Are you getting ready for the iOS developer interview? In this tutorial, we’ll discuss how you can best prepare yourself for the iOS developer interview and how to increase your chances to get hired.
Here’s what we’ll get into:
Ready? Let’s go.
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First, let’s discuss the interview process itself. How exactly does the iOS developer interview take place? The interview isn’t always the same, so it makes sense to find out more. That way you’ll be better prepared for what an employer might throw at you.
Most job interviews for developers consist of:
In the field, you’ll find many variations of the above interview components. Some employers will skip the phone screen and the hard-core coding interview, and will merely ask you questions about past projects. Some companies pre-filter with an online application process. Other companies, especially larger ones, will designate entire days to vetting job candidates!
What should you make of this, when preparing for the interview? It’s smart to focus on the in-person interview and the live coding interview. A phone screen is kinda a small in-person interview, and chances are – if you’re fit for the job – you’ll ace the test project anyway.
Quick tip: In interviewing, focus on getting comfortable with answering interview questions (coding and non-coding). You’ll find a bunch of them at the end of this tutorial!
Imagine you’re a hiring manager at a large software development firm. You’ve got a new job opening for an iOS developer. Your firm is quite popular, so you’ve got hundreds of online applicants. How do you find the developers you want to interview in person?
In this scenario, the developer interview starts by vetting candidates. Here’s how:
Next, a hiring manager plans a phone interview with the developers on their shortlist. We’re down from hundreds of applicants to a dozen, or just a few. This can be quite vexxing for you, the developer for hire, because you’re in the 80% that gets on the “Don’t call” list, without a second thought.
Quick Note: Not getting called back is the no. 1 frustration for potential hires. You can help yourself by asking a hiring manager or recruiter when you’ll hear back latest about the position, and not worry about it until then.
How do you prepare for the phone screen interview? Here’s how:
It’s also a great idea – if not a must – to make your CV and application stand out. You don’t have to be novel or unique to stand out. What about a video cover letter? It also helps to emphasize skills and achievements for a specific job, and customizing your CV for different industries or skillsets.
You can also ask questions to the interviewer. That’s a great idea, actually! It shows you care, that you’re engaged in the process, and that you’re genuinly interested in the work at hand. It also gives you an opportunity to get process-related questions out of the way, like “When do I hear back about the position?”
Two questions that are guaranteed to make a good impression are:
Pro Tip: Build an online showcase of your work. Like a portfolio, but better. Focus on presenting your work in a way that shows its benefits, qualities and value to future employers. The best way to get hired – still – is to get hired for your kind of work, instead of trying to get hired as a generic code monkey. Don’t have work to showcase? Start working on that, and keep the 2×3 Rule in mind: develop 3 professional projects, and 3 related projects that show who you are (experiments, try-outs, open source, etc.).
Let’s move on to the in-person interview. You’re past the phone screen and you’ve been invited to your future employer’s office. Don’t worry! You’re about one-third through the developer interview. What’s going to happen next?
In the in-person interview, you typically discuss your CV, the job at hand, the company and the team (“cultural fit”) and typical interview questions. Most of these things are thematic, i.e. there’s no structure that defines that you’ll first discuss your CV, then the job, etc. It’s more of a mix, so you’ll want to be prepared as best you can.
Most in-person developer interviews roughly consist of two components:
Wait, what!? Seemingly aimless small talk? What’s that about?
Imagine you’ve just arrived for the interview. You walk up to the receptionist. “Yeah, I’m here for the interview at 9.” You wait for a bit, and Emma, a senior developer, comes down to meet you.
“What have you been working on recently?” she asks you. You start talking about a project you did with Flutter. You’re interviewing for the iOS developer job, but you figured it’s smart to showcase your affinity with learning a new technology. Emma and you get a coffee, and before you know it, you’re discussing how Flutter and SwiftUI affect iOS development.
This is seemingly aimless small talk! It’s incredibly important in any developer interview. On the one hand, you get a chance to connect and to show your skills and passions. On the other hand, you can get comfortable with getting interviewed and being “on the spot”. You often also get a chance to check out the office.
The hiring manager, or senior developer who’s hiring you, gets the opportunity to see what you’re made of. Don’t assume the interview starts when you’re sitting down in an office somewhere – it starts the moment you set a foot in the door.
The next phase in the interview is what we think of when we think “job interview”. It’s the question-answer dialogue that you’ve prepared for, with nerve-racking questions like “Why should we hire you?”, “What’s your greatest strength?” and “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?” (OK, maybe that last one is a myth.)
How do you prepare for this part of the developer interview?
Before we move on, let’s discuss a strategy for answering dialogue-style questions. We’ll focus on the typical “Why should we hire you?” question.
Your first reaction might be: “Well, I’m out of a job, and I saw this job advert, and now I’m here.” But that’s really not what an interviewer wants to hear when they’re asking this question! The emphasis is on why they should hire you. So… why should they?
A great technique is the so-called ACA Method. It stands for Advantage-Claim-Advantage, and in short, you effectively pad a claim with two advantages. You first give an advantage, then a claim, and then finish with another advantage.
Let’s say you’re good at iOS development. You can’t just say “You should hire me, because I’m good at iOS development.”, because without evidence that sounds unbelievable. How can you convey that you’re good at iOS development, without outright saying it?
Here’s a few ideas:
Do you see how each claim (in italics) is wrapped in two advantages (ACA)?
You’re using the large-scale iOS project to give weight to your expertise in software engineering. You’re using Flutter as a stepping-stone to show your expertise in iOS development. And you’re using a customers email to give the value of your iOS app – and your skills – momentum.
Whatever you do, don’t say “perfectionism” is your greatest weakness. Everyone says that! If you find that you tend to give wanted, unoriginal answers, see if you can get the help of a professional to find your strengths and weaknesses. It’s not as black-and-white as that, but it may help you to get an outside-in view of what you’re good at (and what not).
Most developer interviews have a live coding test. Some developers dread it, others love it. And why not? You get to work on an interesting challenge, show off your coding skills, and hopefully land a gig in the process.
Here’s how the live coding test works:
First, let’s discuss the environment you’re doing these coding tests in. Take for example Codility’s online environment:
This editor is totally different from what you’re used to. You don’t have code completion, for example. Code highlighting may not work perfectly. You often can’t run your code in between edits. It’s totally different than what you’re used to!
The best advice here is: get used to the code environment you’re going to use for the live coding test. If you know that Codility is used for coding tests, work your way through their practice challenges and get to know the way they grade tests. If you can use Xcode Playgrounds on Zoom, great! Online coding platforms have a time limit, so take that into account when devising your strategy. Completing 2 of 3 tests is better than 3 tests done only half.
Next, let’s focus on talking and coding at the same time. Imagine the developer interview is conducted via Zoom, and you share your screen so the interviewer can see what you’re doing. How are you going to talk the interviewer through your finding a solution to the challenge?
Some ideas:
Next, let’s take a look at an actual live coding challenge. What’s a good strategy for solving it?
Your job is to sort giraffes into groups based on the lengths of their necks. The giraffes get anxious if their group contains giraffes with much longer necks than theirs. So, you’ll need to make sure that the differences between neck lengths in a group is not greater than 2. The input you get is a one-dimensional array of length N, with lengths between 1 and 20. The desired output is a two-dimensional array with groups of lengths.
The challenge is simple: organize an array of numbers in such a way that the differences between neighbouring numbers is less than or equal to 2. You need to transform the array of numbers into an array of arrays of numbers, or “groups”.
Solution: You can best imagine the solution as sorting all numbers, writing them on a line, and grouping them with a pen (by drawing a line between numbers) if you see that the difference with a subsequent number is greater than 2. It really helps if you can picture this in your mind!
Going from a story-based challenge description to something you can work with, such as arrays and numbers, is another skill worth learning. You need to extract the relevant information from the story, and leave the giraffes in the zoo…
What’s a good strategy to solve this problem?
The last bit of advice worth sharing, is to practice a lot. This is true for the entire developer interview, in fact. Work your way through the example challenges of platforms like Codility, HackerRank, Project Euler, etc. Get comfortable with a strategy that works for you. Practice really makes perfect!
Here’s a few step-by-step challenges for you to try:
Live coding tests in developer job interviews are becoming increasingly controversial, because they may not be representative of the job you’re interviewing for. An interesting story is that of Max Howell. He’s the creator of Homebrew, a package manager for Mac/Linux, that’s used all over the globe. He failed his interview at Google for not being able to invert a binary tree, despite the fact that many people at Google probably use his software…
In this tutorial, we’ve discussed how you can best prepare for the iOS developer interview, and set yourself up for success. Here are some key take-aways that are worth putting into practice:
This tutorial isn’t complete without a few example interview questions, of course:
Want to learn more? Check out these resources:
