How to Prepare for DSA Interviews: A Practical Guide
Engineering Tech Lead · 2026-06-07
DSA interviews are the single biggest barrier between engineering students and jobs at product-based companies. Here is how to prepare systematically.
The Core Topics (in order of priority)
- Arrays and Strings: Two-pointer technique, sliding window, prefix sums
- Linked Lists: Reversal, cycle detection (Floyd's algorithm), merge two sorted lists
- Stacks and Queues: Monotonic stacks, queue implementation using stacks
- Trees and Binary Search Trees: Traversals (inorder, preorder, postorder), height, LCA
- Recursion and Backtracking: N-Queens, Sudoku solver, subsets, permutations
- Dynamic Programming: 0/1 Knapsack, Longest Common Subsequence, Coin Change
- Graphs: BFS, DFS, Dijkstra's shortest path, Union-Find
- Searching and Sorting: Binary search variations, merge sort, quick sort
Recommended Daily Schedule (8 Weeks)
Week 1-2: Arrays and Strings (15 problems). Week 3: Linked Lists and Stacks (10 problems). Week 4: Trees and Binary Search (12 problems). Week 5: Recursion and DP (15 problems). Week 6-7: Graphs and advanced DP (12 problems). Week 8: Mock interviews and revision.
Best Free Resources
LeetCode (free tier), Striver's A2Z DSA Sheet (450 problems with solutions), NeetCode.io (curated 150 problems with YouTube explanations), and GeeksForGeeks practice section.