PRIME Big Tech Interview Prep Guide

Hey I’m Ella! I help people break into tech - follow me (insta here!) for more internship sauce :D

5-part formula to make tech interviews feel so much easier
(Especially SWE internships roles)

PATTERNS

Most coding interviews are pattern-matching and come from the same set of ideas. Master these patterns first:

Start Here:

• 🔗 Blind 75 – NeetCode Version
• 🔗 Grind 75 – With study plans
• 🔗 LeetCode Top Interview 150
• 🔗 NeetCode 150 and 250

🎯 Topics to master:

• Arrays & Hashing
• Sliding Window
• Two Pointers
• Trees / DFS / BFS
• Binary Search
• Dynamic Programming
• Graphs

RESOURCES

Don't guess. These are the best prep tools used by candidates who’ve passed FAANG interviews:

• 📚 Tech Interview Handbook (coding + behavioral + resume advice)
• 💻 Coding Interview University (GitHub) – full CS study plan
• 🏗️ System Design Primer (GitHub) – for full-time roles
• 📘 Cracking the Coding Interview (Book)

Practice Platforms:

• 🔗 LeetCode
• 🔗 HackerRank
• 🔗 GeeksforGeeks

INTERVIEW THREADS

See exact questions from real interviews. Use these to reverse-engineer what to expect by company.

• 🔎 Glassdoor – search: “Google Software Engineer Intern Interview”
• 🔍 Reddit r/cscareerquestions – search: “How I passed Meta interview”
• 🔍 Reddit r/leetcode
• 🔍 Team Blind – tons of interview threads (requires free signup)

Bonus:

• 🔗 How to Use Glassdoor for Questions (Reddit guide)

MOCK INTERVIEWS

You need to say your answers out loud. Join communities that offer mocks or study partners:

• 💬 CScareers.dev Discord
• 💬 NeetCode Discord
• 💬 Product Haven (Product roles) 
• 🎥 Pramp – live 1:1 mock interviews
• 💬 Exponent Mock Interviews

EXPERIENCE MATCHING (Behavioral)

Behavioral questions are just disguised job responsibilities. Here's how to prep them fast:

Tools:

• 🔗 30 Most Common Behavioral Questions (Tech Interview Handbook)
• 🎥 Video I made explaining
• 📝 STAR Format
• 📝 CARL Format (what I use)
• 🛠️ Use ChatGPT or Claude to extract skills from job descriptions for your “Skill Map”

BONUS: Landing the Interview in the First Place

Before any of this matters, you need to actually get the interview. I compiled a list of the best live-updated job boards for 2027 internships across tech, finance, product, and more. Check them daily during recruiting season and apply the same day roles go up:

• 💼 Job boards 2027

Feel free to make a copy of this and add your own resources! Good luck :)