Tonight's study plan¶
About 4½ hours tonight, 45 minutes tomorrow morning. Sleep matters more than the last hour of reading: stop by midnight.
Tonight¶
| Time | Block | Do | Done when |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0:00–0:30 | Your story | Read Tell me about yourself. Say the 90-second version aloud 3 times, recording yourself once on your phone. | You can say it without notes in under 2 minutes |
| 0:30–1:15 | CV line by line | Go through the CV walkthrough. Fill in every Fill in box with a real detail. | Every bullet has one number or concrete detail you can say |
| 1:15–2:15 | Prayog | Pitch aloud, redraw the architecture on paper from memory, then failures 1, 2 and 5. | You can draw the diagram and tell 2 bug stories |
| 2:15–2:30 | Break | Walk, water, no screen | |
| 2:30–3:15 | Java + Spring | Core Java, concurrency, Spring Boot. Answer aloud before opening each fold. | You miss fewer than 1 in 5 |
| 3:15–3:45 | Kafka | Kafka. Link each answer to Prayog or work. | You can explain delivery guarantees and consumer groups on a whiteboard |
| 3:45–4:15 | React + JS | React, then the "event loop" and "closures" parts of JavaScript | You can explain re-renders, useEffect and keys |
| 4:15–4:30 | Behavioural | STAR story bank: pick your 5 stories, then questions to ask | 5 stories, 3 questions chosen |
If the job description is in hand, spend 10 minutes mapping each requirement to one story or project. Requirements you cannot map are the ones to read up on.
Tomorrow morning¶
| Time | Do |
|---|---|
| 20 min | Cheat sheet and the 90-second story aloud once |
| 15 min | One system design warm-up: say the 6 steps for "design a notification service" |
| 10 min | Setup: laptop charged, camera, quiet room, CV and job description open, water, a pen and paper for diagrams. Open Prayog's docs and Galois in tabs in case they ask to see them |
During the interview¶
- Pause before answering. "Let me think for a second" is fine and sounds senior.
- Answer, then evidence. Lead with the one-line answer, then the example from work or Prayog.
- Say what you would measure. "I would check X first" beats guessing.
- Don't know? Say what you do know, how you would find out, and move on. Never bluff a number.
- Coding: restate the problem, ask about input size and edge cases, say the brute force, then improve, then test with an example out loud.