C# .Net interview(Skype)

Tsipras

Hi,

I've an interview coming up via Skype for a .Net C# graduate position,

My recruiter reckons they'll email me some "technical stuff" to do during the interview, I presume he means some coding problems, but I wonder will they just ask directly via Skype..

I finished college in May and I've been working in a different area so i'm not totally sharp on stuff but I've a couple of days to nerd up..

There was a thread a few months ago that mentioned fizzbuzz,just googled it there that'd be grand:)

They know I don't have much experience outside college, I'll concentrate on knowing the basics well - inheritance,polymorphism,interfaces,encapsulation,delegates,properties,collections

Linq is mentioned in the spec too haven't used it but I know it in theory:o

Any advice greatly appreciated

Aswerty

I had a remote interview a few years back for the Microsoft graduate program. They used Microsoft Lync so we could use a collaborative text editor for testing my programming capability. There's loads of these types of tools on the market these days and I'd imagine if they want you to remotely demonstrate coding ability something like this will be used.

Peforming live coding, especially from a remote location, is tough. If you have a few days you should try get as much coding done as possible. Don't just look at code, or potential questions. You need to start working through something like Project Euler, Hacker Rank, etc. There is no subsitute for actual coding. If you haven't been programming for the last while it's suprising how rusty you get but on the other hand after being back at it a day or two you'll be back to where you were.

Linq is mentioned in the spec too haven't used it but I know it in theory

I think you're better off just saying you don't know it but you have heard of it. If you did end up getting the job not knowing LINQ isn't going to slow you down, it's handy enough to pick up. And there isn't really such a thing as knowing LINQ theoretically, at least in my opinion. It's something you become familiar with the more you use it and delve deeper into what is going on under the hood.

Lemming

Aswerty wrote: »

I think you're better off just saying you don't know it but you have heard of it. If you did end up getting the job not knowing LINQ isn't going to slow you down, it's handy enough to pick up. And there isn't really such a thing as knowing LINQ theoretically, at least in my opinion. It's something you become familiar with the more you use it and delve deeper into what is going on under the hood.

Simply stating "LINQ" for the spec is a bit open-ended; fwiw most usages of LINQ I've come across or written in production code have been lambda expressions rather than LINQ to SQL syntax.

They [lambda expressions] are pretty quick and easy to pick up OP, and worth knowing about anyway.

Lambda expressions in 3 Minutes
MSDN reference

brevity

My tip would be to know the college projects that you worked on very well. Talk about the technologies that you used, how you worked well with others etc...

Aswerty

Lemming wrote: »

Simply stating "LINQ" for the spec is a bit open-ended; fwiw most usages of LINQ I've come across or written in production code have been lambda expressions rather than LINQ to SQL syntax.

They [lambda expressions] are pretty quick and easy to pick up OP, and worth knowing about anyway.

Lambda expressions in 3 Minutes
MSDN reference

I don't consider LINQ an open ended requirement; it is a specific technology used for a specific purpose on a specific platform.

Lemming

Aswerty wrote: »

I don't consider LINQ an open ended requirement; it is a specific technology used for a specific purpose on a specific platform.

/head desk

I wasn't talking about what you personally do or not consider open-ended. I was referring to the OP being told that "LINQ" is part of the interview topics. There are more than a few different manners in which that statement can be read and indeed google would turn up more than a few differing hits too. The MSDN landing page for LINQ alone lists several.

As I have already said - and we are going way off topic to what the OP needs to read - the most common that I've seen is via use of lambda expressions; what it was originally show-cased with when released with VS2008 was LINQ to SQL replacing stored procs with queries written in code.

Aswerty

Lemming wrote: »

/head desk

I wasn't talking about what you personally do or not consider open-ended. I was referring to the OP being told that "LINQ" is part of the interview topics. There are more than a few different manners in which that statement can be read and indeed google would turn up more than a few differing hits too. The MSDN landing page for LINQ alone lists several.

As I have already said - and we are going way off topic to what the OP needs to read - the most common that I've seen is via use of lambda expressions; what it was originally show-cased with when released with VS2008 was LINQ to SQL replacing stored procs with queries written in code.

If you don't want my personal take on something then don't directly quote me because that instigates dialogue, which you apparently don't want. I took from the OP that LINQ was part of the job spec, in that respect I do not believe anyone can conceive it is open ended.

Keep banging you head off desks by all means.

lukin

Studying for these coding interviews is almost always a complete waste of time in my opinion. The interviewers can ask you almost anything so it will just be complete pot luck if you happen to have studied what they ask you.
There are few reliables like the FizzBuzz test as someone has already mentioned (also swapping two variables is one they might ask).
They may ask you to explain things like polymorphism, inheritance etc. so swot up on that (provide examples if you can). They know you are only out of college since May so they don't expect you to know stuff an experienced developer would know.
As it is on Skype a good idea would be to write as much stuff you need to know down on sheets of paper and then pin them up on the wall behind the computer you are looking into. You can glance at them when they ask you something.Sounds silly but worth doing. Best of luck to you.

Tsipras

Just to update on my OP - Thanks for all the advice,

The Skype interview was definitely a mix of good and bad. Good - The majority of the interview was general personality questions. Also a fair few "tell me about a time you... at work" This part went really well.

Then some technical questions, I answered all the OOP and C# questions and pretty well but then when we got onto .Net questions my brain went blank on a few things.

With a few minutes to go I was told I'd be emailed more technical questions straight after the interview and would have 20mins to do them and send them back , then in the middle of conversation my Internet connection went dead:( Didn't get it back for about an hour (rang provider the next day "oh ya sorry about that it might happen for the next few days too")

So I thought ah feck it that's my chances gone doesn't look good ect. but they emailed the next day and said could I do the test and I did, it didn't go great,there was maths problems :eek: but I answered the programming Qs ok, at the time I thought it was a complete disaster but they had told me the technical part of the interview was not as important as the first part..

I was still a bit surprised when they got in contact soon after this and arranged another Skype interview, at this point I kinda figured they were keen to hire me, and they offered me the job a couple of days after that

Hope this may help anyone in a similar position I guess the big thing I took from it was that as a graduate some companies don't expect you to have great technical knowledge they just want to see you're really eager to learn and would work well with people, take direction ect. I think stuff that applies to nearly all jobs