Expert: advanced patterns and interviews · Interview strategy and mock problems · topic 61 of 61 · 30 min
Your study plan and the job hunt
Explanation
Why a plan matters
Without a plan, most people solve random problems, forget them in a month, and never practise the topics they find hard. A plan by pattern makes sure every technique in this course gets practised, and regular revision makes it stick. One focused hour a day for months does far more than a few long weekends before a placement drive.
A 14-week plan by pattern (1 hour a day, 5–6 days a week)
| Weeks | Focus | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | Big-O, arrays, strings, prefix sums | 12–15 easy problems |
| 3–4 | Hashing, two pointers, sliding window | 12–15 easy and medium |
| 5 | Stacks, queues, linked lists, monotonic stack | 8–10 problems |
| 6 | Recursion and backtracking | 6–8 problems |
| 7 | Sorting, binary search, binary search on the answer | 8–10 problems |
| 8–9 | Trees and BSTs | 12–15 problems |
| 10 | Heaps, greedy, intervals | 8–10 problems |
| 11 | Graphs: BFS, DFS, topological sort, Dijkstra, union-find | 8–10 problems |
| 12 | Tries and bit manipulation | 5–6 problems |
| 13 | Dynamic programming | 10–12 problems |
| 14 | Mixed revision, timed mocks, design-style problems | 2–3 timed mocks |
If you have more time, stretch it to 16 weeks and give graphs and DP two weeks each. If a topic feels weak, repeat its week before moving on; the order matters more than the exact dates.
One hour a day
- 10 minutes: revise one old problem from your notebook, from memory.
- 40 minutes: one new problem. Try for about 25 minutes; if stuck, read ONE hint, not the full solution. After solving, read one good solution and compare.
- 10 minutes: write a notebook entry and the complexity.
Spaced revision and a mistakes notebook
Spaced revision means meeting the same idea again after growing gaps, for example after 1 day, 1 week and 3 weeks. Each time you re-solve the problem without looking, the memory lasts longer than if you had read it three times in one evening.
A mistakes notebook (a file or a paper notebook) has one short entry per problem you got wrong or needed help with: the problem name, the pattern, what went wrong, and the key insight in one line, such as "subarray sum = k with negatives → prefix sums + dict, not a window". Before every interview, read the notebook, not the whole course.
Where to practise
- LeetCode: interview-style problems tagged by topic and difficulty, plus weekly contests.
- GeeksforGeeks: articles on every topic and a large practice section; widely used for Indian campus preparation.
- Codeforces and CodeChef: timed contests with ratings; great for speed and harder thinking (competitive programming).
- HackerRank: practice tracks, and the platform many companies use for online assessments, so get used to its editor.
- InterviewBit: a structured, topic-by-topic interview track.
Pick ONE main site and finish its topic lists; jumping between sites wastes time. Features and free limits change, so check each site's current pages.
Mock interviews
Pair up with a friend once a week. One plays the interviewer with a problem the other has not seen; use a shared editor and a 45-minute timer; then swap. The interviewer gives feedback on four points: clarifying questions, approach, code quality and testing, and communication. Recording yourself also works.
Companies and rounds in India
| Type | Examples of the kind of work | Typical rounds (vary by company) |
|---|---|---|
| Product companies | Build their own software products and platforms | Online assessment, 2–4 DSA rounds, sometimes design and a hiring-manager round |
| Service companies | IT services and consulting for client companies | Aptitude and basic coding test, technical interview, HR; some run higher-pay tracks with harder coding tests |
| Startups | Small teams building a new product fast | Varies: DSA, a take-home task, project discussion, culture fit |
Campus hiring happens through your college's training and placement cell, usually in the final year. Off-campus hiring is open to everyone: company career pages, LinkedIn and job portals, hiring contests, and referrals from people who work there. Many good jobs are found off-campus, so do not rely on campus drives alone.
Salaries: honest ranges
Pay varies by company, city, role and skills. As a rough guide, freshers at large service companies are often offered about ₹3.5–7 LPA (lakh per annum). Product companies and well-funded startups vary widely and are often higher, but there is no single number. Note that CTC (cost to company) can include bonuses, stock and benefits that are not part of monthly take-home pay, so compare offers by the fixed part too.
Your resume
- One page for freshers: education, skills, two or three projects, achievements.
- Projects: what it does, the tech used, and one concrete result ("search in under 100 ms on 50,000 records"). Link the GitHub repository and a live demo if there is one.
- Keep GitHub clean: a README that explains how to run each project.
- Only list what you can discuss in depth; interviewers ask about every line.
System design (designing large systems such as a URL shortener or a chat service) is usually tested after a few years of experience. Freshers may get object-oriented design or basic database questions, along with CS fundamentals (operating systems, DBMS, computer networks, OOP), which are common in Indian interviews.
Common mistakes
- Solving hundreds of problems without revising any. Fix: spaced revision and the mistakes notebook.
- Reading solutions too early. Fix: 25 minutes of honest effort, then one hint.
- Only practising easy problems. Fix: from week 4, at least half of new problems should be medium.
- Never practising aloud. Fix: weekly mocks with a timer.
- Applying only through campus. Fix: apply off-campus and ask for referrals politely.
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Your study plan and the job hunt · 1/9
This last lesson is about your study plan and the job hunt.
Prefer a video by a teacher? Find free videos on “DSA preparation plan for placements 3 months coding interview roadmap” on YouTube ↗
In real life: A final-year student's placement season
A final-year student in Pune starts in June: one hour every evening using the 14-week plan, one LeetCode list, and a mistakes notebook. Every Saturday she does a 45-minute mock with a classmate. By September, when campus drives begin, she has solved around 150 problems by pattern and revised most of them twice. She also applies off-campus through career pages and referrals. Her story is typical, not a promise; results depend on effort, the year's hiring market and luck in each round.
from datetime import date, timedelta
solved_on = date(2026, 6, 10)
for gap in (1, 7, 21):
print(solved_on + timedelta(days=gap))Practice (0/2 done)
Write your personal 12–16 week DSA plan and job-hunt plan. Be specific: dates, daily time, topics per week, how you revise, and how you will apply.
A final mixed problem. Write min_meeting_rooms(intervals): intervals is a list of (start, end) pairs with start < end. Return the minimum number of rooms needed so no two meetings in the same room overlap. A meeting that starts exactly when another ends can reuse its room. Return 0 for an empty list. Aim for O(n log n) with sorting and a heap. Example: min_meeting_rooms([(0, 30), (5, 10), (15, 20)]) returns 2.
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Questions people ask about this
Open a question to see the answer and why. The first ones are this topic's own quiz, so try the quiz above before you peek.
What is spaced revision?
Answer: Re-solving the same problem after growing gaps, such as 1 day, 1 week and 3 weeks
Growing gaps between attempts make the memory last much longer than one long session.
What belongs in a mistakes-notebook entry?
Answer: The pattern, what went wrong, and the key insight in one line
Short, personal insights are fast to revise before an interview.
Which statement about fresher salaries in India is the most honest?
Answer: Pay varies by company, city, role and skills; service-company offers are often about ₹3.5–7 LPA
Ranges are approximate, and CTC can include parts that are not monthly cash.
For a fresher, what is usually tested LESS than DSA and fundamentals?
Answer: Large-scale system design
Designing large distributed systems is usually expected after a few years of experience.
What makes a resume project strong?
Answer: What it does, the tech used, a concrete result, and a GitHub link you can explain
Interviewers ask about every line; real, explained work is what convinces them.
Which plan is most likely to work in the month before interviews?Related
Answer: Daily practice of questions aloud, SQL and DSA problems, project polish, and mock interviews
Interviews test speaking, coding and project knowledge together. Steady daily practice and mocks cover all three.
Why end each revision week with a mini-project?Related
Answer: It combines the week's topics into something working you can show
Building ties the ideas together.
Many Go roles ask for 2+ years of backend experience. A good fresher strategy is...Related
Answer: Apply broadly for backend roles, show a Go project, and move to Go as you grow
Backend experience in any language transfers to Go.
In a 90-minute machine-coding round, what should you do first?Related
Answer: Clarify the requirements and plan briefly
A few minutes of questions and planning avoid building the wrong thing. Then make it work, then make it nice.
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Next steps
- This is the last topic of “Interview strategy and mock problems”. The module exam comes next.
- Module 12 exam: Interview strategy and mock problems · 14 questions · 25 min, without help. 5 topics of this module still to finish first.
- 61 topics left in the course before the final exam.