Not long ago, we were contacted by a candidate applying for a software engineer position at PayPal. He had been grinding LeetCode for months and felt well-prepared, but in a previous big tech interview, nerves and disorganized responses led to rejection. This time, facing PayPal’s process, he chose not to go it alone and signed up for our real-time remote interview support at CSOAHELP.

This article shares the details of his PayPal interview experience and how CSOAHELP helped him truly perform to his potential—and move to the next round.

The technical interview with PayPal was conducted over Zoom. After some quick small talk, the interviewer shared this question:

No Pairs Allowed

For each word in a list of words, if any two adjacent characters are equal, change one of them. Determine the minimum number of substitutions such that the final string contains no adjacent equal characters.

words = ['add', 'boook', 'break']
# output: [1, 1, 0]

At first glance, it’s not a difficult problem. The candidate quickly realized: "Just iterate through each character and check if it’s the same as the previous one. If so, count it as a replacement and skip the next character." Conceptually, he got it. But under pressure, expressing that clearly—or writing clean code—was far from guaranteed.

That’s where we came in. Before the interview, we had everything prepared: our silent assistant system running ToDesk in the background on a secondary device. All prompts were quietly displayed as on-screen text. He only needed to read or paraphrase.

As the interviewer explained the question, the candidate showed signs of tension. We immediately pushed a suggested response:

"I’ll iterate through each character in the string, checking if the current character is equal to the previous one. If it is, I’ll increment the replacement count and skip the next character to avoid overlapping substitutions."

He followed it smoothly, with natural pace and clear logic. The interviewer nodded along, satisfied.

When asked to write code, we promptly sent a clean function template. The candidate simply needed to understand and type it out:

He wrote it out confidently, explaining while coding. The logic was clear, the code concise, and he made zero mistakes—far more efficient than going solo.

But the real test came with the follow-up questions.

The interviewer asked: What's the time complexity of your solution? Would it still work well for very long strings? How about a list containing thousands of ultra-long words?

These questions are challenging even for strong candidates, especially under stress. With limited ability to articulate such ideas clearly, the candidate needed help. We instantly pushed structured answers:

"Since we scan each string once and skip one character when a duplicate is found, the time complexity is O(n), where n is the length of the string."

"As this is a linear-time algorithm, it scales well even for long strings. The overall complexity is O(total number of characters), which is acceptable under typical interview constraints."

He spoke them aloud, one section at a time, calmly and confidently. When the interviewer pushed further: What if the replacement character must not be equal to the characters before or after it? How would you ensure that?

We immediately prompted: try all letters from 'a' to 'z' and pick the first one that differs from both neighbors. We also sent a code snippet:

The candidate explained the concept and added: “This is a strategy I would use in a later version to ensure safe substitutions.” The interviewer acknowledged the approach.

The entire interview lasted about 40 minutes. Afterward, the candidate told us this was his "best performance ever." He usually performs similarly when practicing alone, but under pressure, things often fall apart. This time, someone was there to guide him at every step.

The interviewer’s feedback: “Very clear solution. I like how you considered scalability. Let’s move forward.”

Many candidates fail tech interviews not because they’re unqualified, but because they struggle to express themselves clearly when nervous. At CSOAHELP, we guide you through every answer with structured phrasing, even when your mind goes blank. You just follow the prompts.

This isn’t cheating. It’s not about giving you answers. It’s about preparing the right cues, at the right time, so your real skills can shine.

We’ve helped hundreds of engineers pass interviews at Meta, Stripe, Shopee, TikTok, and more. We also support international students, career switchers, and new grads breaking into tech.

If you have an important interview coming up, don’t go in alone.

We can:

• Provide real-time, second-screen support with structured prompts, phrasing templates, and even code suggestions.
• Run mock interviews to identify your weak spots and train your communication pace.
• Customize interview strategies based on the company and role—no generic prep, only what the interviewer truly cares about.

This PayPal candidate’s success wasn’t luck. It was because someone had the right words ready before he even knew what to say.

Are you ready to win your next interview too?

经过csoahelp的面试辅助，候选人获取了良好的面试表现。如果您需要面试辅助或面试代面服务，帮助您进入梦想中的大厂，请随时联系我。

If you need more interview support or interview proxy practice, feel free to contact us. We offer comprehensive interview support services to help you successfully land a job at your dream company.