My tips reflect my attitude more than general advice, but here goes:
- Decide what you want out of the interview. How do you decide to work for this company? An interview is a two-way street. Engage with the interviewer, connect with the culture. Push back (a little) on their ideas, see what happens.
- I hate puzzles. I think they're junk and have never found them to be good predictors (for either party). I usually (1) parlay it into some relevant experience "I encountered something like that when I..." or (2) describe how I'd solve a problem rather than dig into it [1].
- Demonstrate your common sense, flexibility, good social skills. Talk about how you work in a team. Talk about what you do when you encounter a problem you can't solve yourself. Talk about any self-lead learning you do. You need to fit in and you need the company to demonstrate they want you to help. Even if the interviewers aren't aware of it, more often these form the lasting impression from an interview.
[1] Long, long time ago I was asked to produce a "sort" implementation. So I drew a bubble-sort. When one of the interviewers was somewhat outraged by this, my reply was "I didn't have any constraints, so I optimized for maintainability." A bit cheeky perhaps, but worked in the context.
- Decide what you want out of the interview. How do you decide to work for this company? An interview is a two-way street. Engage with the interviewer, connect with the culture. Push back (a little) on their ideas, see what happens.
- I hate puzzles. I think they're junk and have never found them to be good predictors (for either party). I usually (1) parlay it into some relevant experience "I encountered something like that when I..." or (2) describe how I'd solve a problem rather than dig into it [1].
- Demonstrate your common sense, flexibility, good social skills. Talk about how you work in a team. Talk about what you do when you encounter a problem you can't solve yourself. Talk about any self-lead learning you do. You need to fit in and you need the company to demonstrate they want you to help. Even if the interviewers aren't aware of it, more often these form the lasting impression from an interview.
[1] Long, long time ago I was asked to produce a "sort" implementation. So I drew a bubble-sort. When one of the interviewers was somewhat outraged by this, my reply was "I didn't have any constraints, so I optimized for maintainability." A bit cheeky perhaps, but worked in the context.