Common Pitfalls in Coding Assessments & How to Avoid Them

Why Small Mistakes Cost Big Opportunities

Timed online coding tests frequently eliminate candidates not because they could not solve the problem, but because of unhandled boundary conditions, integer overflow, or inefficient I/O operations.

Top Checkpoints Before Submitting Code

• Check edge cases: empty inputs, arrays with 1 element, negative numbers, maximum constraints.
• Watch out for integer overflow: use 64-bit integers (e.g. long long in C++ or BigInt) when accumulating sums.
• Analyze time and space complexity against input limits (e.g. $N \le 10^5$ requires $O(N \log N)$ or $O(N)$).