Question

How should I prepare for the Amazon online coding interview?

Answer 1

Mostly Amazon calls candidates for in house interview and take the interview on pen paer or white board but sometimes when the number of candidates are more then it conducts online coding Interview Round in HackerRank platform.

There are mostly 2–3 questions that are there in Online Coding round in Amazon out of which more than 50% score is mandatory by passing all test cases.

In general you need to prepare for coding and when I am talking about coding it means you need to improve Algorithms and data structure Skills. Proper time needs to invest in all topics of Algorithms by practising more and more problems.

Before Appearing for Amazon coding interview all these below topics need to be prepare thoroughly and in the below sequence only

Maximum Effort required in preparing for recursion and graph Problems as mostly candidates fails in writing code in these topics only

It’s always better that you take help from some Online materials which teches you all the techniques of solving problems. so i will list those also here

• There is one Online course Logicmojo, which explain all techniques and concepts cracking online coding interview specially for Big shots Like Google, Amazon, Walmart etc.

Take help from this course, it will teach you all these techniques in lesser time and then you need practise coding, so they also provide Editors for practising code and take online weekly coding test.

Specially for preparing Interview like amazon it’s works like “Quick Interview Preparation Guide”

• Start Practising from Hackerrank , because Amazon also take test in Hackrank environment before online interview it’s better to practise more and more in Hackerrank environment.

Also, It’s very important to do the time management, priorize and prepare the topics accordingly, Dont waste all your time solving infinite problems from one topic only.

First prepare all problems from Logicmojo, as they shortlisted frequently asked problems in Amazon then put your focus on the basis of the difficulty of the topics.

you can see the below chart, here it arrange the difficulty level of all the problems.

This chart is prepare on the basis experience of the candidates in interviews.

Comments

I will follow your approach but please can tell me like  either you are any of your friends followed the same and got into Amazon ?

Answer 2

I have interviewed with different companies and have also worked with Amazon in past. As per my experience I would suggest you to develop a systematic approach for your preparation. Here is a pattern which you can follow during your preparation.

Know your basics

Have an in-depth knowledge of algorithms, data structure, complexity analysis.

I would advise to consider these two books:

• Elements of Programming Interviews: the most complete resource to be prepared for algorithmic, design and other technical aspects.
• Cracking the Coding Interview: a good second book that explains also what to expect during the interview.

Solve Questions

Start with practicing questions for coding interview after developing a good foundation on data structures and algorithms. You can use platforms like leetcode and geeksforgeeks. Make sure you solved at least 4 to 5 problems in every category (arrays, tree, linked-list, etc.) I solves around 100–150 questions during my preparation.

Whiteboard Practice

Whiteboard will help you to practice in real conditions. Stop coding on your computer and switch to the whiteboard to reduce the discomfort while coding on whiteboard.

Leadership Principles

Knowing the leadership principles shows your culture fit and your understanding of the company principles. Learn about amazon’s leadership principles and connect with your own experience. Learn about the job and do some research about the division you are interviewing for.

Mock interviews

A mock interview is an emulation of a job interview. It will help a person gain confidence for real interviews as well as provide the interviewee with information about how to handle an upcoming interview. The feedback provided at the end of a mock interview can be really helpful. Expertmitra is good platform for mock interviews with professionals. They have professionals from industry who can guide and can provide personalised feedback for performance enhancement.

Answer 3

The online coding interview is the pre-screening part of the journey, in which we should decide whether or not it makes sense to fly you out to an onsite interview or not. Obviously, we don't want to spend a lot of time and money on someone who doesn't stand a chance of at least meeting the bar, but we also don't want to go overboard in the initial screen, so there's a balance to be found in the complexity of programming questions which are asked in the online interviews.

Hence, unlike certain people who're trying to make a career out of consulting armies of young engineers who see meaning of life in getting a job in Silicon Valley (or die trying), let me tell you the distilled truth about the technical interviews for new grads:

It's nothing special, really.

See, you were either sitting on your ears in school, or you tried to make something out of it. You either loved your work and had genuine passion for computer science, or you tried to game the system so you can pass, somehow. In case of the former, you didn't restrict yourself to school materials - you read, and then you read some more, and then researched even more and coded the most. If you're that type of guy or girl, then these technical interviews will be no more difficult than what you had for homework, or exams.

Sure, brush up on things. Go through Cracking the Coding Interview if you must; by all means, revisit CLRS, but ultimately, these should be just subtle differences if you really have it in you. The knowledge that will be probed in the interviews should be deep in your head by now. Does that seem unreasonable?

If you do have the knowledge, than your psyche is your worst enemy, because your nerves may inhibit your reasoning. The best way to handle future stressful situations is envisioning them and playing them out in your head, over and over, until you grow accustomed to all those unpleasant sensations with which your body will react. This has been said and written so many times, it's almost a cliche, but - do mock interviews and practice writing code on whiteboards and talking to people while you do it, until you're comfortable with it. With online interviews, you might experience bad audio and you might not understand everything the interviewer says, especially if they have a heavy accent. Don't panic, ask questions, clarify and don't move until you understand what you're asked. You can prepare for that by practicing that with your friends, over the phone.

TL;DR;

Focus on managing psychological part of the interview if you have the technical abilities. If you don't, well then good luck with that.

Yeah, and what those other guys said about those websites that help you prepare by showing you how to reverse a linked list.