In 2020, practicing your coding skills online is easier than ever. With COVID-19 ever so present, interviewing processes have gone fully remote, and many companies are utilizing the tools listed below to create and deliver code challenges. There are different formats of questions including fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice, and freehand coding challenges. While I personally believe the freehand coding questions are most valuable for companies, not every organization will stick to only these types of problems.
If you do come across a freehand challenge, however, remember that it’s not always simply the final answer the company is wanting. Sometimes, the final answer itself doesn’t matter much. They want to understand what your thought process was as you worked your way through the problem, and they want to see how you organize your code. Is your code really messy? Well that could be a red flag when the hiring manager needs all engineers on the team to be clean and organized since they contribute to the same code base.
Luckily, the three websites below offer you practice problems for all of the types of questions previously mentioned. The three places I would recommend you go to in order to enhance your analytical or software engineering skills are:
- LeetCode:
- The website has over 14 languages and over 1500 practice problems.
- HackerRank:
- According to their website, over 7 million developers utilize their site.
- TestDome:
- Not only do you have free access to practice problems, but you can also get certified for free.
Whether you’re an entry-level professional or a coder with 10+ years of experience, you should always be enhancing your skills. There is always a new framework or version of a framework coming out that you need to know to stay competitive in the hiring market. Also, with the emergence of bootcamps, there are more software engineers coming into the market than ever! You need to have a GitHub, and you need to add your code continuously to show that you’re always practicing. Hiring managers do look at your GitHub and the most recent entry logged by yourself. Make sure to track your work to make it *work* for you!
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Melissa is a Career Coach with over 9 years of experience working with those in the Technology and Creative fields. If you’re looking for career coaching advice as a candidate or hiring advice as a company, don’ hesitate to reach out! Schedule a free 1:1 consultation with her here.
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