How to evaluate your technical aptitude for FAANG companies

To crack the FAANG interview, you need to be prepared really well. It means you must be sure you are proficient with all the required tech or non-tech skills.

It’s important to have quality learning resources along, with a solid interview preparation plan, and strategies to crack FAANG interviews.

The question is how to evaluate your current technical skills, and how to master your technical aptitude? How to be sure that you prepare yourself for the technical part of FAANG interviews? The best way to do that is by self-evaluation of which topics are your strengths and which are weaknesses and through zealous practice.

In this article, we’ll provide you with effective strategies for how to evaluate your technical aptitude for FAANG interviews, what you should focus on, strategies to improve your technical aptitude, and how to level up your interview preparation game using personalized professional mentoring programs.

Overview:

• Which skills FAANG companies crave to find in you
• How to be sure you are prepared for the technical part of the FAANG interviews
• The questions you should ask yourself to evaluate your technical aptitude for FAANG interviews
• How to improve your technical aptitude
• How personalized professional mentoring programs can help you

1. Which skills do FAANG companies crave to find in you?

• Computer Science skills: you have to have not just top-notch algorithmic and data structure skills, but you also have to understand how these interact with each other and how to carve new structures that match the problem at hand. This requires incredibly deep knowledge and also deep creativity.
• Sharp communication skills across stakeholders: you must be able to communicate incredibly complicated pieces of information to non-technical people, better yet if you have any marketing experience because it helps: understanding positioning, for example, can help focus on what you need to say to people so that they can relate what you’re relaying to where that section of the company is.

FAANG companies test these two different skill sets because they are a signal for the others.

2. How to be sure you are prepared for the technical part of the FAANG interview?

FAANG interviews are like binary — either you qualify mostly all or you qualify none. The preparation depends on:

• Your understanding of computer science fundamentals - This includes data structures, system design, topics from OS viz. threading, scheduling, memory management; and networking concepts like IP address, DNS, and request-response cycle. If you are interviewing for an HFT, the focus is majorly on OS and networking. The HFT process of interviewing is way too different since a different skill-set is required.
• Your projects - The projects you do give direct visibility of your understanding of computer fundamentals.

There are 3 critical things you need to do at a minimum in this order:

• Have a very strong command over Data Structures and algorithms. Usually, this is the deciding factor as 70-100% of your interview questions will be on this.
• Understand Operating Systems concepts (threads, deadlocks, semaphores, processes, paging, etc.) thoroughly
• Be good with database systems and Object-Oriented programming concepts. You should be able to write SQL queries and think of architecture, especially questions around scaling, locks, etc.

3. The questions you should ask yourself to evaluate your technical aptitude for FAANG interviews

1. Do you know the programming language you claim to know? And, is it with the proficiency you claim to have in it?
2. How properly do you analyze the problem at hand and devise a conceptually correct solution?

Your solution should work. Some ‌candidates propose solutions that wouldn’t work even if implemented properly.

1. Do you use appropriate algorithms and data structures in your solution?
2. Can you actually write the code to implement those things?

• What level of quality does your code have?
• Is the code reasonably structured?

Candidates often propose a reasonable solution but can’t implement it.

1. Can you analyze the complexity of your code in speed and memory?

• How close your code comes to optimality?

4. How to improve your technical aptitude

In the technical part at FAANG companies, you’re mainly tested on core data structures, algorithms, and distributed systems design.

Here are some of the most popular algorithms that you should know when going in for a FAANG interview:

1. Dynamic Programming

2. Tree Traversal Algorithms

3. Graph Traversal

4. Search Algorithms

5. Sorting Algorithms

6. Hashing Algorithms

• Practicing these algorithms before an interview will make you familiar with them and give you confidence in explaining the solution to the interviewer.
• The main thing you have to do to crack these interviews/tests is to practice a lot of coding questions. You can get a lot of these coding questions online.
• With this, a person can get an overall idea about the type of questions and numerous ways to answer them efficiently.
• Spend at least two hours daily studying and applying concepts in Data structures, Algorithms, and Systems Design.
• You should be even very particular about the time taken for the execution, as this plays a key role in the shortlisting process.
• You have to get a strong grip on aptitude and reasoning questions. To achieve this, I would suggest doing some puzzles daily.

And the most important thing is that, if you have some idea on Web Dev, Android Dev, etc… it adds a positive impact on your profile and this also helps when you are doing jobs.

See also: FAANG interview preparation - A step-by-step guide to crack FAANG interview

Test yourself by asking the questions I mentioned above in the third section. Then, spend a significant amount of time on all topics in which you need improvement and practice. We highly recommend you practice with experts from Interviewhelp.io.

Interview help can also help you to test yourself first.

Interviewhelp.io is a platform that can help you to evaluate your technical aptitude for FAANG companies, prepare you for interviews, improve your foundational programming skills, and enhance problem-solving skills in the domains of Technical program managers, Software development managers, and Software Development Engineers.

5. How personalized professional mentoring programs can help you

Interview help is a well-known platform for leet code preparation, system design preparation, and behavioral coaching.

Depending on your past knowledge level, you can choose from three different learning modules: basic, intermediate, or advanced.

Expert information and practical tools are available to assist you to make your idea a success from conception to corporate adoption.

Experts will conduct on-demand mock interviews on behalf of companies like Google, Amazon, and FAANG.

Each of the sessions is completely live and interactive. As a consequence, query resolution is achievable right away.

Furthermore, by attending live sessions (1 to 1) regularly, you may get answers to all of your queries.

There are no delays in submitting assessments or learning disruptions since technical support is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Interviewhelp.io platform is suitable for both novices and working professionals since it provides a well-structured program that meets all standards.

As a result, it covers everything from the fundamentals to the most complex ideas.

Don’t waste your time,