Tailored note-taking methods for quick revision before interviews

Introduction

As you approach an interview, having a well-structured set of notes makes it easier to quickly refresh key concepts, patterns, and system design principles. Rather than juggling random snippets of information, using tailored note-taking methods helps you quickly pinpoint what matters most—like common coding patterns, complexity formulas, or architectural templates. By organizing your notes into accessible, review-friendly formats, you ensure that pre-interview revision is efficient, boosting your confidence and readiness.

In this guide, we’ll discuss how to structure notes specifically for fast pre-interview review, how to integrate insights from DesignGurus.io resources, and how to maintain a system that evolves as you refine your problem-solving toolkit.

Why Tailored Note-Taking Matters

1. Faster Recall Under Pressure:
   Having a clear, concise reference lets you skim key data structures, algorithms, patterns, and system design frameworks minutes before the interview starts. This last-minute mental warm-up reduces anxiety and improves performance.

2. Focus on Prioritized Content:
   Well-curated notes filter out noise. They highlight recurring patterns, must-know complexities, or standard architectures, ensuring you spend pre-interview moments on high-yield material.

3. Supports Long-Term Skill Retention:
   Regularly updating and refining your notes after each practice session or mock interview helps solidify knowledge and track improvements over time.

Strategies for Effective Note-Taking

1. Categorize by Problem Type and Complexity:
   Divide coding notes into sections:

   • Arrays, Strings, Graphs, Dynamic Programming, etc.
   • Within each category, list essential patterns (e.g., “Sliding Window: Two pointers move to maintain a condition… O(N) complexity”).

   Resource: Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions gives a pattern-based structure. Adopt these categories in your notes so you can instantly recall which pattern applies to the problem at hand.

2. Use Bullet Points and Short Definitions:
   Keep notes minimalistic. For each pattern or data structure:

   • Write the name (e.g., “BFS for shortest paths in an unweighted graph”)
   • State complexity: O(V+E) for BFS.
   • Core steps: Initialize queue, mark visited, enqueue neighbors, etc.

   Resource: Grokking Data Structures & Algorithms for Coding Interviews gives complexity stats and standard operations. Condense these into a one-line reminder per structure.

3. Highlight Common Trade-Offs and Tips:
   Note key decisions:

   • When to prefer a heap over a balanced tree for priority operations.
   • When BFS beats DFS for shortest path.
   • Caching strategies for high-frequency data access.

   For system design, list essential architectural components (load balancer, CDN, cache) with a one-liner about their purpose and complexity:

   • “CDN: reduces latency by caching content globally.”
   • “Sharding: divides data, improves scalability but adds complexity to queries.”

   Resource: Grokking the System Design Interview and Grokking the Advanced System Design Interview provide standard architectural patterns. Turn these into quick-reference notes.

4. Incorporate Complexity References and Formulae:
   Often, before an interview, you want to confirm that a solution’s complexity meets the problem’s scale constraints. Write down common complexities and their feasibility for large inputs (e.g., O(N²) might be too slow for N=10^6).

   This quick complexity cheat-sheet ensures you rapidly assess approaches without re-deriving complexities on the spot.

5. Include a Small “Last-Minute Review” Section:
   At the front page of your notes, have a tiny cheat-sheet of the most commonly forgotten points:

   • Simplest BFS/DFS template steps
   • Key DP transitions (e.g., “For Knapsack, dp[i][w] = max(dp[i-1][w], dp[i-1][w-weight[i]] + value[i])”)
   • System design must-haves (e.g., “Always consider load balancing, caching, database indexing, and replication”).

Maintaining and Updating Notes

1. Refine After Each Mock Interview:
   If you struggled to recall a certain pattern or missed a complexity detail, add a line to your notes. Over time, your notes become finely tuned to your weaknesses, ensuring steady improvement.

2. Prune Outdated or Redundant Information:
   If you no longer struggle with two-pointer techniques, maybe reduce that section. Keep notes lean, focusing on what you need to reinforce before interviews.

3. Add Learned Insights from New Problems:
   Every time you solve a new type of problem, write a brief line summarizing the pattern. This continuous updating makes your notes a living document that evolves with your skill set.

Using Notes During Final Review Sessions

• The night or morning before an interview, spend 10-15 minutes scanning through your notes. This quick pass refreshes critical details:

  • Complexity reminders: “Binary search O(log N) steps”
  • Patterns: “When in doubt with shortest path, consider BFS for unweighted or Dijkstra for weighted”
  • System design building blocks: “Begin with requirements, outline a simple architecture, then add complexity like shards or caches as needed.”

• This structured review ensures you enter the interview with fresh recall of essential concepts, reducing the risk of blanking out under pressure.

Long-Term Benefits

1. Consistent Interview Performance:
   As your notes refine, pre-interview refreshes become highly effective. You’ll approach each new interview with stable confidence, knowing you have a compact knowledge bank in mind.

2. Promotes Continuous Learning:
   Regularly updating notes after practice or mocks encourages iterative learning. You identify patterns in your weaknesses and steadily reinforce them.

3. Better On-the-Job Reference:
   Even after landing a role, these notes serve as a quick reference when facing tough engineering challenges. The habit of concise, pattern-based documentation transfers well to real-world problem-solving.

Final Thoughts

Tailored note-taking methods turn pre-interview revision into a fast, structured routine rather than a last-minute scramble. By organizing concepts into concise, pattern-based bullet points and updating them as you grow, you ensure rapid recall and maintain composure under interview pressure.

Combining this approach with the pattern knowledge from Grokking the Coding Interview, fundamental data structure insights from Grokking Data Structures & Algorithms, and architectural frameworks from Grokking the System Design Interview, you streamline your mental preparation. Ultimately, these notes become a strategic asset, reinforcing your confidence and readiness for any coding or system design challenge that comes your way.