How to prepare well for Karat coding interview
Table of contents
A lot of tech companies started to use Karat as their screening round. CircleCI, Indeed are some examples, and I expect the list to grow. One thing good about Karat is it's a pure technical interview. Because the interviewer is not attached to the company you are interviewing, it won't be your coworker as well so you spend 60 minutes doing the technical interview. Usually, 60 minutes is more than enough.
Within 60 minutes, it will be divided into 2 sessions.
Domain knowledge (15 minutes)
This will be slightly different depending on the role you are interviewing for. For example, if you are applying for a frontend role you might get "how do cookies work", or "design an API for ....". The topic will be extremely broad but it should be something you are familiar with. You should be able to get hints from your recruiter but some tips are:
- time is valuable, give a short but accurate answer
- let them know if you don't know so that they can skip to the next question quickly
Coding (45 minutes)
The coding session will contain at most 3 parts and you are expected to solve at least 2 parts to pass this round. I have heard people solve 1 part but come up with a solution without coding the second part passed as well. Time is very valuable, so spend a minimal amount of time in the domain knowledge session so that you can have more time in the coding round. I used to advise people to do 200+ leetcode questions but clearly, this doesn't work for everyone. If you already solved 200+ leetcode questions you should be fine but if you do not have time, you can also spend a small amount of money to see how well the questions look at a reliable source.
Redo
Depending on the company, you might also have a chance to redo the interview regarding how did you perform in your interview. Utilize this chance, or you can treat the first round as practice. Good luck in your interview (=