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Technical Interview Preparation: A 4-Week Plan

16 min readUpdated April 28, 2025
The difference between candidates who get offers and those who don't isn't raw talent — it's structured preparation. A focused 4-week plan that covers algorithms, system design, and behavioral questions systematically will outperform months of unfocused studying. This guide provides a concrete daily plan with specific topics, practice problems, and milestones for each week. It's designed for candidates with 1+ years of programming experience preparing for mid to senior-level engineering roles at top companies.

Week 1: Foundations & Core Data Structures

Goal: Build a solid foundation in core data structures and basic problem-solving patterns.
  • Days 1-2: Arrays, Strings & Hash Maps — Solve 5-6 easy problems daily on LeetCode. Focus on two-pointer technique, sliding window, and hash map patterns.
  • Days 3-4: Linked Lists & Stacks/Queues — Practice reversal, cycle detection, and monotonic stack problems.
  • Days 5-6: Trees & Graphs Fundamentals — BFS, DFS, tree traversals (inorder, preorder, postorder).
  • Day 7: Review Day — Re-solve problems you struggled with. Track weak areas in a spreadsheet.
Week 1 Target: 25-30 problems solved, comfort with basic patterns. Tracking template columns:
  1. Problem name & link
  2. Category (array, tree, graph, etc.)
  3. Difficulty (easy/medium/hard)
  4. Solved independently? (yes/no/hint)
  5. Time taken
  6. Key pattern used

Week 2: Advanced Algorithms & Patterns

Goal: Master medium-difficulty problems and learn to identify which pattern applies.
  • Days 1-2: Binary Search — Standard binary search plus searching on answer space. Practice problems like Koko Eating Bananas and Split Array Largest Sum.
  • Days 3-4: Dynamic Programming — Start with 1D DP (climbing stairs, house robber), then 2D DP (unique paths, edit distance). Focus on identifying subproblems and state transitions.
  • Days 5-6: Graph Algorithms — Dijkstra's shortest path, topological sort, union-find (disjoint set).
  • Day 7: Mock Interview — Conduct a mock with a friend or on Pramp/interviewing.io.
Week 2 Target: 20-25 medium problems solved. Ability to identify which pattern applies to a new problem within 5 minutes. Pattern recognition checklist:
  1. Does the problem ask for contiguous subarray? → Sliding window
  2. Does it ask for combinations/permutations? → Backtracking
  3. Does it have optimal substructure? → DP
  4. Does it involve shortest path? → BFS or Dijkstra

Week 3: System Design & Behavioral

Goal: Become comfortable whiteboarding system designs and delivering polished behavioral stories. System Design (Days 1-5):
  • Days 1-2: Fundamentals — Study load balancing, caching strategies, database sharding, message queues, and the CAP theorem.
  • Days 3-4: Practice Designs — Work through 2 full designs: a URL shortener and a chat application. Practice drawing diagrams and estimating scale.
  • Day 5: Advanced Designs — Study 2 more designs relevant to your target companies (news feed, ride-sharing, video streaming).
Behavioral (Days 6-7):
  • Prepare 8-10 STAR stories covering conflict, failure, leadership, ambiguity, and tight deadlines
  • Practice telling each story in under 3 minutes
  • Map each story to at least 2 themes for flexibility
Week 3 Target: Comfortable whiteboarding 4 system designs, 8 polished STAR stories.

Week 4: Mock Interviews & Refinement

Goal: Simulate real interview conditions and refine your weakest areas.
  1. Days 1-2: Full Mock Sessions — Complete 1 coding + 1 system design + 1 behavioral per day. Use a timer and simulate real conditions (no IDE autocomplete, explain your thinking aloud).
  2. Days 3-4: Weakness Targeting — Focus exclusively on weak areas identified in mocks. Re-solve problems you got wrong.
  3. Days 5-6: Company-Specific Prep — Research the company's tech stack, recent engineering blog posts, and Glassdoor interview reports. Prepare thoughtful questions for your interviewers.
  4. Day 7: Rest & Logistics — Light review only. No new problems. Get proper sleep, prepare logistics (outfit, directions, tech setup), and trust your preparation.
Week 4 Target: 2-3 full mock interview sets completed, confidence in your prepared material. Pre-interview checklist:
  • Laptop charged, stable internet connection tested
  • Quiet, well-lit environment prepared
  • Water and notepad ready
  • 3 thoughtful questions for the interviewer prepared
  • STAR stories reviewed one final time

Frequently Asked Questions

Is 4 weeks enough to prepare for FAANG interviews?

For candidates with 1+ years of programming experience, 4 weeks of focused preparation (3-4 hours daily) is sufficient. If you're coming from a non-CS background or haven't coded in a while, extend to 6-8 weeks. The key is consistency and deliberate practice, not total hours.

How many LeetCode problems should I solve?

Quality over quantity. 100-150 well-understood problems covering all major patterns is more effective than grinding 500 problems superficially. Focus on understanding patterns (sliding window, two pointers, BFS/DFS, DP) so you can apply them to new problems.

Should I memorize solutions to common problems?

No — memorize patterns, not solutions. Understanding why a hash map solves Two Sum (trading space for time) is more valuable than memorizing the code. Interviewers can tell when someone is reciting a solution versus deriving one. Focus on building intuition for which pattern applies.

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