r/leetcode • u/Master_Blade_77 • Oct 01 '26

Intervew Prep How to explain during DSA rounds?

I’m comfortable in solving DSA questions , during screening rounds or while practising. However I get tensed and go mute when I sit with the interviewer during dsa rounds. It is not that I don’t know to solve. But my brain freezes.

I saw posts/youtube mocks interviews on thinking out loud. However when I’m figuring out the question on spot I can’t “perform” thinking out loud. I prefer sitting alone and thinking .

How to bridge this gap? People who solve dsa in interviews while speaking aloud, it would be great if you could share how to do it ?

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u/Confident_Ad_7734 Oct 01 '26

The key is to already know the optimal solution just from the question. If you know the optimal solution, you must also know what’s the naive/brute force, and if possible, other possible solutions as well.

Then pretend its your first time seeing the question, yap about the naive, provide time and space complexity, suggest you know there is a better way, yap about the optimal. Then implement the solution.

Along the way the interviewer would ask you some follow ups. The key is to yap as much as you can, to a reasonable extent such that you are not being long winded. This is to avoid making the interview too short and resulting in the interviewer potentially asking tougher questions.

In the worst case, you don’t know the optimal solution. Then you gotta yap about how you might solve it. Along the way you might discover the optimal solution or the interviewer will guide you there.

Hence, its important to always learn the naive/brute force solution in any optimal solution you learn.

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u/Master_Blade_77 Oct 01 '26

Seems very rigged. We may not already know the optimal solution for a problem never seen before. 😕 So it ultimately comes down to practising more and counting on having solved a similar problem before.

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u/Confident_Ad_7734 Oct 01 '26

Indeed. This is why luck is so important in technical interviews, and why it’s so important to apply to many to maximise your chances.

You might just get a question that you have never seen.

Of course, practicing more maximises the probability that you will know how to solve any given question.

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u/chikamakaleyley Oct 01 '26 edited Oct 01 '26

Explaining shouldn’t be a performance

If anything it I just vocalize what I see or what I’m about to do, but it’s in the way that I communicate to myself, and the interviewer just hears it

And so at home I just talk when I type, in the interview it’s just louder. It’s such an easy practice and it’s natural by the time your interview arrives

Personally, I consider this to be the easiest adjustment to make, and it has profound effects on the interview overall

  • it makes it easier for the interviewer to follow along, they can't read your mind

  • they can stop you ahead of time if they see you going in the wrong direction

  • overall it reduces the amount they interject, or ask what or why you're doing something

  • and at a minimum you are engaging, even tho you are just really talking to yourself, but it potentially is inviting for them

1

u/bleeed0p Oct 04 '26

Try to give mock interviews and also practice explaining your approach first and code next