University of California San Diego
Mastering the Software Engineering Interview
University of California San Diego

Mastering the Software Engineering Interview

Mia Minnes
Leo Porter
Christine Alvarado

Instructors: Mia Minnes

70,401 already enrolled

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Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
4.6

(554 reviews)

Intermediate level
Some related experience required
Flexible schedule
Approx. 20 hours
Learn at your own pace
98%
Most learners liked this course
Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
4.6

(554 reviews)

Intermediate level
Some related experience required
Flexible schedule
Approx. 20 hours
Learn at your own pace
98%
Most learners liked this course

Details to know

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Assessments

20 assignments

Taught in English

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This course is part of the Object Oriented Java Programming: Data Structures and Beyond Specialization
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There are 6 modules in this course

Welcome to our course on effectively communicating your technical abilities. This course focuses on landing a technical job and excelling in a technical role. To succeed in job interviews, you’ll need to be able to confidently articulate your ability to solve challenging problems and come up with new solutions under potentially stressful conditions. After getting a technical job, the role of communication increases even more. You’ll need to work with other members of the team, communicate technical challenges and successes, and potentially sell the value of your work to those outside the company. Our goal is that by the end of this course each and every one of you understands the importance of technical communication, and has received constructive feedback on areas of potential improvement. In achieving this goal you will also learn about algorithmic thinking on the fly, how to evaluate a good interview answer to a difficult technical problem, and how “soft” skills impact interview outcomes. In this module, we’ll begin to see what a technical interview looks like, from the perspective of a major tech company. We’ll then focus on how to best get the interview in the first place. If you're not in the job market right now, you might want to skim the videos in this module and skip ahead to the Resume Critique (for insights about how to present yourself in writing) or the Introductions assignment (on effectively presenting yourself in person).

What's included

15 videos5 readings6 assignments3 discussion prompts

What's included

1 reading1 assignment1 peer review

Now that you’ve gotten warmed up, it’s time to practice your coding skills. One of the things you’ll almost certainly be asked to do during a technical phone interview is to code up a solution to a problem in a shared text document (e.g. Google doc) while you are on the phone with the interviewer. This experience can be intimidating, unfamiliar and humbling if you are not prepared, so this week we will give you lots of practice and tips for getting through this part of the interview with flying colors.

What's included

12 videos3 readings6 assignments

This week, we’re going to focus on how to speak about your experiences working on projects and how to speak about the technical problems you’ve experienced and how you’ve solved those problems. We’ll introduce the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Results) model for presenting your work, and discuss how to and how not to present the problem you worked on and the solution you developed. We’ll also discuss the communication skills that are critical to this task. It’s a fun week with lots of examples (both good and bad), which ends with an assignment where you will present your own work on video and submit this video for peer review.

What's included

16 videos1 reading1 assignment

What's included

1 video1 assignment1 peer review1 discussion prompt

As we saw in week 2, coding on the fly can be a difficult task! In this final week of the course we’ll revisit the skill of live problem solving by looking at how to solve more challenging algorithmic problems (and write the code associated with the solution) on the whiteboard. You’ll recognize these problems as “classic” interview problems you’ve probably heard a lot about, designed to test your problem solving skills as well as your analysis and coding abilities. Don’t worry, we’ll teach you how to approach them with confidence through a 6-step process to addressing technical questions (hint: you don’t have to produce the perfect solution on the first try!). We’ll show you how to use this process in a number of examples. But of course, there is no substitute for practice, so we’ll set you up with how to train and evaluate yourself.

What's included

17 videos5 readings5 assignments

Instructors

Instructor ratings
4.9 (13 ratings)
Mia Minnes
University of California San Diego
5 Courses390,505 learners
Leo Porter
University of California San Diego
5 Courses390,505 learners
Christine Alvarado
University of California San Diego
5 Courses390,505 learners

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4.6

554 reviews

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DA
5

Reviewed on Feb 9, 2016

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4

Reviewed on Nov 27, 2018

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Reviewed on May 1, 2020

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