Acing Interviews & Negotiating Your Offer

The typical process

1. Recruiter screen (20–30 min): your background, why this company, salary expectations
2. Technical screen (45–60 min): a coding problem or take-home task
3. Onsite / final loop (2–4 hours): more coding, a project deep-dive, behavioral questions, sometimes a small system design or code review
4. Offer

Coding interviews: think out loud

Interviewers grade your process, not just the final answer:

1. Clarify the problem and ask about edge cases
2. Describe a brute-force approach and its Big-O
3. Improve it, and explain the trade-off
4. Code it cleanly, narrating as you go
5. Test with examples, including edge cases

Practice this script in the Interview Prep section, out loud, with a timer. Better still, ask a friend to play the interviewer.

Behavioral interviews: STAR

• Situation: the context, in one or two sentences
• Task: what you were responsible for
• Action: what you did (say "I", not "we")
• Result: the outcome, with a number if you can, plus what you learned

Prepare 5 stories you can adapt: a hard bug, a conflict, a failure, learning something fast, and going beyond what was asked.

Questions to ask them

• "What does a great first 90 days look like in this role?"
• "How do code reviews work on the team?"
• "How does the team use AI tools day to day?"

Negotiating

• Research the salary range for the role and city first
• When asked for expectations early, give a researched range or ask for their budget
• When the offer comes: thank them, get it in writing, and take a couple of days
• It's normal to ask: "Is there any flexibility on the base salary?" The worst answer is no

Next: how big tech hiring works, a full mock interview, and your first 90 days on the job.