What I've learned from 100s of interviews with candidates at top tech companies

Having been on the recruited and recruiting side for one of the big 5, I'd add an extra advice: Don't panic if you don't have any of the things mentioned above, especially when still young in College.

I didn't have an active github, nor a website, nor screenshots of my side projects. If you're genuinely passionate when you talk about it (no matter how small you think this is), the recruiter will notice this.

One of the most important advice that was given in this article for me is: "Show initiative even at the risk of failure"

-> You did X in a class project : It won't matter so much because you had to do it to pass your class. If it's a group project it will matter even less because there's no way for the recruiter to know if you did 90%/50%/5% of the job.

-> You did a small Android app or a personal command line tool for you, but you didn't publish it at all on github, and it's a private thing (a tool to help your grandma do X remotely), it's fine, but like the Amazon interviewee who started her game company: Mention this on your resume and to the recruiter!!

I've also seen people downplay achievements because they thought it looked lame compared to what is produced by Google/Amazon/FB/Microsoft ... but those products have dozens if not hundreds of engineers behind them, PM, UX teams etc. Of course your project will be lame compared to it. Still put it on your resume.

If you're going at a top CS school, having all of these doesn't matter as much, the recruiters usually know that the projects/classes you took are not trivial (via Alumni giving feedback on those), if you go to an average one, you need to show your passion in one way or another, working on a small side project you genuinely enjoy is a great way of showing this.

Finally, if you have very little time for side projects because you're busy working multiple side jobs to be able to pay your tuition and rent, mention it somehow when talking with a recruiter. You certainly don't want the recruiter to perceive you as what the authors describe "mentally lazy" when in fact the reason you're not doing that much in the side-project side is because you're working your ass off to simply be able to graduate. You can also use some of those side jobs experiences to show the recruiter you have some applied leadership/teamwork skills.

The typical interview rule, IMO, is a good one, at least for men (women unfortunately are under very different pressures): dress one (and only one) notch nicer than the people that will be interviewing you.

There are some rare situations where dressing down compared to your interviewer makes sense, but a normal dev looking for a normal job is not one of them.

It's so hard as an interviewer not to have a higher score for candidates who look, act, and dress like me. I've caught myself doing it before and I hate it.

And the worst part is that most people (myself included) have a very hard time even recognizing they are doing it, which means it actually is good advice. Play on the interviewers unconscious biases. Ugh.

(Context: In chess, a queen can move along a row, column, or diagonal to attack. The N Queens problem is to place N queens on an NxN chessboard such that no two queens can attack each other.)

No one does poorly here because they are "bad at chess algorithms." They might do poorly because they think they're bad at chess algorithms. But this is not a "chess algorithm." It's an algorithm, with a chess skin.

But, sure, if you're bad at chess algorithms, I'll give you this problem: Given an N by N boolean matrix (all falses), set N cells to true such that no two rows, columns, or diagonals have two trues.

Same question, but with a boolean skin. Now will you be able to tackle it?

So, advice: Don't assume you're bad at __ type of algorithm question. For the most part, this isn't true. At most, there's a tiny bit of knowledge to tackle it (so you're not bad at it; you just don't know something). Nearly every time I hear someone say they're bad at some type of question, it's actually just an insecurity. They aren't even missing any knowledge.

The only partial exception here is recursion/dynamic programming, which does have its own little approach.

At a higher level: Can you ask for a new question if you're bad at that type?

You could, but it's risky. If I ask you a question that really involves pointers and you don't understand them, then okay. But realize that this might be a deal breaker for me. I might need that knowledge, or I might be concerned about the tendency to give up.

You're probably better off just voicing something like: "To be honest, I haven't worked much with pointers. I'm happy to give it a shot though, unless you want to move onto a different question."