interview-prep

Interview Prep Planner

When to Use / When Not to Use

Use when:

• 2–12 weeks before an interview and you need a structured study plan
• You want gap analysis across coding, system design, and behavioral topics
• You need STAR story prompts calibrated to a specific company type

Not for:

• Live mock interview practice (use portfolio-interview)
• Resume tailoring to a specific JD (use resume-tailorer)
• General portfolio improvement (use portfolio-feedback or portfolio-rewrite)

Process

1. Gather context — experience level, target company/role, timeline, interview format, biggest worry
2. Calibrate to company type — FAANG, Korean Tier-1, growth startup, or enterprise — each tests differently
3. Identify weak areas — coding, system design, behavioral across specific topic areas
4. Produce week-by-week plan — primary focus, daily practice, named resources, measurable weekly milestone
5. Generate STAR story bank — 6-8 behavioral story prompts matched to common question areas
6. Final week guidance — consolidation, mock interviews, logistics prep

Standalone Inputs

If following portfolio-feedback, portfolio-jd, or portfolio-company, you can start here by providing:

• Your experience level and tech stack
• Target company and role level
• Interview timeline (weeks until interview)
• Known format (e.g., 2 coding rounds + system design + behavioral)
• Your biggest area of concern

Output Template

For each prep session, Claude delivers:

1. Question bank — 10-15 likely questions tailored to the role and company
2. STAR responses — structured answers for behavioral questions with specific examples
3. Feedback — scoring on clarity, specificity, and impact; suggestions for improvement
4. Improvement plan — 3 targeted areas to practice before the interview

What Claude Does / What You Do

Claude	You
Calibrates study plan to company type (FAANG, Korean Tier-1, startup, enterprise)	Does the actual practice problems and mock interviews
Identifies weak areas from your described background	Builds and refines your STAR story bank
Produces week-by-week schedule with measurable milestones	Validates study plan with anyone who has done this interview
Generates STAR story prompts for behavioral areas	Shows up rested and prepared on interview day

Related Skills

• ../portfolio-interview/SKILL.md — practice answering questions live after building this plan
• ../portfolio-feedback/SKILL.md — overall portfolio assessment before targeting specific companies
• ../portfolio-jd/SKILL.md — JD-specific gap analysis if you have a posting

Why Generic Prep Fails

"Study data structures and system design" is not a plan — it is a wish. Engineers who prepare without a structured plan study what they already know, avoid what they do not, and arrive underprepared in exactly the areas that matter for their target role.

A good prep plan starts with two facts: what the company actually tests, and what the candidate's current gaps are. Everything else follows from those two inputs.

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Workflow Note — Sequential Thinking and Parallelization

If sequential-thinking is available, use it to enforce this sequence: (1) gather context → (2) calibrate by company type → (3) identify gaps → (4) generate plan. Skipping gap analysis before planning is the most common failure.

Once Step 2 (company calibration) is complete, gap analysis (Step 3) and domain study structure generation (from references/study-domains.md) can be run in parallel.

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Step 1 — Gather Context

Before producing any plan, collect:

1. Background: How many years of experience? What is the current/recent role and tech stack?
2. Target: Which company or type of company? Which role level? (IC3 vs. Staff, for example)
3. Timeline: How many weeks until the interview (or target application date)?
4. Interview format known? (e.g., two coding rounds + system design + behavioral, or unknown)
5. Biggest worry: What area feels most uncertain right now?

If the user has already provided this, proceed directly to the plan. Do not ask for information already given.

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Step 2 — Company/Role Calibration

Different companies test materially differently. Calibrate the plan accordingly.

FAANG / Top-Tier (Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix-style)

• Coding: LeetCode medium/hard, emphasis on optimal time/space complexity
• System design: large-scale distributed systems, explicit tradeoff discussion expected
• Behavioral: leadership principles, specific STAR stories required (Amazon especially)
• Bar: correct solution is not enough — interviewers probe time complexity, edge cases, and alternative approaches

Korean Tier-1 (Kakao, Naver, Line, Coupang)

• Coding: algorithm-heavy, often includes implementation-level problems (graph, DP, BFS/DFS)
• System design: architecture of real services, Korean-scale traffic considerations
• Cultural fit: collaborative style, team contribution, communication quality

Growth-Stage Startups

• Coding: practical problems, less focus on extreme optimization
• System design: pragmatic choices, speed of delivery vs. scale tradeoff
• Behavioral: ownership, autonomy, self-direction — what did you initiate?

Enterprise / B2B / Fintech

• Coding: often take-home or lower difficulty
• System design: reliability, observability, security
• Cultural: process maturity, documentation, stability-oriented decisions

Adjust topic weights based on the target. A perfect LeetCode hard solver who cannot discuss distributed systems tradeoffs will not pass a Google system design round.

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Step 3 — Weak Area Identification

For each major area, assess based on the user's description:

Coding

• Can they solve medium LeetCode problems consistently in 30 minutes?
• Are they comfortable with: arrays/strings, hash maps, trees, graphs, dynamic programming, sliding window, two pointers, binary search?
• Do they communicate reasoning while coding (not just the final solution)?

System Design

• Can they scope a system from vague requirements to a concrete design in 45 minutes?
• Do they address: API design, data modeling, scalability bottlenecks, caching, failure modes, monitoring?
• Do they drive the conversation or wait to be led?

Behavioral

• Do they have 5–7 distinct STAR stories ready covering: ownership, conflict, failure, impact, leadership?
• Are stories specific (numbers, outcomes, personal role) or generic ("we improved the system")?

Flag specific gaps. The prep plan allocates study time in proportion to gap severity.

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Step 4 — Produce the Prep Plan

Structure the plan by week. Each week has:

• Primary focus area
• Specific resource or practice target
• Measurable milestone to verify the week worked

Plan Template

## Interview Prep Plan
Target: [Company] [Role] — [N] weeks

### Week-by-Week Schedule

**Week 1: [Focus Area]**
- Goal: [Measurable outcome]
- Daily practice: [Specific activity]
- Resources: [Named, specific resources]
- Milestone: [How to verify the week was effective]

[Repeat for each week]

### Topic Priority List (by urgency)
1. [Highest gap / highest weight topic]
2. ...

### STAR Story Bank
[6–8 prompts for stories to prepare, matched to common behavioral questions]

### Final Week Checklist
[Mock interview, review weak areas, logistics prep]

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Domain Study Structures

For domain-specific study structures (coding topic sequencing and practice volume, system design core concepts and practice format, behavioral STAR story bank), read references/study-domains.md after completing Steps 1–4.

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Final Week

Do not study new material in the final week. Focus on:

• Two full mock interviews (coding + system design)
• Review your STAR stories aloud — hear how they sound, not just how they read
• Re-attempt your three hardest practice problems to rebuild confidence
• Logistics: time zone, Zoom setup, whiteboard tool if virtual, rest

The final week is consolidation, not cramming.