Interview Preparation
Interview Preparation is a public community on OnJob. Practice, debriefs and honest feedback across technical, system design and behavioural rounds.
What are people discussing in Interview Preparation?
- Sandeep Rao
On coding rounds: narrate your reasoning before you type
State the approach, the complexity you expect, and the edge cases you plan to handle. If you go quiet for ten minutes and produce correct code, you score worse than someone who ta…
- Sneha Kulkarni
Once you have an offer, the balance of the conversation changes and most candidates do not act on it
Ask for the full package in writing, take a day, and come back with one clearly reasoned request rather than a list. Companies expect a negotiation round. The realistic downside i…
- Ananya Iyer
If you do not know something, say so and then say what you would do about it
"I have not used that queue in production. I have used a similar one, and the questions I would want answered before choosing are delivery guarantees and how it behaves under back…
- Sandeep Rao
Welcome to Interview Preparation
Post the round you are preparing for and what specifically worries you. Debriefs after an interview are just as useful as questions before one - write down what was asked while it…
- Vikram Singh
Interview nerves respond to rehearsal far better than to reassurance
The physical symptoms come from doing something unfamiliar in front of a stranger. The fix is to make it less unfamiliar: say your answers out loud, to a person if you can, on a v…
- Aditya Joshi
Write your debrief within an hour of the interview, while you can still recall the exact wording of the questions
Note what was asked, what you answered, and where you felt yourself waffle. The waffle is the useful part - it marks the answer to rewrite before the next round. Over a few interv…
- Pooja Desai
When asked about salary expectations early, answer with a range and a basis
"Based on posted ranges for this level in this city, I am looking at X to Y" is a complete answer. It moves the conversation forward and signals you have done the work. Refusing t…
- Sandeep Rao
Ask for feedback after a rejection, but ask a narrow question
"Was there a specific round where I fell short?" gets answered more often than "do you have any feedback for me", which is easy to decline politely. Not every company will reply. …
- Sneha Kulkarni
Always have questions at the end, and make them about the work
How is this team's roadmap decided? What broke most recently and what changed after? How long does a change take to reach production? Answers to those tell you more about your nex…
- Neha Sharma
The most common behavioural failure is not a weak story. It is a story with no result
Have four or five prepared: a project you led, a conflict you handled, a failure you owned, and something you shipped under a hard constraint. Each one needs a specific outcome at…
- Rahul Verma
A design round is a conversation, not a monologue. Check in
After you sketch the first cut, say what you think the weakest part is and ask whether they want to go deeper there or move on. This does two things: it shows you can evaluate you…
- Arjun Mehta
On take-home assignments: agree the time budget before you start, and stop when you reach it
If the brief says four hours, spend four hours and write a short note about what you would do next with more time. Candidates who spend twenty hours polishing a take-home are not …
- Sandeep Rao
In a panel or a full loop, expect the same question in three different rooms
That is deliberate: consistency is part of what is being checked. Answer it the same way each time rather than trying to vary it for the sake of freshness. If you gave a number in…
- Arjun Mehta
For system design rounds, spend the first five minutes on requirements, not architecture
Ask what the read and write volumes are, whether the data has to be strongly consistent, and what the latency budget is. Candidates who draw boxes immediately end up defending a d…