If you want to learn how our technical admissions interviews work or you'd like tips on how to prepare, you're in the right place!
👋 Did you stumble onto this page randomly and have no idea what we're talking about? Learn more at hackbrightacademy.com where you can read all about our Software Engineering Program!- ❓ How do these interviews work?
- 😎 Am I ready to book a technical interview?
- 🔮 Where can I find practice questions?
- 💡 Tips for a Successful Interview
Our interviews are about 30 min. long, so you should set aside 30 min. of time where you're free, have access to the internet, and able to talk with someone on the phone.
During the interview, you'll get a phone call from one of our friendly interviewers. You'll work with the interviewer to solve a code challenge in your programming language of choice (you don't have to know Python yet!).
Your interviewer will save some time at the end of the 30 min. where you can ask questions about the program 🤗
If you can do the following, you're probably ready to book an interview:
- Have worked with strings, numbers (integers), and arrays/lists before
- Can think of an example of when you'd use a while-loop and when you'd use a for-loop
- Write a function with parameters that returns a value
- Add up all the numbers in an array/list of numbers by hand (without using built-in functions or methods)
- Use conditional logic and loops to filter an array/list (ex.: "given a
list of words, return all words that start with
'b'")
There are lots of online resources with practice questions, which vary in quality and relevance. To help give you a sense of what to look for, we have collected some problems for you below. Most are written by Hackbright and a few are selected challenges from other resources.
You won't encounter these exact questions in our interviews. However, we recommend them so that you can practice "algorithmic thinking" and problem-solving with code. Working through these questions should help you gauge how comfortable you feel recalling and applying programming basics.
Keep in mind that code challenges can vary in difficulty from person to person — a question that you think is easy might be hard for someone else (and vice versa). So while we can't make any guarantees, if you are able to solve problems similar to the ones below, there's a good chance you'll do well in our interview.
- Add All Numbers
- Find Longest Word
- Get Words Starting with Vowels
- Find Longest Word
- More Evens or Odds?
- Remove Duplicates
- Replace Vowels
- Show Even Indices
- And more questions here
- We conduct our interviews on a site similar to replit.com. Since replit.com is free, we recommend taking some time to familiarize yourself with the platform.
- You won't be allowed to refer to notes or use outside resources (like Google) to help you with syntax during the interview. If you're struggling with syntax or don't know what to do next, don't worry! Just let the interviewer know and they'll point you in the right direction.
- Run your code often throughout the interview. Being a good programming means being a good debugger, so don't be afraid to read error messages carefully.
- Your interviewer will understand how nerve-wracking it can be to program in front of someone. It happens to everyone, no matter how experienced they are. If you draw a blank or get stuck, that's okay! Use this as an opportunity to communicate effectively about what you do understand and what you don't understand.
- Your interviewer wants to help you pass the interview. It may be helpful to think of them as a collaborator rather than a test proctor.
- Technical interviews help you and us determine whether you are ready to take on the challenges of our Software Engineering course. In order to get the most out of our program, we need to make sure you are comfortable with certain programming basics including: basic data types (strings, integers, booleans, lists), conditional logic, indexing, looping, and functions.
- If you don't pass the interview on your first try, don't panic! We'll provide feedback on where you can improve and discuss a timeline for when you can reinterview.