Hello, bytedance spring Dance has begun. Are you ready? Think about whether you are excited to graduate soon, but also very reluctant to give up, welcome students to actively submit, at the same time, social recruitment and intern recruitment is continuing, you can ask me for internal promotion.

Next, we invited an interviewer from Bytedance data platform to explain how to interview for a R&D position from the perspective of the interviewer.

Author: Behai

Hello, everyone. I am a front-end interviewer at Bytedance. Among the students I interviewed before, they often failed to perform well in the interview due to lack of preparation or nervousness. So today I’d like to share with you some tips for interviewing for Internet r&d positions. I will follow the steps of interviewing Internet companies for R & D positions in turn for you to read again.

Current students and fresh graduates apply

Spring and autumn recruitment

If you are in school and plan to work for an Internet company after graduation, the least difficult path is to intern with your favorite team during your last year in school. After you get a full-time job as an intern during your internship, you can go back to school for a relaxing graduation season. First of all, it is important to emphasize the recruitment time. For college students, the winter and summer holidays are the most suitable time for internships. Therefore, a large number of interns and fresh graduates open their positions in the two months before the winter and summer holidays, which is often referred to as spring recruitment and autumn recruitment. For students in Chinese universities, these two key enrollment dates are usually not missed. But the students who study abroad must pay attention to, do not like the students in other countries around, dragging to the near graduation before the plan to find a job (side shows that the employment pressure in Our country is really much bigger than other countries).

Choose big factory or small factory

I think no matter how many practitioners ask this question, you will get the same answer: choose the big factory. Dachang can not only provide better welfare benefits, but also provide more comprehensive learning and promotion channels for new students. The most important thing is dachang’s complete infrastructure, which can greatly optimize the work efficiency.

Select positions and prepare resumes

As for positions, many students may not know the difference between different R&D positions, so I suggest you to look for your senior students to understand the basic operation mode of Internet companies. Different R & D positions have different concerns for candidates, so choose the direction in which you have advantages to send your resume. Some students ask what should I do if I have no advantages? Then create advantages and prepare carefully for several months with the energy of the college entrance examination. What you will gain will not only be a desired offer, because the benefits brought by the improvement of skills will be lasting. Next, prepare your resume. First of all, your resume does not need to be gorgeous, do not need a cover and other decorative content, and try to reduce it to be printed on a piece of A4 paper to describe your key information in a concise way. The general resume consists of the following parts:

  • Basic information such as name and contact information
  • Education background, school of graduation, major, research direction, etc
  • During the school awards and honors, by the content of gold arrangement to write a few highest it is ok
  • Project experience is very important, although there may not be much project experience for college students, but if there is any, try to list it no matter how small
  • If there are published journal articles, they are listed
  • Self-evaluation can be written, if you think you have some characteristics and can be supported by facts, then give yourself a few sentences, but remember not to write a long sentence

What if we don’t have project experience and papers? If there is really no big homework, then graduation thesis is barely ok. But don’t leave this section blank, because you want to create a point of entry between you and the interviewer, which we’ll get to later. Don’t include anything you’re not familiar with or don’t know about, so you don’t get caught in the middle of an interview. Some students like to fill out their resume with high-end content that they don’t know much about, but this behavior often creates a hole for themselves. If you really want to write a resume, understand it first.

Apply for social recruitment positions

Social recruitment is different from school recruitment, there is no fixed recruitment season. So if you’re interested in certain types of jobs, it’s best to keep your eye on them. Read the position JD carefully, compare your strengths and weaknesses with JD, and decide in advance how to answer when the interviewer asks you about your weaknesses. A social resume should be as clear as possible about your work or project experience, as well as your roles and contributions to the project.

The interview

Preparation for an interview

One of the most overlooked aspects of the interview process is the amount of preparation you need to do before the interview begins. For the on-site interview, you need to print out several copies of your resume, read the recruitment brochure carefully, learn about the company’s products and industry, summarize your views on the company and industry understanding, and a brief but best description of your own characteristics. The most important thing is to read your resume and summarize your strengths and weaknesses. The resume can serve as a starting point for the topic. You need to think about possible questions and answers in advance.

The interview process

The interview process for a typical R&D position includes no less than 3 rounds of technical interviews, HR interviews and, for on-campus students, a written test. Today we’re going to focus on technical interviews. First of all, let’s understand what the technical interview is mainly about. Generally, the first round of technical interview is mainly based on the basic investigation, and the subsequent interview will increase the Angle and depth of the investigation (such as technical depth, project management, personal development, etc.). But each round of interviews consists of a few set stages: introduction, project experience, q&A, code review, and a thoughtful interviewer who will give you a chance to ask questions at the end.

To introduce myself

You will almost always be asked to introduce yourself at the beginning of the interview. This process should not take too long. It is important to briefly describe yourself in a few sentences. Most interviewers have already reviewed your resume before the interview begins, and the main purpose of asking you to introduce yourself is to pick out a few key words, i.e. what we’ll talk about later. This is an opportunity to direct the interviewer to your area of expertise. Don’t waste it. Technical interview interviewers tend to be more senior engineers, but there are a large number of engineers who tend to be introverted, which is why you need to include key words that can be used as topics. Smart students have realized that you can control the course of an interview with the content of your resume, the questions you expect and the answers you have prepared. By pacing well, you can better present your strengths to the interviewer. But don’t put the cart before the horse here, the most important factor is, of course, their real talent.

Project experience

When it comes to your project experience, the interviewer may not be familiar with some of your previous fields. Your ability to communicate clearly will be a plus. In addition, positive emotions such as positivity, initiative, studiousness and introspection are generally beneficial in the interview process. After all, people like to work with positive students. During the interview process, if the interviewer asks you about the scope of confidentiality in your previous position, it’s okay to talk directly to the interviewer about that. If there is a non-compete agreement, it is also necessary to inform the interviewer as soon as possible.

Question and answer session

During the q&A session, the interviewer will ask prepared questions to assess your hard skills and your ability to improvise on the spot. In addition to building your knowledge base, think about what the interviewer is asking you about. Sometimes it’s about your expertise, sometimes it’s about how you analyze the question. In addition, part of the interviewer will have the spirit to break the pot to ask the bottom, dig a certain point to a very fine granularity, this process do not be nervous, with their own knowledge can answer a positive answer. It doesn’t matter if your answer isn’t comprehensive, just tell what you know and the interviewer will sometimes guide you to answer. If the topic leads to an area you are not familiar with, you can positively state that the area is unfamiliar to you and that you are familiar with or have opinions about it. It’s a stiff transition, but it’s better than putting both you and the interviewer on the spot.

Code review

The on-site code assessment may be the most worrying part of some candidates. First, they will feel uncomfortable when being stared at to write code. In addition, if they are nervous, they can’t remember some API and can’t check it on site. In fact, writing code on the spot is very difficult, and the normal level may be only a small part of the intensity of the moment. But let me tell you, live code reviews are really tricky. Get the topic don’t worry about writing code, the first thing to do is to analyze the topic, first say ideas, first say ideas, first say ideas. This is so important that you don’t know where to lead until you open your mouth. If the idea is right, then congratulations you have the bottom score, may be for many students to achieve it is just a matter of time; If you’re thinking the wrong way, the interviewer may try to steer you in the right direction right then and there, no matter what. In addition to dictating your ideas, whiteboards, pens and paper can be used as a way to describe your ideas. Sometimes you can analyze a problem in a reasonably abstract way, and show that you analyzed the problem and proposed a solution, may be more favorable to the interviewer than solving the problem. Code reviews usually don’t throw you a particularly difficult problem; there are many ways to solve it. So don’t panic. If you’re nervous and can’t figure out the best solution (which is perfectly normal), let’s start with the simplest and dumbest solution. Rest assured, the interviewer will guide you step by step to optimize your solution. If you come up with the best solution without saying a word, the interviewer may wonder if you have brushed the problem. In short, keep in touch with the interviewer during the coding process and explain why you’re doing what you’re doing while you’re coding. Don’t panic if you encounter a function or API that you can’t remember. The interviewer will either remind you or ignore it. After all, in the future, no one will be writing code in complete isolation.

Question about the brush

From my point of view, I encourage students to brush. In my opinion, it is a way to improve your coding ability and problem solving ability quickly. As long as you can fully understand after you finish the problem solving, it is your knowledge. But it is not advisable to brush the topic at the last minute, just because the temporary brush topic is difficult to understand deeply, the effect is limited. I still hope that students can keep the habit of brushing and continuous learning for a long time.

About the results of the interview

In general, the interviewer will not give you the result on the spot, mainly because the interviewer will consider your performance, or the previous several aspects of consideration. Many interviewers will give you a chance to ask questions at the end of the interview. In this process, you can ask about the team’s business, the technology involved, and so on. If you ask a question for comment or advice, the interviewer will often review your performance and evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, which can help you analyze the interview result. But when it comes to asking questions, don’t waste the opportunity. Prepare your questions in advance. A good question can leave a deeper impression on the interviewer.

Every interview is a promotion

As mentioned earlier, the process of interviewing is not about the interviewer trying to stump you, it’s about getting to know you in a very short amount of time. The interview is a two-way process, which allows the interviewer to get to know you as well as the job you will face in the future. In this process, continuous communication is necessary. By constantly communicating, constantly finding and fixing your weaknesses, you will gradually become stronger. No matter whether the interview is passed or not, carefully review their every interview, summarize their own performance in the interview is good or bad points, every experience an interview is to enrich their own. Finally, I wish everyone can get the desired offer.