Gayle McDowell

Speaking Sessions

• Cracking the Coding Interview

  3:30 PM Saturday   Room: VPA-Theater

  Programming interviews are a different breed from other interviews and, as such, require specialized skills and techniques. This talk will teach you how to prepare for coding interviews, what top companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft really look for, and how to tackle the toughest programming and algorithm problems. This is not a fluffy be-your-best talk; it is deeply technical and will discuss specific algorithm and data structure topics.

• Be a Better Interviewer: How to Interview Like Google (or not)-But Better!

  1:45 PM Saturday   Room: SC-127

  Google is (in)famous for its tough algorithm questions, and then making candidates code on a whiteboard. Other companies are partial to behavioral questions, factual/knowledge questions, and big lofty architecture and design questions. <br/> <br/> We’ll discuss the different styles of technical and behavioral interviews for software developers. What’s right for your company? And how do you help candidates do their very best (and why is this so important)? How to keep your standards reasonable, but high and consistent? How do you limit your false negatives and false positives? <br/> <br/> Hiring managers and recruiters will learn how to create a better process. Interviewers will learn how to select and ask better questions. And candidates will get to explore what happens on the other side of the hiring table. <br/> <br/> This session will cover behavioral questions, coding questions, algorithm questions, knowledge questions, design questions, and code assessment/test tools.

Speaker Books