Maximizing Leetcode Practice for Technical Interviews: A Complete Guide
For those who don’t know, Leetcode.com and other similar websites like HackerRank, are free to use websites that let you practice your coding skills for technical software interviews. You’ll hear many people tell you to just “grind” leetcode as much as possible. However, this is not an optimal way to get better at these types of interviews. Instead of constantly pounding your head with 100s of Leetcode questions, in hopes you get lucky and see a similar one in an interview, let’s help you understand these technical questions and how to approach them!
You DO NOT have to do 1000s of Leetcode questions to get your dream job. So, let’s go over the basics first. The most important thing on getting better at these interviews through Leetcode is to not just look at the answer for the question, as tempting as it may be, when you don’t know how to solve it. Instead, write out on a piece of paper or iPad and force yourself to try to figure out the problem. This helps you actually think through how you would solve the question if it were an interview question, as well as help you not rely on answers. The crutch of the answers being right in front of you is detrimental to interviews, cause the answer WILL NOT be easily accessible. While doing these problems, think about all the data structures you know and just go and try to apply some to the question. This method can help find a unique solution as well. Additionally, practice the Leetcode questions out loud to simulate an actual interview. When you figure out the solution, then look at other people’s answers to compare and see how you can improve your own answer or if there are other approaches. Again, I cannot stress how important it is to not just look at the answer, as it defeats the whole problem-solving premise of Leetcode.
For more specifics, if you are a beginner, keep reading. If not, you can move on to the next paragraph for intermediate levels. Now, if you are a complete beginner, start by doing all the tagged EASY questions. Once you can do these comfortably, move on to medium questions. In the end, Leetcode easys are just simple concepts you should know very well. Leetcode mediums then are just multiple applications of easys, or using Leetcode easy methods in unique ways. Finally, Leetcode hard is the same, just applying multiple Leetcode medium methods.
For everyone else, it is essential to understand patterns in the technical questions. You must be able to see a question and identify what kind of problem it is and what to use quickly. As such, the Grind 75 is an excellent source to help you understand data structures and algorithms with links to Leetcode questions. Additionally, you can look at the 14 most common patterns in Leetcode and understand them. From here, you can work and strengthen certain skills and patterns.
Finally, before interviewing, the Leetcode premium is a good option to practice for company specific problems. However, be alert that not all companies reuse Leetcode problems, and if they do, it is definitely reskinned as a different problem. As so, I recommend using reddit and blind to see which companies actually use Leetcode problems. A simple search to see if Google uses Leetcode problems will show you that they do not use Leetcode problems and have a completely original test bank. Happy coding and good luck on interviews!
