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Tech Interview Handbook: Preparing for a Technical Interview in IT

Software developers (junior/middle/senior) preparing for interviews at product and technology companies. Developers who want to switch jobs or break into the international market. Technical leads and engineering managers who need to understand how candidates are evaluated so they can run interviews themselves.

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Course preview

What you will learn

Explore the full curriculum before you enrol. Lessons unlock after purchase or free enrolment.

01

Resume and Self-Introduction

Topics covered

  • Understand how an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) reads and filters out resumes before a human ever sees them
  • Learn how to structure a software developer's resume: sections, ordering, and the format of work-experience entries
  • Master the principle of tailoring a resume to a specific job posting using keywords from the job description
1 lesson10 questions~25 min
02

Interview Formats and What Top Companies Expect

Topics covered

  • Distinguish between interview round types: quiz, online assessment, take-home assignment, phone screen, onsite
  • Understand the stages of a software developer's full interview cycle, from recruiter to offer
  • Know the format specifics of individual companies (Google, Meta, Airbnb, Dropbox, Lyft, and others) and be able to prepare deliberately for a specific format
1 lesson10 questions~25 min
03

Coding Interview: Preparation and Techniques

Topics covered

  • Understand the four evaluation criteria for a coding interview: communication, problem solving, technical competency, testing
  • Master a structured sequence of actions during the interview itself: before, during, and after
  • Learn a set of solution-finding techniques (visualization, breaking into subtasks, typical data structures) and complexity-optimization techniques (BTTC, avoiding repeated computation, changing data structures)
1 lesson10 questions~25 min
04

Algorithms and Data Structures

Topics covered

  • Systematize your knowledge of the key data structures that come up in interviews: arrays, strings, hash tables, stacks, tries
  • Understand the typical operation complexity (Big O) for each structure and be able to explain it
  • Know sorting and search: which algorithms are worth knowing "by complexity," and which you should be able to apply off the shelf (binary search, the language's built-in sort)
1 lesson10 questions~25 min
05

System Design

Topics covered

  • Understand why system design interviews exist and why they're given primarily to mid-level/senior candidates
  • Distinguish the four formats of system design questions: backend/distributed systems, API design, object-oriented design, front-end architecture
  • Know the list of typical "classic" system design questions and the logic behind how they're built
1 lesson10 questions~25 min
06

Behavioral Interviews and Salary Negotiation

Topics covered

  • Master the STAR(R) format (Situation, Task, Action, Result, + Reflection) for answering behavioral questions
  • Understand the logic of picking stories for interviews: not memorizing answers to specific questions, but building a bank of 3-5 strong project stories
  • Know the "focus areas" behavioral questions target (motivation, initiative, working under uncertainty, persistence, conflict resolution, growth) and how the same stories read differently at different levels (junior/senior/staff)
1 lesson10 questions~25 min
07

Final Exam

Final exam
35 questions~60 min