I used to prep for tech interviews the way most people do: panic-grind Leetcode for two weeks, memorize answers to "tell me about yourself," and hope for the best.
It worked sometimes. Mostly it didn't. And when it didn't, I had no idea what went wrong.
So I built a system. Nothing fancy — just a repeatable process that takes the randomness out of interview prep. I've refined it through my own prep process and it's made a real difference. Here's the whole thing.
Step 1: Know what they're actually screening for
Before you prep anything, figure out what the company cares about. This sounds obvious, but most people skip it.
Read the job posting carefully. Not the requirements list — the description of what you'll actually be doing. Then check Glassdoor or Blind for interview experiences at that company. You're looking for patterns: Do they do system design? Live coding? Behavioral deep-dives?
Tailoring your prep to the actual interview format saves you from wasting time on stuff that won't come up.
Step 2: Build your story bank
Most behavioral questions are variations of five themes: conflict, failure, leadership, ambiguity, and impact. Write one strong story for each. Use the STAR format (Situation, Task, Action, Result), but keep it conversational. Nobody wants to hear a rehearsed monologue.
I keep mine in a simple doc and update it after every project. When interview time comes, I just review and adapt.
Step 3: Practice system design out loud
The system design round trips up experienced engineers more than anything else. Not because they can't design systems — they do it every day. It's because they can't explain their design process while doing it.
Practice talking through your decisions. "I'm choosing a message queue here because..." Force yourself to articulate the tradeoffs. Get a friend to ask "why not X?" questions. The goal isn't to memorize architectures. It's to get comfortable thinking out loud.
Step 4: Do two targeted coding problems per day
Not twenty. Two. Pick problems related to the patterns that company tests for. Spend 25 minutes max per problem. If you can't solve it in 25 minutes, read the solution, understand the pattern, and move on.
The point isn't to solve every problem. It's to recognize patterns quickly so you're not starting from zero in the actual interview.
Step 5: Run mock interviews
This is the highest-ROI thing you can do and the thing everyone skips. Find someone — a friend, a Discord community, whatever — and do a live mock interview. The gap between "I know this" and "I can perform this under pressure" is enormous.
The meta-lesson
Interview prep isn't about knowing more. It's about presenting what you already know under artificial pressure. A system helps because it removes the "what should I even work on today?" decision fatigue.
Build a system. Follow it. Trust it.
I put together a more detailed version of this as a guide — including the actual story bank template, system design frameworks, and the question patterns I track. You can grab it here: The Interview Playbook. And if you want to make sure your resume actually gets through ATS filters first, I have a free ATS checklist too.
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