So you've landed an interview. Nice. Or if you haven't, then you're ngmi. Interviews usually come in a few flavours: the initial recruiter vibe check, a behavioural with HR or the hiring manager, a technical with an engineer, or some rare hybrid of these. You can often guess what you're in for based on the length. A 15-minute call is probably just logistics and some light questions like "Why this company?". A 30-minute slot could be a longer behavioural or a short technical screen. 45 minutes usually means technical, and 1 hour and above is most definitely technical. If it's actually an hour or above, you need to really prepare for something either very hard or extremely implementation-heavy. Sometimes you might as encounter project deep-dives, but that's out of my current scope.
When it comes to technicals, there are also many variants. There's the classic LeetCode style interview, and a lot of first years ask me how to prep for this. Being completely honest, the only way through is to grind. If you're new to competitive programming, something like NeetCode 75 is a good place to start. System design interviews are pretty rare for internships, and I haven't even encountered one yet. Then there are the fast-building challenges, like the ones Ramp gives. That's just raw coding skill, so if you haven't built or coded anything at all, you should probably start now (or consider switching into Honours Arts and Business).
Also, DO NOT VIBE CODE YOUR PERSONAL PROJECTS!!! Only vibe code during hackathons.
Now, behaviourals. This is every CS major's nightmare. What do you mean we have to talk to a real person about ourselves?
First thing's first: do your homework. Research the company, talk to full-timers or previous interns (while you're at it, ask about their interview experience), and write out scenarios from your past "internships." If you don't have internship experience, talk about hackathons. Failing that, use projects. Coursework is your last resort. The key is to have a bunch of unique examples ready, so you can adapt to different questions.
Your "Tell me about yourself" is your elevator pitch. Start with your name, program, and university (don't mention your year unless you're a third-year or above). Then, dive into your experiences and connect them to the role. I like to go from a broad overview to specific achievements so they don't have to ask a ton of follow-ups. However, try to keep this below 2-3 minutes.
Here are some other common scenarios/questions to prepare for:
- Company-specific preferences: always tie your answer to your previous internships.
- Conflict or disagreement: invent a technical disagreement from an internship or hackathon. It's a solid, low-stakes example. Just make sure to talk about how you respected the other person's perspective and how they felt about it after.
- Feedback: stick to positive examples unless they specifically ask for a time you received negative feedback.
- Teamwork: talk about a time you collaborated effectively to solve a problem. Be specific about your role and how you contributed to the team's success.
- Challenging project: be ready for follow-ups. They'll want to know why you made certain design choices or why you picked a specific tech stack.
- Tell me about a project: cover your role, the team structure, and be prepared for follow-up questions about communication or conflicts.
- Ambiguity/vague situations: talk about a situation where you had to take initiative and make decisions with incomplete information.
- Explaining a technical concept to someone non-technical: have an example ready to show you can communicate complex ideas.
- Going beyond your role/what motivates you: share a story about a time you learned something new on your own to solve a problem.
- Deadlines/priorities: less common for early-career roles, but it's still a good idea to have an example of how you manage your time effectively.
- Leadership: very uncommon for internship interviews, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared.
Also, keep in mind that you're an intern. If you really can't think of how you did something, fallback to "I asked my mentor how to do this part". If you have worked at a decently large company, don't go above and beyond and say something like "Oh I did this entire project end-to-end on my own with blah blah decisions and it was deployed into production" because it's not believeable.
My best advice for practicing for behaviourals is to find someone who's good at talking and maybe a little bit of larping and gaslighting to help you prepare. Get them to take your resume and grill you on every single bullet point until you know it inside and out. My roommate is a finance bro, and he's awesome at mock interviews. So yeah, find yourself a finance bro if you want to crush your behaviourals.
When you're in the interview, focus on what you did, what your role was, and what your impact was. The STAR or PAR methods are your friends here. Try to summarize your contributions at the start. And if what you did was... embellished, you've gotta gaslight yourself into believing it. Back it up with as much logical context as you can, even if you have to make some of it up. Oh, and always have something you learned ready to go, just in case they ask.
To sell yourself to others, you have to believe in what you're selling first. That's why periodic personal self-reflection is so important. You also need to make your projects sound interesting. Add some quirk and authenticity to your stories so you don't sound like every other candidate. You don't need a sob story, but you do need to sound passionate.
And a final word of warning: GPT is horrible for this stuff without a ton of context. Don't rely on it unless you're feeding it a two-page prompt with every detail imaginable. At that point, you might as well just write your own notes.