So, you nailed that initial interview and made a good impression on the tech recruiter, now in order to land that job all you’ve got to do is make sure that you score well on that coding assessment.  But how can you make sure you will do well in the coding assessment? It’s best to be ready to show that you’re at the top of your game as a programmer. And that means that you need to be ready to take on the coding assessment. Creating a study plan for yourself and preparing yourself psychologically for the testing days are the best two ways to optimize your chances of acing it! In this article, we will be talking about some of the best websites to prepare yourself for the coding assessment and how to create the right mindset to set yourself up for success!

Are Coding Assessments a Developer’s Worst Nightmare?

Coding Assessments can sometimes be a nightmare for developers when trying to land a new job, especially if they are timed and proctored. Usually, these so-called coding assessments are designed to expose you to some of the challenging concepts that you will encounter in the real-life context of working for that company as a software engineer. They are made to test if you’ve got what it takes to solve daily tasks efficiently and quickly. Coding assessments are not a question of how smart you are, but rather how fast you can solve a problem with the most optimal solution; it’s a question of whether or not you can actually solve the problem efficiently in a timely fashion.

Normally what makes candidates fail coding assessments are a lack of preparation for the test, psychological pressure, or a combination of both. Most candidates think studying or being confident is what will make them do well. However, while both are partially true the real way of doing well is by studying and preparing yourself psychologically, if you do this and focus on your goal for yourself to do well on the assessment chances are good that you will score well.

First, before discussing the best websites and a long-term study plan for acing coding assessments let’s discuss how you prepare yourself mentally for the coding assessment. It’s very easy to get a decent grasp of the coding skillset required by researching the company you’re interviewing for and taking a look at the top websites to prepare you for the coding assessment! However, one of the biggest ways of setting yourself up for failure is by not preparing yourself for correctly handling the psychological pressure of taking a timed proctored test. The truth is studying for the test is only part of the process of making sure you do well the other step is making sure you are well-prepared mentally speaking for the pressure of taking the test. Sometimes our insecurities are our own worst enemies!

5 Ways of Mentally Preparing Yourself For a Coding Assessment

As mentioned before a big part of making sure you do well on the coding test is by mentally preparing yourself for having to code in a timed proctored environment. Of course, being mentally prepared for the test day is only part and if you don’t study chances are that you are still going to fail. Positive thinking and being mentally prepared for the stress of the test day can only get you so far, you still need to make sure you do a lot of coding exercises before the test otherwise, chances are that you are still going to fail terribly. In this part of the post, we will be talking about some of the best ways to mentally prepare yourself to do well during the test day.

1. Know that it’s not the end of the world if you don’t land that job and ace the test

Coding assessments can sometimes be very unfair and cruel. Even if you do everything right like get a good night of sleep before the test, study for weeks about the programming languages and frameworks the test will cover, and do several coding exercises. Several things can still work against you during the test day the platform might give you a very short amount of time to do the coding assessment, your anxiety won’t let you think clearly, and some of the questions might not be exactly what they told you to study for or your answer might be right but the platform won’t accept it as a correct answer and the list goes on. Just like everything in life as much as we try to achieve our goals, sometimes there are too many variables working against us that we have no control over that will lead to setbacks from our goals.

Try your best on the test day, but don’t get upset if you still do badly. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t get that job. A big part of what makes people fail a test is fear of failure. Yes, putting a coding assessment and that job on a pedestal might make you feel even more pressure to do well on the test which can cause you to not think well during the test. So, the secret is to not let it become the most important thing for yourself.

2. Know That Your Time Will Come And That There Will Be Plenty of Other Opportunities In the Future

As said before don’t let any job opportunity become the whole purpose of your life. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Make sure to remember, that there are plenty of opportunities out there and one day you will find the right job and land it. By having this abundance mentality you will increase the likelihood of you doing well in the test since you won’t be feeling like this will be your only chance. This way you will free your mind to focus on the coding problem during the test day without feeling too much psychological pressure of having to score perfectly on the test.

3. Try To Do The Coding Assessment As If You Were Coding on a Normal Day

This one might be obvious, but it still does wonders if you can keep this mindset during the test. We all know it’s basically impossible to keep your cool 100% during a test. After all, tests are made to test how well we would perform under pressure. However, while its true that we can’t be 100% calm during a test we can try to maintain at least some degree of calmness, focus, and patience. If you can prepare to do a bit of that you are likely to do way better on the test than if you were freaking out about it. It’s a mental strength that many of us never develop, which is good because it would be a terrible idea to try to fake it.

4. Don’t Tell Anyone About The Selection Process You’re Participating in Until You Get the Job

Another classic way of setting yourself up for failure is by telling your friends and family that you are participating in a selection process for a job in X company. If you don’t pass you will feel more ashamed of yourself than you would if you had kept it a secret. People will also keep asking how did you do on the test and if you don’t pass you will feel embarrassed to tell them that you didn’t get the job. When you do that you are creating unnecessary psychological pressure on yourself of feeling obliged to pass that test. All of this will lead to a tremendous amount of stress and anxiety during the test day since you will feel like failure is not an option.

My best advice is to not tell anyone you are being part of a selection process until you get the job. This way if things don’t work out no one needs to know about you not getting that job, plus you won’t feel so much obligation of passing the test, this will lead to less stress and anxiety on the test day which will free up your mind to focus more on coding the best possible solution for the problem-set they give to you on the coding assessment.

5. Get a Good Night Of Sleep On The Day Before The Coding Assessment

As obvious as this may sound a lot of people tend to ignore this one or think it’s not important. However, by getting a good night of sleep you’re guaranteeing that you will be being well-rest on the day of the test which you lead to better performance on your part in the coding assessment. A lot of candidates leave at the last minute to study and do problem sets to train for the test, however, all too often it doesn’t work out and they fail.

Staying up all night studying algorithms and solving coding problems will make you feel tired the next, which will lead to worse performance on the coding assessment day. Never start studying one day before the coding assessment, building the coding skills and logical thinking skills necessary to pass a coding assessment takes time, and it’s not something that you can master in one night. What works for me is starting to study a few weeks or days before a coding assessment.

My advice is that if you didn’t have enough time to study all the content of the coding assessment or you didn’t study anything at all you’re better off just going to bed early instead of trying to stay up at night studying. Even if you didn’t study everything or anything at all. Chances are that you will still do better on the test if you get a good night of sleep the day before the coding assessment.

How to Correctly Prepare for a Coding Assessment?

Now that you’ve mentally prepared yourself for the testing day we will be covering what you can do to increase the likelihood of you scoring well on the coding assessment and landing that software engineering job that you wanted so much. Preparing for a coding assessment is not an easy task. It requires a lot of effort and discipline and if you don’t prepare, the outcome of your coding assessment can be awful and as a consequence, you might be eliminated as a potential candidate for that dream job of yours if you don’t do well on the test.

As I mentioned above, the best way to increase your likelihood of passing is to create a study plan for yourself and take a look at the best websites to prepare you for the coding assessment! So let’s start here by taking a look at the top websites to prepare you for the coding assessment!

We’ve provided a list of the best websites below to help you prepare for the coding assessment below. Make sure you visit these websites to get your study plan ready for the test and to start thinking about how you can prepare yourself for the test!

Before you begin your preparation for the coding assessment, I want you to first think about what the coding assessment is all about. The coding assessment is just another term for the computer-based programming test. As previously mentioned, the test is generally based on code written by you, and you are given a certain amount of time to write and test the code before submitting it or the time running out. Writing quality code is not only a skill that will help you ace coding assessment but it will also help you in your journey to becoming a great software engineer, that creates maintainable and efficient software programs.

We’re going to explore how you can increase your odds of passing these coding assessments by exploring the top websites to use to prepare for these tests. So this is going to help you prepare and get yourself prepared for the coding assessment!

To put it in another way, the best way to develop coding skills is to practice coding. This is something a lot of people don’t realize is important to becoming a programmer. Coding is actually like driving a car. It’s not something you think about very often. But once you become good at it, it can improve your overall coding skills and possibly even your logical reasoning and problem-solving abilities. If you’re not comfortable with taking these tests, you must work on being at ease in doing so. After all, after the initial interview, almost all companies nowadays ask you to do some kind of computer-based programming test before you get the job! So, becoming good at writing code for these assessments is a must-have skill nowadays if you want to get a job as a computer programmer.

8 Good Websites To Prepare For Coding Assessments And Improve Your Knowledge About Data Structures

1. LeetCode

LeetCode is one of the most popular websites out there for programmers to train for technical interview questions, data structures knowledge, or solving competitive programming problems. LeetCode focuses mainly on training your problem-solving skills for acing the coding assessments of  FAANGs also known as Big Techs.

In LeetCode, there are many free resources and paid ones to help in your journey to become a great programmer and problem solver. It contains many questions and problems for you to solve about Data Structures and specific ones aimed at sharpening your coding skills to be ready for coding assessments for companies like Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, Google, Facebook(now known as META), and Google. Unfortunately, some of the learning resources are locked behind a paywall, but if you do have the time, and money and you’re in a hurry to get the skills necessary to ace those big tech code assessments I totally recommend paying for access to the premium content and problem-sets.

2. CodeForces

Codeforces can be best described as one of the best programming communities out there. With a wide range of coding problems to solve, programming competitions, and coding discussions.

Whether you code in C, C++, C#, Java, Go, D, Haskell, Kotlin, OCaml, Delphi, Free Pascal, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala, Javascript, or Node.js  signing up to CodingForces and getting your hands dirty in solving their problems is a must if you want to become a great programmer! They allow you to upload solutions to their problem sets written in any of the programming languages mentioned and the list of allowed programming languages continues to grow every day.

And the best of all is that the website is completely community-driven from coding exercises to coding competitions everything is curated by the users themselves. What this means for you is that all the resources provided can be accessed free of charge. You won’t have to pay a dime to sharpen your coding skills! Since you can access all the resources for free in this one there is no excuse for not doing as many coding exercises as you can to ace those coding assessments!

3. HackerRank

Hackerank is another popular platform for sharpening your coding skills and preparing for difficult technical interviews. It is mostly used by companies in North and South America looking to hire software engineers and developers. To sum it up it’s a good platform to practice your coding skills and prepare for interviews depending on the tech company that you are aiming for. Also, tech recruiters from companies like Amazon enjoy using their platform for technical coding assessments that can be proctored. It

4. CodinGame

CodinGame is a training platform for sharpening your coding skills and also a tool for companies to make technical tests for their potential candidates for software development roles. It is most popular in Europe some tech recruiters also enjoy using their platform to perform proctored tests for potential candidates on their platform.

5. Codility

Used by Microsoft and many other big companies in the tech industry sector for giving proctored and non-proctored coding assessments for a potential future employee. Codility can also be used by programmers looking to improve their rational thinking skills when coding and preparing for these tough coding tests. They feature a wide range of lessons and challenges free of charge for coders hungry for more knowledge!

6. BeeCrowd  (Formerly known as URI)

Similar to Code Forces, Beecrowd is another community-driven coding platform free of charge aimed at helping developers sharpen their coding and data structures skills with their long range of coding challenges created by other users themselves. Similarly to Code Forces, you can access all of BeeCrowd’s problem sets and coding contests free of charge as long as you respect the rules of the website.

7. CoderByte

Like the ones mentioned above CoderByte is a similar platform used for technical interview prep, coding challenges, and educational videos about data structures. Most popular in North America tech Recruiters also enjoy using this platform for doing live interviews and technical coding assessments that can be proctored or not for potential candidates for a software development role. Unfortunately, not all coding exercises and tutorials are free to access, similar to LeetCode and other coding websites managed by corporations CoderByte also has some coding exercises and training locked under a paid subscription model.

8. AlgoExpert

Unlike the previous ones,  AlgoExpert is more focused on training the candidate for hard Big Tech interviews about data structures codes with their 160 practice questions, several video tutorials and a crash course for learning the specifics behind data structures logic that is used by these big tech companies. It also has a feature where you can schedule a simulation of an interview with other members of the AlgoExpert community. Unfortunately, AlgoExpert features are exclusive to premium users that pay a subscription.

Conclusion

Remember, coding is not about talent, but rather about training as much as possible to improve your coding skills. Coding is just like trying to get jacked. In order to get jacked you got to have the discipline to show up at the gym and lift as much as you can. If you don’t practice your coding abilities as much as you can you will always be an average programmer. With so many resources available nowadays to improve your knowledge about data structures, programming languages, and big tech interviews, there is simply no excuse for not practicing as much as you can.

If you have access to the internet and a brain your future as a computer programmer is entirely in your hands. All you have to do is put effort and discipline into practicing every day those coding skills.