You have an interview in 7 days. This guide gives you a focused, hour-by-hour preparation plan built specifically for Indian engineering interviews in 2026: whether you are targeting a startup, a unicorn, or a FAANG India office. No fluff, no 6-month plans. Just what moves the needle in the time you have.
Before studying anything, understand exactly what you are preparing for.
Hour 1: Research the company and role. Find: the company's engineering blog, recent product launches, the specific team you applied to, and any public information about their interview format (Glassdoor, AmbitionBox, Blind, LinkedIn comments). Identify 3 things about the company that genuinely interest you: you will need these for 'Why this company?' questions.
Hour 2: Audit your DSA weak spots. Go to LeetCode and filter by topics. Rate your comfort level on each: Strong (can solve 3 medium problems in 30 minutes each), OK (can solve with some struggle), Weak (frequently get stuck). The weak topics are your priority for Days 2–5.
Hour 3: Write your STAR stories. Draft bullet points for 6 stories covering: biggest technical achievement, a failure and how you handled it, a conflict with a colleague or manager, a time you delivered under pressure, an initiative you took, helping a teammate. You will refine these over the week.
Each daySolve 6–8 LeetCode problems. Time yourself. Review solutions, even when you got it right.
Day 2: Arrays, Strings, Hash Maps: These appear in almost every interview. Solve: Two Sum, Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters, Valid Anagram, Top K Frequent Elements, Group Anagrams, Product of Array Except Self. Review time complexity of each.
Day 3: Trees and Graphs: Maximum Depth of Binary Tree, Inorder/Preorder/Postorder Traversal, LCA of BST, Number of Islands, Course Schedule (topological sort), Word Ladder (BFS). Graph problems are high-priority for product companies.
Day 4: Dynamic Programming and Sliding Window: Climbing Stairs, Coin Change, Longest Common Subsequence, Maximum Subarray (Kadane's Algorithm), Minimum Window Substring, Find All Anagrams in a String. Focus on recognising the pattern, not memorising solutions.
Each evening (Day 2–4): Review the company's tagged problems on LeetCode. Spend 30 minutes on problems specifically tagged with the company you are interviewing at.
If your interview includes a system design round, dedicate Day 5 to it.
Morning (2 hours): Review the RESHADED framework (Requirements → Estimation → Storage → High-level → API → Deep dive → Edge cases → Discuss trade-offs). Practice applying it to one system: URL shortener.
Afternoon (2 hours): Deep-dive into one design that is relevant to the company. If interviewing at Swiggy/Zomato: food delivery tracking system. If at Razorpay: payment gateway. If at a B2B SaaS company: multi-tenant data isolation. Write out your design on paper: the act of writing improves retention.
Evening (1 hour): Review core concepts: CAP theorem, caching strategies (write-through vs write-behind), database replication, horizontal vs vertical scaling. These come up as follow-up questions regardless of the main design topic.
Day 6: Behavioural preparation and mock interview:
MorningRefine your 6 STAR stories. Write the full version of each: situation, task, action (with specific decisions you made), result (quantified where possible). Rehearse 'Tell me about yourself' (2 minutes, timed).
AfternoonDo a full mock interview. Use HireStepX or a friend who is a senior engineer. Simulate the entire loop: DSA problem + walkthrough + system design overview + behavioural. The experience of performing under observation is different from solo study.
EveningLight review of weak spots from the mock. Do not cram new material the night before.
Day 7: Interview day preparation: • Morning: Light review of your STAR stories. No new DSA problems: you have done the work. • 2 hours before: Review company research. Prepare 3 questions to ask the interviewer. • 1 hour before: Light exercise, eat, hydrate. Avoid coffee if it makes you anxious. • 15 minutes before: Join the video call early (for remote interviews). Test audio/video. Have your IDE open with your preferred language template.