Quick Tips and Strategies for Succeding in System Design Interview Round

Try to follow the 80-20 rule during your interview, where 80% of the time you will be speaking and explaining everything and 20% of the time your interviewer. Don’t use buzzwords and pretend to be an expert if you don’t know something.

  • You read some blog posts or a few topics today and tomorrow is your interview, during your interview if you throw some buzzwords like “No-SQL”, “Mongo DB” and “Cassandra” then it may backfire on you.
    • You can’t make a fool of the interviewer who is an industry expert, always consider that your interviewer may ask for more details and justification so if you are using technology X or database Y then “why?”, prepare yourself for this kind of question.
  • Do not go into detail prematurely.
    • Many times it happens when a candidate starts explaining one part of the system, they go into too much detail about the component and forget about the strict timeframe and other components.
    • Maybe the interviewer wants you to stop somewhere where they don’t need too much detail. So to avoid this mistake wait for the interviewer’s feedback or response.
    • They will give you some hints or will direct you to whatever part of the system they want you to explain further.
  • Don’t have a set architecture in mind
    • Like MVC or event-driven and try to fit the requirement somehow in that architecture. Maybe it’s not suitable as per the requirement. Requirements may change during the interview to test your flexibility so try to avoid this mistake.
  • Be honest during your interviews
    • If you have never used technology X then you don’t need to be fake in that situation. Try to find common solutions and show them your honesty, confidence, and willingness to learn something. That will make a good impression on the interviewer.
  • Your practical experience, your knowledge, your understanding of modern software systems, and how you express yourself clearly during your interview matter a lot to designing a system successfully.

How to Crack System Design Interview Round

In the System Design Interview round, You will have to give a clear explanation about designing large scalable distributed systems (like Twitter, Messenger, Netflix, Uber, etc..) to the interviewer. This round may be a challenging and complex round for you because you are supposed to cover all the topics and tradeoffs within this limited time frame which seems to be impossible. But this article will work as a guide to solve all these doubts and problems and make you excel in the System Design Interview Round

Steps to Crack System Design Interview Round

  • Steps to Crack System Design Round in Interviews
  • Understand the Goal and Gather All the Requirements
  • Understand the Estimation and Constraints
  • Define the Data model design
  • API design
  • High-level component design
  • Detailed design
  • Identify and resolve bottlenecks
  • Most Frequently asked Problems for System Design
  • Quick Tips and Strategies for Succeding in System Design Interview Round:
  • Importance of Communication in System Design Interview Round
  • Do’s and Dont’s in System Design Interview Round

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Steps to Crack System Design Round in Interviews

We know that it might be an overwhelming round for you so let’s start discussing step by step approach and try to make this round easier for you....

1. Understand the Goal and Gather All the Requirements

System design interview questions, by nature, are vague or abstract. Asking questions about the exact scope of the problem, and clarifying functional requirements early in the interview is essential. Usually, requirements are divided into three parts:...

2. Understand the Estimation and Constraints

Estimate the scale of the system we’re going to design. It is important to ask questions such as:...

3. Define the Data model design

...

4. API design

...

5. High-level component design

Now we have established our data model and API design, it’s time to identify system components (such as Load Balancers, API Gateway, etc.) that are needed to solve our problem and draft the first design of our system....

6. Detailed design or Low-Level Design(LLD)

Now it’s time to go into detail about the major components of the system we designed. As always discuss with the interviewer which component may need further improvements....

7. Identify and resolve bottlenecks

Finally, it’s time to discuss bottlenecks and approaches to mitigate them. Here are some important questions to ask:...

8. Most Frequently asked Problems for System Design

Below, are some question which is most frequently asked in system design for designing purpose:...

9. Quick Tips and Strategies for Succeding in System Design Interview Round:

Try to follow the 80-20 rule during your interview, where 80% of the time you will be speaking and explaining everything and 20% of the time your interviewer. Don’t use buzzwords and pretend to be an expert if you don’t know something....

10. Importance of Communication in System Design Interview Round

In the system design interview round, effective communication plays a crucial role in demonstrating your understanding of the problem, your approach to solving it, and your ability to collaborate with others. Here are some key reasons why communication is important in the system design interview:...

11. Do’s and Dont’s in System Design Interview Round

Let’s try to make it simple and discuss some key points before you start your preparation for this round....