ETA Program Guide

2020
2021
 Overview



Lyft’s Early Talent Access (ETA) Program has one goal in mind:
prepare students for Lyft’s internship interview process through
collaboration, in-depth training, and detailed feedback. 

The Early Talent Access (ETA) Program at Lyft will simulate a

real technical phone interview. You will have the opportunity to
practice in a professional environment and also receive direct
and immediate technical feedback on areas of improvement
without affecting your candidacy. Enrolling in this program
does not guarantee you an interview or an internship spot at
Lyft - it is purely meant to help you.

This document will go over the ETA Program timeline,

expectations for before, during, and after the mock interview,
as well as a thorough list of resources that you can use to
become successful in your technical recruiting efforts - here at
Lyft and beyond!
 Program Timeline
KICK-OFF WEBINAR
Join us for a Kickoff Webinar to learn more
about our internship opportunities and the
structure of the ETA Program! We will answer
all questions before the four workshops get BYTEBOARD 101
started. Get a breakdown of the first step in our
interview process from the team that created
it. Learn what these assessments are
evaluating you on and strategies for how you
can be successful at them.

TECHNICAL INTERVIEW PREP

Led by the Lyft’s engineering team, this deep
dive breaks down the best practices for Lyft’s
second interview, focused on Computer
Science Fundamentals, as well as an overview
on Data Structures & Algorithms.

PROGRAMMING CHALLENGE PREP

Led by the Lyft’s engineering team, this deep
dive breaks down the best practices for Lyft’s
second interview, focused on Computer
Science Fundamentals, as well as an overview
MOCK INTERVIEW on Data Structures & Algorithms.
The moment you’ve been preparing for! Apply
what you learned in all three technical
workshops and put your learning into practice.
At this point, select applicants will be invited
for a unique opportunity to have a1-on-1
interview with a Lyft Engineer.
FEEDBACK & NEXT STEPS
This is the final stage in the ETA Program!
Congrats! This includes an opportunity to chat
with a Lyft engineer along with peers to
discuss interview feedback and helpful tips on
your actual interview. This is your time to ask
tons of questions!
 Technical Interview Tips & Strategies
Main Purposes of Technical Interviews:

  
 Values Fit & Communication

- Are you passionate about the role & the company?
- Can you communicate your ideas effectively?

Developing/Testing Mindset
- Have you tested and debugged your code?
- Do you know how to come up with test/edge cases?

Coding Fundamentals
- Are you proficient in the language you’re coding in?
- Can you code efficiently and properly?

The greatest thing you can do / accomplish through an

interview is to show them your thought process, and
that you think like a developer/engineer. These steps
below can help you accomplish that. It’ll also help you
find the optimal solution along the way:

ASK - Understand the Problem

• Do not start coding immediately
• Ask clarifying questions - lots of them!
• Walk through the examples (if applicable)

BRAINSTORM - Think out loud

• Practice walking through your code out loud
• State what you know, and what you don’t know
• Start determining the correct solution path

COMPLETE - Find a solution

• Implement the solution, starting w/ brute force
• Use good design priciples (classes/helpers)

DEVELOP - Follow-up & test

• Be ready for the follow-up questions!
• Discuss all the small cases and edge cases
• Talk about efficiency, scalability, and cleanliness
 Feedback
We conduct hundreds of interviews, and we have collected a wide array of feedbacks from intern
candidates. In many instances, we give similar feedback to candidates - here are some examples of
common feedback pointers:

• Be ready to talk about the details of the projects/

experiences that you wrote on your resume
• Ask more clarifying question!!!
• Plan before you start coding - and verbalize them
• Prepare some questions to ask the interviewer at the
end (about their experience, about Lyft, etc.)
• Getting an error during an interview is normal - take a
systemic approach to finding the root of the bug and
talk about your thought process here

Resources & Things to Know

Resources & More
• Lyft General Blog & Lyft Engineering Blog
- Here is a specific post about engineering interviews @ Lyft
• Lyft Blog & Lyft Engineering Blog
• •Cracking the Coding
Engineering Interview
interviews @ Lyft
-
• Mentoring
Focus on Ch.Myself (Ep
1-4, 8, 9, 11 1) with
(core Hallie Lomax
topics)

• HackerRank:
• Technical Codingend-to-end
Interviewtechnical
with a Lyftrecruiting platform
Engineer [Video]
• Leetcode:
• Cracking general Interview
the Coding technical interview prep
- The Interview and Beyond section has general interview strategies, technical
questions, and offer negotiations (highly recommended)
- Prioritize Chapters 1-4, 8, 9, and 11. These cover core interview topics
• Common
• Code Complete: Interview Algorithms
A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
- Reverse list (iterative or recursive)
- Widely
- Breadth considered as one of the best practical programming guides
First Search // Depth First Search
The Second
- algorithms,
- Tree Edition
common is fully
search, updated
hash tables and revised with new code samples
• HackerRank: end-to-end
• Language-specific technical
Tools recruiting platform
& Syntax
-
• Leetcode: Creating
generallists,
technical interview
data types prep
and structures
- Inbuilt functions, iterations and tables
• Test Cases
• Common Interview Algorithms: Reverse list (iterative or recursive) - Breadth First
- Consider
Search all the edge cases
// Depth First and
Searchkeep- Tree
askingalgorithms,
questions! common search, hash tables

• Language-specific Tools & Syntax: Creating lists, data types and structures -
Inbuilt functions, iterations and tables
• Test Cases - Consider all the edge cases and keep asking questions!

Questions? Reach out to ETAprogram@lyft.com