The missing step in interview prep: connecting code to business value


Is addressing much more coding obstacles your answer to a fallen short task interview? That could be the wrong solution. What you missed in your interview prep is converting the code outcome to company value.

The Missing Step in Interview Prep

Picture by writer|Canva

When planning for information interviews , the majority of prospects consume over solving the coding difficulty. Write the code. Pass the examination instance. Enhance the runtime. Done. Rinse and repeat up until you reach the variety of addressed challenges worth extoling.

This alone will not obtain you a task. Employers don’t employ you to create questions in a vacuum cleaner. They hire you to utilize data to drive choices Simply put, your output must connect straight to service impact

What do firms desire?

Let’s begin with what they do not want. They don’t desire somebody simply to return a number. If your code output shows that the ordinary order value is $ 42, what does that actually mean? Is it high, is it low, just sufficient? Your code returns facts You’re revealing you’re an experienced service technician able to obtain realities from data. They don’t require that.

Business require a person to tell them what to do They desire candidates who can link the void between truths and decisions by turning result into insights that affect company approaches, e.g., rates, marketing, and sales.

What abilities are the companies seeking? Simply put, you should be able to:

The Missing Step in Interview Prep

Photo by author|Napkin AI

The structure for linking code to organization worth

When planning for interviews, do not simply think about the code; link it to business worth by following these steps.

The Missing Step in Interview Prep

Image by writer|Napkin AI

Allow’s now find out exactly how to use this framework in method.

Practical example

We’ll address an interview inquiry, show the outcome, then demonstrate just how to assign business value to it.

Meeting concern

The inquiry is from Natera meetings.

It needs you to determine the churn rate for September 2021 as a percent. The assumption is that if the customer’s agreement end is NULL, the contract is still energetic. In addition, if a customer started or completed their agreement on a particular day, they must still be counted as a client on that particular day.

We’ll create the code in SQL. Yet no matter in which shows language you do it in the interview; the point is always to connect it to service worth.

The dataset

There is only one table, and it’s named natera_subscriptions Below’s the data.

The Missing Step in Interview Prep

The code

Here’s the solution in PostgreSQL.

It uses a common table expression that selects all registrations that started on or prior to 1 September 2021 and are either still energetic or ended after 1 September 2021

The outer SELECT statement then determines the spin rate for September 2021, i.e., agreements that ended before September 30

  WITH sept_first AS 
(SELECT *
FROM natera_subscriptions
WHERE contract_start <

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *