord server (cybersoc.org.uk/discord) to learn more!