2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Upon degree acquisition, computer science (CS) majors with aspirations to pursue a career in industry are faced with the challenge of effectively showcasing their skills to prospective employers and hiring managers. Technical interviews are one approach used by tech companies to comprehensively evaluate a candidate’s skillset and preparation for potential job placement in their respective corporations. A CS major’s inability to showcase appropriate skills and preparation during technical interviews could result in missed opportunities for a lucrative career in tech. This problem potentially contributes to the high job demand in tech and the low supply of prospective graduates to fill them.

Establishing ways to expose CS majors to technical interview practices, and effectively prepare them for success is a growing topic that needs more attention. In academic settings, approaches for gauging technical interview exposure, preparation, and impact on CS majors during matriculation are expanding. Yet, the existence of systematic studies that yield critical details about the impacts of such exposure and preparation over time are needed. Likewise, there are a lack of studies that emphasize relative efforts at earlier stages of student matriculation.

This article discusses a study that exposed early CS majors to technical interview practices in the form of group-based interactive whiteboard problem solving activities. This study was conducted over a span of four semesters (Fall 2020 – Spring 2022). The targeted students for the study were enrolled in either CS2 or an Object-Oriented Programming course at a Mid-Atlantic Historically Black University in the United States. The results revealed that majority of these students completed assigned problem sets from these group-based activities successfully. When gauging psycho-social attributes (such as perception, comfort, and anxiety) exhibited during these activities, the students showed positive perceptions, adequate levels of comfort, and moderate levels of anxiety. It was also found that conceptualizing/understanding the given problem along with the verbal communication with assigned partners were the easiest aspects of these activities. Likewise, coding the actual problem was found to be the hardest aspect. Outcomes from this study contribute to practices that can be adopted to aid early CS majors with technical interview preparation.