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Interview Prep thumbnail

Interview Prep

170 courses5 categories

Part of LearnBusiness

Interview prep is the playbook for getting through modern tech hiring loops. The pipeline at most product companies in 2026 is still recognizably the LeetCode-era format — recruiter screen, technical phone, then 3–5 on-site rounds — but the rounds themselves are split into distinct tracks: data-structures-and-algorithms, system design (backend and frontend), language-specific deep dives, behavioral / leadership, and increasingly an AI-tooling fluency round where you are observed using Copilot or Claude Code on a small task.

The frameworks that survived contact with thousands of candidates are practical. For DSA: pattern recognition over memorization (two-pointer, sliding window, monotonic stack, BFS/DFS variants, dynamic programming on subproblems). For system design: requirements clarification first, then API sketch, then data model, then scaling story — never start with "I'll use Kafka." For behavioral: STAR-format stories prepared in advance, mapped to the most common prompts. Companies have not stopped asking these questions; the questions just got more refined.

What you'll find under this topic

  • Data structures and algorithms: arrays, hash maps, trees, graphs, heaps, dynamic programming
  • System design interviews: scope, capacity estimation, data model, scaling tradeoffs
  • Frontend system design: component architecture, state, rendering, accessibility
  • Coding interview patterns: two-pointer, sliding window, recursion, backtracking
  • Behavioral and leadership: STAR stories, conflict resolution, prioritization
  • Career strategy: resume, levelling, compensation negotiation, internal transfers
  • Company-specific prep: FAANG, mid-size, late-stage startups, EU/UK markets

The candidates who clear the loop at Google, Meta, Amazon, Stripe, Coinbase, Atlassian, and the well-known late-stage startups consistently report the same thing: 80% of preparation is volume on a small set of patterns, 20% is mock interviews with a real human. The courses under this topic cover both halves.

Top 10 picks for 2026

Categories(5)

Algorithms & Data Structures thumbnail
Algorithms & Data Structures
Algorithms & Data Structures form the backbone of computer science and software engineering, providing essential…
Career & Interviews thumbnail
Career & Interviews
Career and interviews is the practical side of software engineering: getting hired, getting promoted, deciding when to…
Frontend System Design thumbnail
Frontend System Design
Frontend System Design involves crafting the architecture of client-side applications, focusing on the unique…
Preparing for an interview thumbnail
Preparing for an interview
Preparing for an interview involves understanding various formats and honing skills necessary to effectively…
System Design & Architecture thumbnail
System Design & Architecture
System design is the discipline of choosing how a software system is laid out at the level above any single codebase…

Courses(170)

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Frequently asked questions

How much LeetCode is enough?
100–200 problems is usually plenty if you pick them deliberately by pattern rather than grinding randomly. The point is internalising patterns (two pointers, sliding window, BFS/DFS, dynamic programming buckets, heaps, graph traversal) — once you recognise them under interview pressure, additional volume has rapidly diminishing returns. Quality of review beats raw count.
How should I prepare for system design interviews?
Build a small library of templates (URL shortener, news feed, chat, rate limiter, geo-distributed cache) and practice talking through them out loud. Read 'Designing Data-Intensive Applications', some real engineering blogs (Discord, Figma, GitHub, Stripe, Cloudflare), and a couple of system-design-focused video resources. Mock interviews matter — the format is as much about communication as design.
Do behavioral interviews really matter?
Yes — they're often the deciding signal at mid-level and above and almost always the deciding signal at senior+. Have 6–10 strong stories ready (project, conflict, mistake, leadership, ambiguity), structured loosely as STAR. Vague answers are the single most common reason otherwise-strong candidates fail loops at top-tier companies.
How long should I prepare for FAANG-style interviews?
3–6 months part-time for engineers already shipping code, 6–12 months from a weaker baseline. Front-load algorithmic patterns, layer in system design once those click, then add behavioural prep in the final month. Last-minute cramming rarely works because the bottleneck is pattern recognition under pressure, which only builds with repetition.
Take-home assignments vs live coding — which is harder?
Different skills. Take-homes reward production-quality code, README hygiene, scoping, and tests under a time budget. Live coding rewards talking out loud while writing reasonable code without an editor's full creature comforts. Many strong engineers excel at one and freeze on the other; practise both rather than picking only the format that feels natural.