Developers need to do 15% better in technical interviews: here’s how

Is a career in tech still the golden ticket it was before mass redundancies started sweeping the board? If you’re an engineer or developer, the sector remains ripe with opportunities, particularly within the UK’s robust fintech scene.

Developers need to do 15% better in technical interviews

That being said, the bar has been lifted and when it comes to the interview process, candidates need to bring their A-game to secure a new role – writes Aoibhinn Mc Bride, Content Editor, Jobbio.

15%

That’s according to data compiled by interviewing.io, a technical mock interview platform, which has found that tech job applicants need to do 15% better in a technical interview in order to get hired compared to 2022.

And yet, technical proficiency is just one part of the recruitment puzzle. Developers also need to look past coding and think of the bigger picture by brushing up on their system design knowledge.

“When candidates approach a system design interview as if it were a coding interview, they do things like expect to get a right answer, assume there is an optimal solution, and presuppose that precision is more important than covering a broad surface area,” says Kevin Landucci, a Harvard-certified advanced negotiator and interviewing.io’s developer advocate.

“A system design interview should be approached like a design problem—design is more art, and engineering is more science, but you can approach this art in a scientific way.”

Interview guide

To assist tech workers in the system design interview process, the platform has created an interview guide filled with advice from 75 contributors on how to prepare for and tackle this part of the interview process.

“We interviewed dozens of experienced system design interviewers from top companies for months and then analysed recordings of tens of thousands of system design interviews. One of our biggest findings was that keyword stuffing is the single most cited, and most hated red flag,” he elaborates.

“Keyword stuffers are heavily penalised because they come off as lacking depth and understanding, and it’s one of the most common failure modes in a system design interview.”

Landucci suggests that ignoring interviewer prompts, not making a decision and instead cycling through a variety of options, and leaving long stretches of silence also don’t bode well.

Instead, he recommends simplifying things so that your knowledge and expertise can shine.

“Your interviewer wants to see well-reasoned, qualified decisions based on engineering trade-offs. Your interviewer doesn’t want to see specific answers with ironclad certainty.”

Ready to put your interview prowess to the test? The Payments Cards & Mobile Job Board has thousands of opportunities across fintech like the three below.

Senior Software Development Engineer – Growth, GoCardless, London

GoCardless is looking for a Senior Software Development Engineer to work on a team that contributes to various codebases and work on business problems that have a direct impact on company growth and revenue. The team at GoCardless uses React, TypeScript, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, Postgres, BigQuery, Google Cloud Platform to solve problems ranging from improving activation rates to converting payers into customers or driving growth through partner integrations. As such, applicants should have professional experience in coding—with JavaScript/React on frontend and Ruby on backend—and be enthusiastic about working in a strong culture of experimentation, testing and code review. View more details here.

Senior Software Engineer, Ripple, London

Ripple is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for its RippleX team, which provides the infrastructure, tools, services, programs and support for creation on one of the world’s fastest, most sustainable and consistently reliable public blockchain––XRPL. You’ll be building and maintaining a highly scalable distributed service and data pipelines for the public and will propose, design, implement, maintain, and optimise new feature sets, and SLAs. Plus, you’ll be diving deep into performance issues to understand bottlenecks and come up with potential solutions. You’ll need a high proficiency in C++ including effective use of STL and templates, experience in backend or distributed systems development and experience working with any one of the database technologies (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Apache Cassandra, etc). See the full job description here.

Backend Engineer, Monzo, London

Monzo is hiring a Backend Engineer to collaborate across disciplines and test hypotheses to make a difference to customers. As a product backend engineer you’ll work in a squad alongside product managers, marketers, user researchers, designers, mobile engineers, web engineers, data analysts, business analysts and writers.  Backend engineers at Monzo have a variety of different backgrounds so a formal qualification or degree is not required, however the ideal candidate will have strong experience working on the backend of a technology product, want to be involved in building a product that people use every day, have a product mindset and some experience with strongly-typed languages. Get more information here.

For thousands more job opportunities, visit the Payments Cards & Mobile Job Board today

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