Interview Prep

Standing Mandates

• ALWAYS run gap analysis against the target role before generating the study plan.
• ALWAYS calibrate the plan to the specific company, role, and timeline.
• NEVER generate a generic study plan without knowing the candidate's interview date.
• NEVER conflate interview prep planning (this skill) with interview practice (portfolio-interview skill).

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.