r/interviewpreparations

Hey anyone have any tips for the interview ? They said it’s gonna be 13 questions

Hi everyone! I have my Google L4 Software Engineer interview (USA) coming up soon and would really appreciate hearing from people who have recently gone through the process.

Could anyone share:

How you prepared for the coding/DSA rounds and what resources helped the most

How you prepared for Googliness & Leadership
Behavioral/Googliness questions or themes you encountered

How much technical depth you included in your behavioral stories

What went well and what you would do differently
Any mock interview platforms, books, question lists, or other materials you recommend

If you received an offer or cleared the loop, what do you think made the biggest difference?

Both successful and unsuccessful experiences would be really helpful. I’m especially interested in recent Google L4/SWE III experiences.

Thank you, and good luck to everyone preparing!

Hello!

I have my screening interview with apple in a couple of days.

My plan is to brush up ML fundamentals but not so sure about coding like is leetcode a part of the process?

Any pointers/ suggestions?

Thanks!

Hello everyone! 💡

I’m prepping for an upcoming hiring manager interview for a People Systems Analyst position focused on HRIS administration, process automation, and AI integration within People Operations.

To help frame my preparation, here are the main focus areas from the job scope:

• System Admin & Governance: Managing platform architecture, data audits, and role-based permissions.
• Automation & AI Workflows: Streamlining manual HR tasks using low-code tools and building AI-driven self-service tools/knowledge access.
• Analytics & Reporting: Generating workforce insights, turnover/headcount metrics, and compliance reporting.
• Change Management: Crafting SOPs, leading UAT, and driving AI/tech literacy for HR end-users.

For those who hire or work as HRIS / People Systems Analysts:

• What specific scenario-based or technical questions would you recommend practicing?
• How are hiring teams currently evaluating a candidate’s practical AI/automation skills in HR?

I’d love to hear your thoughts or any tips from your own interview experiences. Thank you!

​

I’ve been unemployed for the last 2 months due to a layoff, so I’m feeling the pressure to find something quickly. Yesterday, I had a technical SQL interview with an e-commerce firm, and it was an absolute nightmare—not because of the questions, but because the interviewer was completely lost.

For the first question, my solution passed all of their test cases. Despite this, he kept insisting the test cases "weren't complete." It became incredibly obvious that he had exactly one sample solution in front of him and refused to accept any other approach. At one point, he even got confused trying to explain the difference between an inner join and a left join.

By the time we got to the second question, it was clear he hadn’t even read it before the interview. He just copy-pasted it into the environment and immediately threw out a hint. Within 15 seconds, I had to point out that his hint was completely wrong. To his credit, he agreed, but the vibe was already ruined.

I really need this job, but this experience was incredibly frustrating. How do you all handle interviewers who are rigid, unprepared, or technically incorrect without coming across as argumentative or arrogant?

I have had 3 final-round interviews at large biotech companies and, unfortunately, 0 offers. Two of those were with the same company (company I have wanted to work for for a long time)

I only have one and a half years of experience, so I am applying for relatively entry-level roles. What’s been especially discouraging is that I have made it all the way to the final round multiple times, but I keep ending up as the runner-up.

I have asked for feedback after every rejection, but the response has essentially been the same: “There were no red flags; we just found someone who was a slightly better fit.”

I understand that sometimes another candidate really is just a better fit, and I’m grateful to even be making it this far. But it’s difficult when each interview process takes around 2 months, communication is slow, and I am not given anything concrete to improve on.

I’m someone who really values feedback and using it to get better, so not knowing what I’m missing has been particularly frustrating. I’m starting to worry that I’m going to keep making it to the final round and finishing second unless I make some meaningful change.

For those of you who have been in a similar situation:

1. What did you change that eventually helped you get over the finish line?

2. If you were consistently making final rounds but not getting offers, how did you figure out what was holding you back when companies wouldn’t give you feedback?

3. For hiring managers/interviewers in biotech, what separates the person who is “good” from the person you ultimately choose when several candidates are strong?

I would especially appreciate hearing from people who have been in this exact “finalist but no offer” situation. I’m really trying to turn these experiences into something I can learn from rather than just getting discouraged by them.

I would like to seek advice from anyone who has interviewed with fab2 for the role of Process Development Engineer. Please feel free to share your experience. Thank you.

I have been frustrated with trying to maneuver myself in online doc editing during system design interviews. It's like my mind knows how to explain it, but my hand's ability is telling my mind to 'shut up' and do something easy for me to draw.

It made me wonder, has anyone tried using a doc camera for showing what you do when doing system design interviews? What was your experience with it? Does it work well with the other camera to your face?

Hi guys, I work as a Data Engineer at one of the top banks in the UK. I’m looking to make a move to Big Tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, etc. Has anyone recently interviewed with these tech giants? If so, please share your preparation strategy, the level of DSA required, and the resources you used to prepare for DSA. Thanks!

Context: My department was eliminated about three months ago and everyone on the team was let go (there were 5 of us). Since then, my former coworker, who is also a friend of mine from college, and I have stayed close while looking for jobs. A new company had an opening and it seemed like they might take both of us, so they asked us to come in for separate interviews (and of course we compared notes afterward).

In my interview, the Principal said to me directly: "I know I'm not supposed to ask this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway; do you have kids?" I was shocked by how blatant the question was. I do have a family, and that has been used against me more than once in my previous work. He had also spent about 90 minutes interviewing me and had made the conversation comfortable and friendly, which made reacting in the moment harder.

I didn't know what the polished answer was supposed to be, because refusing to answer basically makes them feel like you answered. I usually try to keep that part of my life out of any work conversation because of past experiences. In the end, I told the truth, and at the time he seemed genuinely happy about it. He talked about his grown children, and even framed it as something positive for me as a potential hire.

Then about a month later, he used that same information against me in the hiring process and treated it as part of the reason they wouldn't be making an offer. Afterward, I found out that he also asked my former coworker about her previous compensation during her interview!! And that's also not legally allowed where we live.

I know I chose to share personal information, so that part is on me. But I'm asking how other people handle this without the interview immediately becoming awkward, or without it seeming like I'm confirming the answer when I dodge it. I'd be grateful for any advice!!

This is going to be a long post, and I will probably break the full story into several posts because there are a lot of lessons I learned throughout this process. Some are about AI, some about interviewing, and others about dealing with rejection and figuring out what you are doing wrong when you keep getting very close but can't get across the finish line. I hope sharing my experience can help someone going through the same thing.

For some background, I am an Engineering Executive with close to 30 years of experience building and leading technical organizations around the world. I've been an expat twice, speak three languages fluently, have managed global organizations, and have been responsible for programs worth up to $3 billion.

I have also been unemployed for the last six months.

I voluntarily decided to leave my previous company, which is a story for a different post. Over the last year, however, I have consistently landed interviews for corporate leadership roles. Getting interviews was never really my problem. I had no issues talking with recruiters, and I successfully interviewed with VPs and SVPs of HR, VPs of Operations, CFOs, Business Unit leaders, and SVPs of Engineering. I would go through four, five, sometimes more interviews and make it all the way to the end.

Then I would meet the CEO.

Five CEO interviews. Five rejections.

That became my curse.

After the second rejection, I hired an HR consultant specifically to help me understand what I was doing wrong and get through that final interview. It didn't help. Actually, I think it made things worse because it drove my frustration even further. Looking back, I consider most of it a waste of time and money. Probably the only really useful thing I got from the experience was having my resume rewritten by a professional HR consultant the agency subcontracted.

A couple of months ago, I started reading about people using AI as a copilot in their job searches, so I decided to give it a shot. I used ChatGPT, but I approached it a little differently than I had seen other people doing. I wasn't particularly interested in having AI write generic interview answers for me. I wanted it to help me understand why I kept failing at exactly the same point.

I started the conversation by telling ChatGPT that I wanted direct, critical feedback. I didn't need encouragement or reassurance. I wanted it to challenge me and tell me what was wrong with my interviewing strategy.

Then I gave it as much information as possible.

I uploaded my resume, but more importantly, I had been taking notes throughout my job search. I had documented the roles I interviewed for, insights recruiters gave me about what companies were looking for, questions I had been asked, and whatever feedback recruiters were willing to give me after a rejection. I also had a log of around 20 interview questions with prepared answers. Every time somebody asked me a new question, I added it to the log.

So instead of asking ChatGPT, "How do I interview better?", I was essentially saying: Here is my career. Here are my answers. Here is what happened in multiple interview processes. Here is the feedback I received. I can consistently pass recruiters, HR, Engineering, Operations and other senior executives, but I have now been rejected by five CEOs. Find the pattern. What am I doing wrong?

The answer was uncomfortable, but it made a lot of sense.

I was presenting myself as a very accomplished technical leader with an extensive background managing projects, programs and engineering organizations around the world. The problem was that, at the CEO level, I was still talking too much like an engineer or project leader. I talked about projects, execution, technical problems, teams, budgets and results. What wasn't coming through strongly enough was my ability to operate as a business partner: understanding the business strategy, allocating capital, managing risk, making tradeoffs, challenging assumptions and aligning the Engineering strategy with what the company was actually trying to accomplish.

That was probably the biggest realization of my entire job search. I thought I was demonstrating executive experience by talking about the scale and complexity of what I had done. The CEOs were looking for something different. They wanted to understand how I thought as a business executive.

So I started going through the questions in my interview log with ChatGPT one by one. I wasn't changing the stories, exaggerating accomplishments or inventing new experiences. The facts remained exactly the same. What changed was how I framed them.

For example, instead of saying, "I executed a project to solve A and achieved X," the answer became closer to, "The business was facing A. I aligned with the leadership team on the business objective and the tradeoffs, developed a technical strategy to address it, and the result was X."

Same story. Same accomplishment. Same person. Completely different message.

We went through dozens of questions this way. Then I practiced them over and over. It probably took me two weeks to retrain my brain because, after almost 30 years as an engineer, my natural instinct is to explain how I solved the problem. I needed to get much better at explaining why the problem mattered to the business, how I made the decision, what tradeoffs were involved, and what changed because of it.

Right around that time, I landed an interview for an SVP-level role. This became the real-world test of whether any of this was actually useful.

I asked the recruiter for the Job Description and uploaded it into the same ChatGPT conversation, along with public information I had collected about the company. I asked ChatGPT to analyze the role against my experience and identify potential gaps, areas I should emphasize, concerns the company might have about me, and questions I was likely to be asked.

I passed the recruiter interview, then the Director of Talent Acquisition, then an SVP of Global HR, and then an SVP from one of the businesses.

Before every interview, I asked the headhunter a very simple question: "What is this person looking for?"

I would take notes on the answer and enter that information into my ChatGPT conversation. Then I would ask how that new information should affect my interview strategy. After each interview, I also added anything new I had learned.

Something interesting started happening as I went deeper into the process. The differences between the answers I had prepared myself and what ChatGPT was recommending became smaller and smaller. I needed to adjust my responses less and less.

That, to me, was actually the point.

I wasn't trying to have AI interview for me. I was using AI to retrain the way I thought about and communicated my own experience.

Eventually I was invited to an onsite interview at the company's corporate office in a large U.S. city. I prepared for it the same way. I wrote down my main talking points in a notebook and practiced the roughly 40 questions I had accumulated by that point.

During the onsite, I met with the VP of HR, two business leaders, the COO and finally the CEO.

And here we go again.

The CEO interview was intense. He asked a flurry of technical questions framed around things like, "How would you solve X?" and "Tell me about a time when you failed on a project and what did you learn from it?" He pressed me particularly hard on the failure question.

There were also a few technical concepts where I didn't think my explanations landed as clearly as I wanted them to. In the past, I probably would have left the interview, replayed everything in my head for the next several days, and waited for the recruiter to call.

This time I did something different.

On the way to the airport, while everything was still fresh in my mind, I wrote down as much as I could remember: questions, reactions, things I thought went well, and things I thought hadn't. I drafted individual follow-up emails for the people I had interviewed with. For the CEO, I spent additional time clarifying some of the technical points we had discussed and included supporting material where I thought it would be useful. I ran the drafts through ChatGPT, edited them myself, and sent them.

Then I waited.

About a week later, I got a call from the recruiter telling me things were "going in the right direction," but that some stakeholders needed further alignment. I put that information into the same ChatGPT conversation and used it to think through what might be happening, what the potential concerns could still be, and how I should handle the next steps.

A few days later, I received a text message telling me they were moving ahead with an offer and were authorizing the role for me.

By the end of the week, I had the offer in my hands.

I start my new role next week.

Looking back at the process, I don't think AI "got me a job." It didn't create my 30 years of experience, lead my teams, execute my projects or sit across the table from the CEO. And no amount of prompting could compensate if I didn't have the experience to back up what I was saying.

What AI did extremely well was help me see a pattern in my own behavior that I wasn't seeing myself.

And I think this is where there is a much bigger opportunity for people using AI in a job search. Don't just upload your resume and ask it to make it better. Don't just ask for "10 questions I might get in an interview." And definitely don't memorize a bunch of AI-generated answers and try to pretend they're yours.

Give it your actual history. Give it your resume. Give it the Job Description. Keep a log of the questions people actually ask you and the answers you actually give. Write down what recruiters tell you about the hiring manager. After an interview, write down what happened while it's still fresh in your head. When you get rejected, get as much feedback as you can and add that too.

Then ask AI to find the patterns.

Ask it what you're not seeing. Challenge its conclusions when they don't make sense. Ask it what a CEO might hear when you give an answer versus what you think you're communicating. Ask it to identify contradictions between how you describe yourself and what the role actually requires.

Most importantly, don't use AI to create a different candidate. Use it to understand how the candidate you already are is being perceived.

Five CEO rejections in a row hurt. When you repeatedly get that close, you start questioning everything. Am I too old? Too expensive? Too specialized? Overqualified? Am I coming from the wrong industry? Or am I simply not as good as I think I am?

In my case, at least part of the problem turned out to be much simpler. I had spent almost 30 years learning how to solve Engineering problems, but I hadn't completely learned how to communicate those same experiences through the eyes of the person running the business.

Changing that changed my interviews.

This time, I got the offer.

If there is interest, I can write separate posts about the five CEO rejections and the feedback I received, my experience hiring an HR consultant, the interview-question log I built, how I prepared for individual interviewers using AI, and maybe the most useful one: actual examples of how I changed my answers from an "Engineering answer" into an "Executive answer."

I really hope some of this helps someone who, like me, is sitting there after another final-round rejection wondering what the hell they're doing wrong.

Has anyone recently given interviews for sde 1 at bistro?
Please help me with your interview experiences

Hey everyone,

I’m a Full Stack Developer (2 years of experience) currently preparing for a job switch and looking for people who are interested in practicing mock interviews together.

I’m mainly looking to practice:

• DSA / Coding rounds
• JavaScript, React, Node.js technical discussions
• System design basics
• Real interview-style problem solving

If you’re also preparing for a switch or want to sharpen your interview skills, we can do regular mock sessions and give each other feedback.

I’m targeting opportunities around the 8–10 LPA range.

If interested, feel free to DM me or comment below. Let’s help each other crack interviews 🚀

I have multiple backend and fullstack interviews coming up next week
i have worked as a backend engineer for 2 years but got laid off 6 months back now feeling an imposter syndrome. How do i prepare from 0 to 100 again in short time period

I just want to feel confident in my skills and ace these interviews.

Interviews are related to Python, FastAPI and Django.

Hey so recently I graduated from my CS bachelor and I decided to apply for a few jobs. Surprisingly I got response from one of the companies really quickly. That was great and I got the first round of interview with HR and it went well. Im pretty sure they liked me alot because of my university credentials and 2 years of experience. Now im scheduled a technical interview (which this will be my first technical interview) in 1 week. I have never done lead code problems before and last time I touched DSA and system design was 2 years ago for my universities courses. Ive just started learning the different patterns in solving those programming puzzles and I feel very unprepared. From what ive heard from Gemini usually people take a few months to prepare and I only had 2 weeks. Do you guys think I should cancel my interview and apply again when I had time to prepare or do you think I should go through with it anyways. Please help me with this i really want to work for this company and im afraid that if I perform bad at this technical interview they wont consider my application again

It seems like many folks are using AI these days to help with interview prep - generating likely questions, tightening up answers, mock rounds. I am curious where it stops being helpful or doesn't get it right in the first place.

What did you use it for, and what did you end up doing a different way?