Interview Strategy
How to use Prep Tracker specifically to prepare for each type of interview round.
Coding Rounds
6–8 weeks out
- Start with Practice → Daily at Medium difficulty
- Focus on one topic per week — don't scatter across everything
- Use Flashcards daily to reinforce patterns (sliding window, two pointers, DFS/BFS templates)
2–4 weeks out
- Ramp up to Hard problems
- Run Battle coding rounds for your target company — these are timed and topic-weighted
- Review problems you got wrong; use the notes field to write down what you missed
Final week
- Stop learning new patterns — review what you already know
- Do 2–3 Battle sessions to sharpen time management under pressure
- Check your weak topics in the Dashboard charts and do a focused review
During the interview
- Think out loud — interviewers care about your reasoning more than the final answer
- Start with brute force, then optimize — don't stay silent while thinking
- Clarify edge cases before coding, not after
System Design (HLD)
How to structure 45 minutes
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 0–5 min | Clarify requirements — functional and non-functional |
| 5–10 min | Estimate scale — QPS, storage, read/write ratio |
| 10–15 min | Design the API |
| 15–25 min | High-level architecture — draw the boxes |
| 25–35 min | Deep dive on 1–2 components the interviewer picks |
| 35–40 min | Discuss trade-offs and alternatives |
| 40–45 min | Address failure modes and scaling |
Use the Design timer and HLD checklist in Prep Tracker to practice this structure until it's automatic.
What interviewers actually care about
- Can you scope a vague problem into a concrete design?
- Do you know the trade-offs (SQL vs NoSQL, push vs pull, sync vs async)?
- Do you think about failure, latency, and scale — not just the happy path?
Low-Level Design (LLD)
LLD rounds ask you to model a real system in code — classes, interfaces, relationships.
Practice approach
- Open an LLD problem in the Design section
- Sketch the class diagram in your editor before writing any code
- Identify which design patterns apply (Observer, Strategy, Factory, etc.)
- Use the LLD checklist to verify you haven't missed anything
Common patterns to master
- Observer — Notification systems, event buses
- Strategy — Payment methods, sorting algorithms
- Factory — Object creation with varying types
- State — Vending machines, elevator systems, ATMs
- Composite — File systems, UI trees
Behavioral Rounds
Build your bank early
Add STAR stories to the Career section as you think of them — don't wait until the week before an interview. Aim for 10 stories covering different themes.
Key themes to cover
- A time you took ownership of something that wasn't your problem
- A time you disagreed with a teammate or manager
- A time a project failed and what you learned
- A time you had to make a decision with incomplete information
- A time you mentored or were mentored
- Your most technically complex project
Before each interview
- Look up the company's behavioral focus (Amazon → Leadership Principles, Google → Googleyness)
- Filter your STAR bank by relevant tags
- Practice each story out loud — 90 seconds, clear structure, specific numbers
Peer Mock Interviews
Use the Social → Mock Sessions feature to schedule sessions with friends.
How to run an effective mock
- One person is interviewer, one is candidate — don't switch mid-session
- Interviewer should give hints only when the candidate is genuinely stuck for 3+ minutes
- After the round, give structured feedback: what went well, what to improve
- Switch roles in the next session
Do at least 5–10 mocks before a real interview loop. Talking through problems out loud is a separate skill from solving them silently.