How To Crack Mechanical Technical Interview

How To Crack Mechanical Technical Interview Questions And Answers
How To Crack Mechanical Engineering Interview
How To Crack Mechanical Technical Interview Question
How To Crack Mechanical Technical Interview Questions

Then you should start describing your technical skills and technical projects. Try to divert your interview to your area of excellence, like speak about your work or technologies which you feel most confident to answer. Experienced candidate should try to bring his achievements and excellence into talk. How to crack any Technical Interview? Explain about multicore CPU's and multi threading technologies? Explain briefly about the pin diagram of the 8086 micro controller.

Technical questions are common in product manager interviews at companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. For instance, your interviewer might ask, 'How would you explain cloud technology to a five-year-old?” These questions can feel really unsettling at first.

But the good news is that if you know how to approach them they can become fairly easy to answer. So, let's step through our suggested methods for answering technical interview questions as well as some examples to help you prepare for your interview.

Here’s an overview of what we will cover:

How to answer

1. What technical questions can you expect in PM interviews? ↑

Product Managers work with engineers to build software products. PMs don't need to be developers but they need to understand how technology works. This is why companies like Google and Amazon ask technical questions in PM interviews. There are two types of technical interview questions: Technical explanation questions and Algorithm questions.

Employers use Technical explanation questions to assess the extent of your technical knowledge and your ability to communicate that knowledge simply. For instance, you could be asked, “How does the internet work?” Interviewers are looking for a summary that’s easy to understand, and might also follow up with questions to see how deep your understanding of the topic is.

Tech companies use Algorithm questions to test if you can think like a developer. For example, an interviewer might ask, ”How would you design a method to identify if a number is prime?“ Note that you’re only likely to be asked this type of question if you have a technical background. Your interviewers are mostly interested in how you think when they ask these types of questions. They will therefore only expect you to write pseudocode, not production-level code.

2. How to answer technical interview questions ↑

A common mistake candidates make when answering technical questions is to provide an unstructured answer. In this next section, we’ll walk through two step-by-step approaches you can use to avoid that pitfall — one for Technical explanation questions and one for Algorithm questions.

2.1 Technical explanation questions↑

Technical explanation question example:

“How does the internet work?”

2.1.1 Step-by-step approach: IGotAnOffer Method

We developed the IGotAnOffer method below to help you give a clear and thorough answer to Technical explanation questions. The steps might sound abstract at first but bear with us as the example below will help make them tangible.

Clarify: Many candidates skip this step and jump straight into answering the question. This is a big red flag for interviewers. Before starting to answer make sure you understand exactly what the interviewer wants you to explain by asking clarification questions. In addition, if the topic you were asked about is extremely vast you will need to narrow down and focus your explanation on the most important aspect of the topic.
Explain step-by-step: Next, you should explain the technical concept step-by-step. When possible, use a metaphor to communicate your understanding of how it works. In this step, it’s ok to ask your interviewer for some time to structure your thoughts before delivering your answer.
Conclude and discuss: Finally, you should provide a summary of your explanation. At this point the interviewer will most likely critique your explanation, which is perfectly normal. They might continue to ask for further details to assess the depth of your understanding. Some interviewers will also keep on asking questions until they reach a technical area which you don’t master. If you don’t know something you should therefore admit it.

2.1.2 Example question with answer: How does the internet work?

Now that you know how to approach Technical explanation questions, let's look at an example.

Try answering the question below by following the method described above. Play both the role of the interviewer and candidate. Leave a comment at the bottom of the blog post with your answer. This is a great opportunity to gain some practice for your PM interviews.

The key is to answer each question without seeing other people’s answers. To do so, scroll down directly to the bottom and leave your answer before reading other candidates’ proposals.

Try this question:

“How does the internet work?”

Answer

Below you will find our proposed answer to the question. Before taking a look at it, make sure you go to the bottom of the page and answer the question by yourself in the comments section. There are only so many opportunities to prepare for technical interview questions!

Step one: Clarify

The Internet is a complex system with many features and we can’t realistically explain how all of it works in an interview. It’s therefore a good idea to clarify with the interviewer what specific features of the Internet we should focus on.

To reduce the scope of our explanation, we might say something like, “The internet is composed of many complex elements. I could talk about network connections, blockchain technology, specific web services, etc. But the most fundamental feature of the Internet is probably that websites can be accessed by typing a URL in a browser, so this is what I suggest we focus on. Is that what you have in mind too?”

How to crack mechanical technical interview questions and answers

Step two: Explain step-by-step

Let’s imagine the interviewer agrees that we should explain what happens when someone types a URL into the address bar of a web browser.

A this point, we would ask for a few seconds to gather our thoughts and to list the high level steps of what happens when a user queries a website. Once you’ve laid out your thoughts you can start walking the interviewer through the different steps.

When a user queries a website there are four systems involved:

The device on which the user is typing the website’s URL. This is often called the 'Client'
The DNS resolver which is going to help us find the IP address of the website based on its URL
The Server, from which we need to get the website data that needs to be displayed
The Internet which manages communications (e.g. queries, data, etc.) between the Client and the website’s Server

Here is what happens step-by-step:

The Client browser uses the URL (e.g. example.com) to find the website’s IP address, which is either stored in local memory or found with a DNS lookup. Let’s use a metaphor for a second. A DNS resolver is like a big phone book matching URLs and IP addresses. If you wanted to call “John Smith” on the phone first you would need to find his number in the phone book.
Next, the browser uses the IP address and queries the Internet for the website’s data. This is like if you dialed John Smith’s number, the phone company would make a connection between your phone lines.
Then the website’s Server sends appropriate data (e.g. an index.html file) back across the Internet. In our metaphor, when John Smith answers and says hello, his voice is translated into an electronic signal that’s passed through the phone lines.
Finally, the website’s data reaches the browser, which then displays a visual interpretation of that data. This is like your phone’s speaker turning the electronic signal into John Smith’s voice again.

Step three: Conclude and discuss

We would conclude by saying something like, “So, typing a URL into the address bar of a browser works a lot like making a phone call. Information is transferred back and forth between two connection points. Also, the transferred information needs to be interpreted by the receiver.”

Let’s imagine the interviewer is looking for more detail and says, “That’s an interesting explanation, but you glossed over DNS lookup which is a really important factor of the process you described. Can you explain more about that?”

Once again here we could ask for some time to list what happens step-by-step when a DNS resolver tries turning a URL into an IP address. Let’s assume we know a lot about how DNS resolvers work. Below is the information we would walk the interviewer through.

There are four major types of servers involved in DNS resolution:

The Resolving name server receives the URL from the Client and is expected to send back an IP address. To find that IP address the Resolving name server communicates with three other servers: Root servers, Top Level Domain (TLD) servers, and Authoritative name servers.
Authoritative name servers provide the IP address of specific websites (e.g. www.example.com). However, there are many Authoritative name servers, and the Resolving name server does not know which one to contact to find the IP address.
A TLD server can point to the Authoritative name server of any website that ends with the particular domain extension it’s responsible for. As an example, a ‘.com’ TLD server stores the location of the Authoritative name server for all websites that end with ‘.com’. However, the Resolving name server does not know the location of the TLD server it needs to contact when it begins searching for the IP address.
A Root server provides the location of TLD servers. The Resolving name server always knows where to find Root servers. So, contacting a Root server is the Resolving name server’s first step when searching for the IP address it’s trying to find.

Here is how the resolution works step-by-step:

The Resolving name server queries a Root server, which points to the appropriate TLD server. Let’s use our phone book metaphor again. When calling John Smith, we would start our search for his number in the phonebook by deciding between the yellow pages for business numbers versus white pages for personal numbers. This is what the Root name server does for us.
The Resolving name server then queries the appropriate TLD server, which points to the Authoritative name server. This would be like using the category and alphabetical sorting of the phonebook to find the specific page that lists all the “Smiths.”
The Resolving name server then queries the appropriate Authoritative name server, which will provide the website’s IP address. There could be a lot of “John Smiths” listed in the phonebook, so you would use street addresses to determine the exact phone number for the specific John Smith you’re trying to call.

The interviewer interrupts and asks, “Another important element related to DNS is caching — can you explain how that works?”

At this point let’s assume we don’t know anything about caching, so we would say something like, “That’s really interesting, but I’m not sure how caching works in DNS processes. I would need to look into it a bit more to give an accurate answer.”

Remember, interviewers are likely to ask follow up questions until they reach the limits of your knowledge so it’s ok to say when you don’t know something.

2.2 Algorithm questions: IGotAnOffer Method↑

Algorithm question example:

”How would you design a method to identify if a number is prime?”

2.2.1 Step-by-step approach: IGotAnOffer Method

We developed the IGotAnOffer method below to help you give a clear and thorough answer to Algorithm questions. The steps might sound abstract at first but bear with us as the example below will help make them tangible.

Clarify: Many candidates skip this step and just start writing code. Before doing this, you need to make sure you understand the question correctly by asking clarification questions and playing back what you understood to the interviewer. Doing this upfront is extremely important because you can’t answer the question correctly if your understanding is not accurate.
Solve an example: Start by answering the question for a simple example. This will help you figure out how to write your algorithm for the generic solution in the next step.
Write your generic solution: Once you’ve solved an example you should write an algorithm in pseudocode that solves the generic case. You should show the piece of paper you write on to your interviewer or use a whiteboard when possible.
Discuss your solution: It’s a good idea to finish your answer by sense-checking your algorithm with an example. You should also list edge cases you would want to test your algorithm on but there’s usually no need to run through them unless the interviewer asks you to. Finally, if you have a very technical background, such as a Computer Science degree, the interviewer might also ask about the trade-offs of your code (e.g. memory vs. speed performance).

2.2.2 Example question with answer: How would you design a method to identify if a number is prime?

Now that you know how to approach Algorithm questions, let's look at an example.

The key is to answer each question without seeing other people’s answers. To do so, scroll down directly to the bottom and leave your answer before reading other candidates’ proposals.

Try this question:

”How would you design a method to identify if a number is prime?”

Answer

Step one: Clarify

First we want to confirm our understanding of prime numbers with the interviewer. The main question that comes to mind here is how prime numbers are defined:

What exactly makes a number prime?

Let’s imagine the interviewer gives us a few details related to prime numbers. We would then summarize to make sure we understand correctly, and say something like, “So, a prime number is a whole number greater than one, and whose only factors are one and itself. In other words, a prime number divided by any whole number between one and itself (excluded) will produce a remainder.”

Note: If you’re not familiar with the concept of a remainder, one way to think about it is as the fraction left over after dividing. For example, 9 / 4 = (4 / 4) + (4 / 4) + (1 / 4). The number 4 divides into 9 exactly twice with 1 left over. That leftover 1 is the remainder of 9 / 4. A remainder of 0 is produced when there is nothing left over. For example, 8 / 4 = (4 / 4) + (4 / 4). The number 4 divides into 8 twice, and there is nothing (0 / 4) left over.

Step two: Solve an example

First, let’s pick a simple number and think about what we would do to determine if it’s a prime number. For instance, how could we determine if the number 7 is prime or not?

The first condition is that it has to be greater than one
The second condition is that when dividing 7 by any whole number between 1 and 7 (excluded) there should be none that produces a remainder of 0

We know that 7 is greater than 1, so the first condition is met.

How To Crack Mechanical Technical Interview Questions And Answers

To meet the second condition, 7 divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 all need to produce a remainder greater than 0. If dividing by any of these numbers produces a remainder of 0, we know 7 is not prime.

7 / 2 produces a remainder of 1
7 / 3 produces a remainder of 1
7 / 4 produces a remainder of 3
7 / 5 produces a remainder of 2
7 / 6 produces a remainder of 1

So, since 7 does not have any other factors besides 1 and 7, the second condition is met and we can conclude that 7 is a prime number.

Note: we don’t need to check numbers larger than 7 as we know it is not divisible by 8, 9, 10, etc.

Step three: Write your generic solution

Now let’s think about how we can generalize this logic. At this point we would start writing out our solution in pseudocode.

Let’s write an algorithm which takes a number N as an input and determines if N is prime or not as an output.

First, we should check if N is greater than 1. If it’s not, we know that it’s not a prime number and our algorithm should return “false.”

Step one: if (N <= 1) return false;

Next, we'll need to start at the next integer above 1 (which is 2), and check if there are any other factors between 2 and (N - 1).

In other words, if any of the numbers between 2 and (N - 1) produce a remainder of 0, we know N is not a prime number.

This should work for any situation where N is greater than 2. But, we also know that 2 is a prime number, and if we divide 2 by 2 then we get a remainder of 0, which would incorrectly output 'false' (i.e. not prime) for the number 2. We can solve this by adding a simple step. See below for how we could approach this:

Step two: i = 2;
Step three: if (N 2) return true;
Step four: N % i = R;
Step five: if (R 0) return false;

Note: “” is standard notation to test if two variables are equal to each other. And “%” is standard coding notation for a function that calculates the remainder of a division between two numbers.

This gets us about half way there, but we still need to add something to move us on to the next integer between 2 and N each time the remainder produced is different than 0, until we finally get to N.

Step six: else i++;
Step seven: while i < N, go back to step four;

If N is not divisible by any number between 1 and N (excluded), then N has passed our second condition, and we can confirm it is a prime number.

Step eight: return true;

The whole algorithm then looks like this:

Step one: if ( N <= 1) return false;
Step two: i = 2;
Step three: if (N 2) return true;
Step four: N % i = R;
Step five: if (R 0) return false;
Step six: else i++;
Step seven: while i < N, go back to step four;
Step eight: return true;

Step four: Discuss your implementation with the interviewer

Let’s now test out our generalized algorithm on another easy number, like 10.

Step one: 10 > 1
Step two: i = 2
Step three: if (10 2) return true;
Step four: 10 % 2 = 0 = R
Step five: R 0, so return false;

Our algorithm confirms that 10 is not a prime number, as 2 is also a factor.

Finally, we could call out non-integer and negative numbers as edge cases we would want to test. We might also highlight that we could make a more condensed version of our algorithm by using a for loop:

if ( N <= 1) return false;
for (i = 2; i < N; i++) {
N % i = R;
if (R 0) return false;
}
return true;

3. List of sample interview questions: Technical ↑

If you would like feedback on your answer to any of the questions listed here, you can leave your answer below and our team will get back to you. If you'd like to learn about the other types of questions you may face, you can also visit our ultimate guide to product manager interview questions.

3.1 Practice Technical explanation questions

Here is a list of Technical explanation questions that were asked in PM interviews at Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook, according to data from Glassdoor.com:

Explain recursion to my grandmother
What technologies would you use to build a live stream video service?
Explain the concept of 'protocol' to a 4-year-old child
What is the difference between C++ and Java?
Explain what happens when executing mergesort
When are Bayesian methods more appropriate than 'Artificial Intelligence' techniques for predictive analytics?
How would you most efficiently store large images in a database?
Explain the concept of big O notation
How would you get authentication to work across domains

3.2 Practice Algorithm questions

Here is a list of Algorithm questions that were asked in PM interviews at Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, according to data from Glassdoor.com:

Design a method that removes every other node from a linked list
Write a program to randomly shuffle an array of numbers
How would you output a tree in column sequence from left to right
Invert the words of a sentence in a string
Write a function that returns how many digits are in a number
Take in an unsorted array with duplicates and return it with no duplicates
Write a function that determines if an array of ‘chars’ is a palindrome
How can you find and then remove the second to last element in an infinite list?

Now that you have a list of sample questions to work with, it’s important to consider how you will practice with these questions.

4. How to practice technical questions ↑

It’s best to take a systematic approach to make the most of your practice time, and we recommend the following three steps:

4.1 Learn a consistent method for answering technical questions

In this article, we’ve outlined a step-by-step method you can use to solve technical questions. We’d encourage you to first memorize the basic steps, and then try solving a couple of the sample questions on paper.

This will help you to understand the structure of a good answer. This is a good first step, BUT just knowing the method is not enough, you also need to be able to apply the steps in interview conditions.

4.2 Practice by yourself or with peers

A great way to practice the method for solving technical questions, is to interview yourself out loud. This may sound strange, but it’s an excellent way to improve the way you communicate your answers during an interview. Play the role of both the candidate and the interviewer, asking questions and answering them, just like two people would in an interview.

If you have friends or peers who can do mock interviews with you, that's a great option too. This can be especially helpful if your friend has experience with PM interviews, or is at least familiar with the process. You can also find peers to practice with on our new PM mock interview platform.

In addition to practicing by yourself, and with peers, it can be a huge advantage to do mock interviews with experienced PM interviewers.

4.3 Practice with experienced PM interviewers

If you know a Product Manager who can help you, that's fantastic! But for most of us, it's tough to find the right connections to make this happen. And it might also be difficult to practice multiple hours with that person unless you know them really well.

Here's the good news. We've already made the connections for you. We’ve created a coaching service where you can practice 1-on-1 with ex-interviewers from Google, Amazon, and other leading tech companies. Learn more and start scheduling sessions today.

PM Interview Coaching

Any questions about PM interviews?

If you have any questions about product manager interviews, do not hesitate to ask them below and we will be more than happy to answer them. All questions are good questions, so go ahead!

Keep reading:product manager interview articles

Technical interview

Main objective behind having a technical interview is to judge your technical skills for the role you are applying for.

Dressing sense and etiquette:

Men: You must be nicely dressed. Have a light color formal shirt with dark color pant.Use black formal shoes (avoid shoes without lace). Use full length socks which match your pant color. Black leather belt with a decent buckle. Clean shave and nicely perfumed.

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Women: Check out what women of that company usually wear. When you are in doubt, you should wear a suit with a skirt or pants. Try to go for darker color if opting suits and with skirts prefer wearing knee-length skirts. Don’t go with heavy makeup and too much jewelry. If you have documents to carry, you can go for a professional briefcase.

When you enter in room greet with a nice smile on your face and pay attention to time, like if it’s dot 4 or past 4’o clock greet him evening. Many a times you may see that chair is placed at a distance, so never try to move the chair, sit on that chair wherever it is kept.

Research work about company.

This is what makes you stand different. Preparation, doesn’t just mean
passing knowledge about a company, but rather in-depth research about the firm and its industry. This includes company achievements , recent project works, any collaborations/acquirements, recent awards, any contributions, socio activities, recent technologies company is working on, tools and softwares used, total number of employees, total job centres. To get all this information you need to check companies website, various social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Glassdoor.

Brush up your technical knowledge:

If you are a college students then go through basics of technologies and your project works, if experienced go through your major projects, tools and technologies used so far. Practise advanced topics and some practical problems on you technologies.
College students must be prepared with at least 2 of your technical subjects and 1 programming language. For CS/IT students it is better to choose subjects from below list:

DBMS
Software Testing and SDLC
Operating System
Data Structure
Networking

While experienced guys should have deep knowledge of couple of technologies, repository management tool (ex. Git), project management tool (ex. JIRA), project development model (ex. waterfall, agile) etc.

Your Introduction:

How To Crack Mechanical Technical Interview Question

This is the most important part of interview process and you should use it wisely for leading you one step ahead. You should start with your basic intro which includes your

Personal Details
College and schooling Details

Then you should start describing your technical skills and technical projects. Try to divert your interview to your area of excellence, like speak about your work or technologies which you feel most confident to answer.
Experienced candidate should try to bring his achievements and excellence into talk. For example 3 years of experience in Amdocs core product building group.

When you have no answer:

You are surely going to face a situation, where you have no answer for the question. This question is not asked by the intention to test your knowledge but to test your flexibility towards new technologies. So, here you are not supposed to give any irrelevant answers or sound negative, you must try to show positive attitude towards learning and capturing new terms and technologies by saying something like this – Sorry I am unaware of this technology but surely wanna try to learn it.

How To Crack Mechanical Technical Interview Questions

Know your USP:

You are there to sell yourself and if you notice a sales person selling a product he always mentions you all the unique feature first, and then all other common positive points and never tells his major drawbacks to you. He gives you no reason not to buy that product. Even if he mentions the common points that are present in other products as well , he mentions it in a very unique and different way that puts some weightage to his product.
Similarly you are supposed to find your own USP (Unique Selling Point) and try to sell yourself as high as you can.

Extra Tips:

Ask questions and your questions should reflect how well you understood the company and the role you are being hired for.
Try to look confident when answering questions even though you might be nervous, and best way is to have a smile on your face.
Be prepared for some puzzles and practical questions to solve.
You need to show how eager you are to join the company, which will make them sure that you are going to stay for a longer time with them.
Try to speak about some of your best achievements and describe how some of your qualities helped you to get those achievements.