How to Prepare For a Technical Interview

Technical Interview preparation is hard, and that’s why AlgoDaily exists. However, it’s important to know exactly how to prepare. We’re talking about the schedule to set, the cadence, what problems and concepts to focus on, and exactly how to actually study.

Most people waste time in their efforts. This article will go through everything you need to read, observe, and do in order to go into your interview with confidence.

This article also assumes that you’ve already landed the interview and are preparing for on-sites, though the advice here is definitely applicable for technical phone screens as well.

So first, a word on timing.

How Long Do I Need?

If given a choice, I’d obviously advocate long-term technical preparation- the longer the better. As a general recommendation, roughly 2–3 months to get fully prepared. This lets you get in around 60–120 challenges, which seems to be the amount you need to do to build the algorithmic intuition.

Obviously this depends on work experience, familiarity with computer science fundamentals, and proximity to interviews themselves.

It may take 3–6 months for a new bootcamp grad with zero exposure to data structures and algorithms to get fully ramped. On the other hand, it could take take 1–2 weeks for a low-level Senior Systems Engineer.

Could you pass a whiteboard technical interview from absolute scratch with a…