So I'm a 4th year computer science student, and my school has mandatory Co-Op requirements, of which I need to complete an internship for 3 semesters. I have already completed 2 semesters at a tech company, and have continued to work part time for them for the past year. Though, for my last co-op block I wanted to try to go for a bigger more well known company that would look good on my resume after graduation. For several reasons, I was looking for something in the Boston area and I came across two companies that seemed like great places to work at, so I began preparing.

For both companies, the process was very similar: I applied, got a phone interview, completed a coding assignment, made it to the final technical interview. For both technical interviews, I did some research and found the typical prompts that these companies ask.  I took a look at both of them and they both involved a relatively simple challenge that involved string manipulation in the language of your choice. Before both interviews I practiced these challenges to make sure I could do them, it was no problem, could do each of them my first try in about 15 minutes. However, when it came to sitting down with their engineers, it was totally different.

Even though I literally practiced the problem before hand, I for some reason kept blanking on things during both interviews. For some reason I was finding it extremely challenging to talk and code at the same time. The first company interview went very well except for the coding portion in which they gave me feedback saying "I didn't seem confident in my coding skills", which is why I didn't get that position. For the second interview I couldn't even finish the assignment in the full hour even though I practiced it beforehand and did it in 15 minutes on my own. It is very frustrating because I feel that out of all the aspects involved in an interview, coding is in reality my strongest, but it just seems completely different when I have to explain what I'm doing while I'm doing it.

Has anyone else experienced this sort of thing? If so, how did you get past it/prepare for it?