How do I prepare for a technical interview?

Interviews usually have 3–4 parts. Prepare each one:

1. Coding exercises - Core patterns: arrays and strings, hash maps, two pointers, sliding window, stacks/queues, recursion, basic trees and graphs (BFS/DFS), sorting. - Practice ~50–80 easy/medium problems on LeetCode or NeetCode, grouped by pattern. Don't grind 500. - Think out loud. Clarify the inputs, state a brute-force approach first, then improve it and discuss complexity. Interviewers grade your process more than a perfect answer.

2. Practical / take-home: a small feature or API. Clean code, tests, a README explaining trade-offs, and a working deploy if possible.

3. System design (lighter for juniors): how you'd build a URL shortener or a notification system. Cover databases, caching, queues, APIs.

4. Behavioral: prepare 5–6 stories using STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result): a bug you fixed, a conflict, a mistake you learned from, a project you're proud of.

Also research the company, prepare questions for them, and do mock interviews with friends or community members. Nothing replaces practicing out loud.