How to Prepare for a Technical Interview: A Developer's Checklist

The Week Before: Foundations

Day 1–2: Understand the Company and Role

Study the company's product, tech stack, and engineering blog if they have one. Read the job description three times. Write down the five most critical skills they need and prepare a concrete example for each from your own experience.

Day 3–4: Data Structures and Algorithms Warm-Up

For most junior to mid-level roles, revisit arrays, hash maps, linked lists, trees, and basic graph traversal. LeetCode's "Easy" problems are sufficient for most companies. For senior roles or FAANG-style interviews, add dynamic programming and advanced graph algorithms.

Day 5–6: System Design Practice

Pick two or three common system design questions relevant to the company's domain. If you are interviewing for a job portal, design a notification service and a search service. Draw on paper, time yourself, and talk through your reasoning out loud.

The Day Before

During the Interview

Coding Rounds

Think out loud from the first second. Interviewers evaluate your process more than your answer. Clarify the problem before you write a single line. State your brute-force approach, explain why you will optimise it, then code the optimised version.

Behavioural Rounds

Every answer follows STAR: Situation, Task, Action, Result. Keep results quantifiable where possible — "reduced page load time by 40%", "increased test coverage from 20% to 85%", "mentored two junior engineers who were both promoted within a year."

After the Interview

Send a short thank-you email within 24 hours. Reference one specific thing from the conversation that excited you about the role. It takes three minutes and most candidates never do it. It is remembered.