Time required for TPM interview preparation for FAANG

People often ask how long it takes to prepare for an interview, what should I do to prepare for an interview within a few weeks.

In this article, I will not talk about any shortcuts or tricks that will magically allow you to receive offers effortlessly, but we want to help you focus on what is important when preparing for an interview for a TPM position.

Your focus in preparation should be only on things that have a huge impact on your preparation. This will reduce the preparation time within a month.

1st Stage: Make a concrete daily plan and stick to it

Given the one-month preparation time, it is very important to know what you are doing, to have a detailed plan and idea of ​​the workload, and to make full use of it every day.

Make a detailed plan, determine how many hours per day you will spend on preparation, how many stages there are, and how many hours each of them is.

Follow the plan every day without exception.

- Make a review of your basic knowledge and test your broad knowledge

At this stage, we wanna make sure that you have a very solid technical background, and that is the most important thing when preparing for an interview.

When preparing for a TPM interview, you should focus on system design. And the rest should come in naturally if you have managed a handful of projects. Your preparation for this part can be 10-14 days, but the time for preparation depends upon the knowledge and skills you already possess.

You need to have a lot of experience in designing systems. But if you are just in the initial phase of preparation, then it would be a really hard task to accomplish.

10-14 days of preparation for system design interview:

• The initial stage of preparation

System design interviews are open-ended interviews, i.e. there is no specific correct answer to the problem. That’s why the right approach can help you till midway. You must be familiar with some knowledge of advanced system design concepts such as caching, hashing, data sharing. If you are familiar with the concepts, start practicing questions that cover the major topics and build an approach towards them. The basic way to approach a system design question can be:

1. Clarifying the question and the scope from the interviewer.
2. Drawing out the most basic infrastructure.
3. Defining the API between server and client.
4. Defining the database schema.
5. Optimizing for performance and availability.

If you are comfortable with different topics and had developed an approach, the next step is to practice as much as a mock test as you can. Practice and practice as much a mock test as you can!’ The only way to have a real-time interview experience and to save yourself from the mistakes that can happen during the final interview.

• The final phase of preparation

You are already familiar with concepts and structures, then you should work only on:

• Solving questions: Solve as many questions as you can to cover a wide array.
• Mock Interviews: Mock interviews are a powerful tool in evaluating where your skills are and preparing for the interview.

Nothing is better than a real-time experience, so mock interviews are the key to ace an interview. A lot of things might go wrong during the final interview, like getting anxious or nervous, and that is quite normal. However, mock interviews can affect your performance.

Many interviewees don’t know how to perform an interview, even if they have extensive knowledge. So, mock interviews can be really helpful in such cases. Join our site Interview help, for practicing mock interviews.

2nd Stage: FAANG- targeted preparation

Different companies have different styles and focus. Try to find out the background and goals of the interviewer.

Try to find colleagues, connections that work in FAANG companies. Try to connect with the employees of FAANG companies, or with the former employees there, through social networks. When it comes to FAANG, this is easy. Then ask for as much information as possible about the interview process. What questions were asked, what are their focuses, etc. This information will be of value to you as you adjust your preparation for the last few days.

Search for interview questions from the company and crack them as many as possible. You will be familiar with what kinds of questions were asked in the past, but also you’ll be more confident and well-prepared for your upcoming interview.

3rd Stage: Practice and practice!

There are a lot of interview questions that you need to go over before your job interview. Once you prepare well with them, you’ll feel like every interview question is quite familiar to you, although it’s your first time to solve it.

Use a timer to track your speed. So you can conduct interview sessions by yourself and see if you can finish on time.

I recommend you talk while thinking. It’s important to keep communicating with your interviewer while solving a problem! Most people prepare for interviews in silence. It’s a good time for you to practice this now.

BOTTOM LINE: Good approaches can save you tons of time and make you more likely to be hired. Join our site and let us help you with your preparation.