As in any other interview, communication is very important here. You need to ask relevant and important clarifying questions to reduce ambiguity, clearly articulate your technical ideas, and drive the conversation in the right direction in a structured manner. It’s important to pay attention to any input/feedback you receive from the interviewer and use that feedback in your design.

Here are some of the things that the interviewer is looking at:

• Structured communication and logical flow
  • It’s vital to drive the conversation in an organised way, logically moving from one topic to the next, briefly explaining the topics with clarity and ease, demonstrating good grasp of various technical concepts.
• Respond well to interviewer’s questions, comments and feedback
  • Interviewers might intervene to ask clarifying questions, dig deep into a topic, when they think you are deviating from the important stuff, or they need to gather some signals in a particular area.
  • It’s essential to listen to them carefully and calmly and act on it. Don’t try to ignore their input or get defensive.
  • Respond to technical questions without any rush, after clearly understanding the question.
  • Sometimes, interviewers also drop indirect hints. It’s important to catch these hints and incorporate them in your answer. This shows active listening.
• Trade-off analysis
  • In System Design there can be multiple possible solutions. It’s crucial to talk about a few options wherever applicable, and explain the reasoning behind your design choices.
  • It’s important to do trade-off analysis and explain what would work best in the current scenario.
• Express technical details clearly
  • Interviewers are looking at your ability to clearly express the technical details and articulate your ideas comprehensively.
  • This is an integral part of working as a Software Engineer and the interviewers need to make sure that you are on par with other Software Engineers working at their firm.