The 8-Week Interview Prep Plan
This timeline assumes 15-20 hours per week of focused study. Adjust based on your starting level and target companies. The plan covers coding, system design, and behavioral preparation.
Week 1-2: Foundations
Daily Schedule (3 hours/day)
- 1 hour: Review data structures (arrays, linked lists, stacks, queues, hash maps, trees, graphs)
- 1 hour: Practice 2 easy LeetCode problems
- 1 hour: Review time/space complexity analysis (Big O)
Goals
- Solve 20 easy problems confidently
- Understand when to use each data structure
- Can analyze any code's Big O complexity
Week 3-4: Core Patterns
Daily Schedule (3 hours/day)
- 1.5 hours: Learn and practice 1 pattern per day (Two Pointers, Sliding Window, BFS/DFS, Binary Search)
- 1 hour: Practice 2 medium problems using the day's pattern
- 0.5 hours: Review previous week's problems
Patterns to Master
| Pattern | Problems to Solve |
|---|---|
| Two Pointers | 15, 167, 11, 42 |
| Sliding Window | 3, 76, 209, 424 |
| BFS / DFS | 200, 133, 102, 207 |
| Binary Search | 704, 33, 153, 4 |
| Recursion / Backtracking | 46, 78, 51, 37 |
| Dynamic Programming | 70, 198, 322, 1143 |
Week 5-6: System Design + Company-Specific Prep
Daily Schedule (3-4 hours/day)
- 1 hour: Practice 1 medium-hard coding problem
- 1.5 hours: Study system design (one topic per day: load balancing, caching, databases, microservices)
- 1 hour: Company-specific prep (read culture memo, practice behavioral questions)
System Design Topics
- Scalability: Horizontal vs vertical scaling, load balancing, caching
- Databases: SQL vs NoSQL, sharding, replication, indexing
- Microservices: Service discovery, inter-service communication, circuit breakers
- CDN & Edge: Content delivery, edge caching, geographic distribution
- Real-time: WebSockets, long polling, server-sent events
Week 7: Mock Interviews + Weak Areas
Daily Schedule (4 hours/day)
- 2 hours: Mock interviews (use Pramp, interviewing.io, or friends)
- 1 hour: Target weak areas identified in mocks
- 1 hour: Practice system design mock interviews
Mock Interview Tips
- Do at least 5 mock coding interviews
- Do at least 2 mock system design interviews
- Record yourself and review communication habits
- Practice thinking out loud — silence kills interviews
Week 8: Final Review + Mental Preparation
Daily Schedule (2-3 hours/day)
- 1 hour: Light problem solving (review favorites, not new hard problems)
- 1 hour: Review system design cheat sheets and architecture diagrams
- 1 hour: Behavioral question practice with STAR method
Mental Preparation
- Sleep 8 hours every night before interviews
- Do not cram — trust your preparation
- Visualize success before each interview
- Prepare questions to ask the interviewer
Weekly Problem Count Targets
| Week | Easy | Medium | Hard | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | 20 | 5 | 0 | 25 |
| 3-4 | 5 | 25 | 5 | 35 |
| 5-6 | 0 | 20 | 10 | 30 |
| 7 | 0 | 10 | 5 | 15 |
| 8 | 5 | 10 | 0 | 15 |
| Total | 30 | 70 | 20 | 120 |
How GhOst Accelerates Your Prep
- Real-time help: Get instant solutions during practice instead of being stuck for hours
- Pattern learning: See the optimal approach immediately, accelerating pattern recognition
- System design: AI-generated architectures for any design question
- Behavioral prep: Generate STAR-method responses for common questions
- Mock interview mode: Practice with AI that simulates real interview pressure
FAQ: Interview Prep
Frequently Asked Questions
Most engineers need 8-12 weeks of dedicated study (15-20 hours/week). If you are rusty on algorithms, plan for 12 weeks. If you interview regularly, 4-6 weeks may suffice.
Quality over quantity. 100-150 well-understood problems covering all major patterns is better than 300 shallowly solved problems. Focus on patterns, not problem counts.
System design is typically not asked in new grad interviews. Focus on coding and object-oriented design. Start learning system design for L4+ (2+ years experience) roles.
Yes. GhOst is an undetectable AI assistant that operates at the OS level, making it invisible to screen sharing and browser-based proctoring. It provides real-time help during live interviews.
