Top 10 Books and Courses for Technical Interview Preparation
Ace your next technical interview with these top 10 books and courses that cover data structures, algorithms, system design, and more. Get the knowledge and skills you need to land your dream job!
Even if you are not preparing for Google or Facebook but some service-based companies like Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Cognizant, Tech Mahindra, etc., or some Investment banks like JP Morgan, Morgan Stanely, or Barclays you will benefit from this list of books.
Though I won't suggest you read them all, obviously 10 is way more than enough, but choose the book depending upon the difficulty level of interviews and your knowledge and experience. If you are good at data structure and algorithms, you can skip some of the books that teach fundamentals and directly jump on solving coding problems.
If you are preparing for startups and big tech giants like Google, Amazon, or Microsoft, then you should prepare hard and well, and there the difficult problems given in classic books like Algorithm Design Manual by Steven Skiena seriously help. Still, for more general-purpose interviews, I think the Cr.acking the Coding Interview book itself is sufficient.
If you need more questions, you can solve problems given in the Coding Interview questions book by Narasimha Karumanchi, the famous data structure and algorithm book author in Python and Java.
And, if you want to combine books with some active learnings, then you can also join some online courses I have shared for coding interviews like Data Structure and Algorithms Analysis - Job Interview on Udemy, one of the best courses to prepare for coding interviews.
10 Books to Prepare Technical Job Interviews
Here is my collection of some of the best books to prepare for coding/programming job interviews. If you are looking at tech jobs at Investment Banks, Software service companies, Startups, and some of the biggest tech giants like Google and Facebook, then these books will help you to prepare well and perform well in your job interviews.
1. Cra.cking the Coding Interview
This is the most recommended book for programming/coding job interviews because it contains frequently asked questions from various tech companies. I strongly suggest you go through all the problems, 189 in total given in this book to refresh your knowledge.
It should be the first book you read because, by reading this, you will automatically gain all the experience you need to cr.ack a technical job interview.
The author has worked on famous tech companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft and familiar with the in and out of their job interview process, which makes this book an invaluable resource for all developers preparing for tech jobs.
If you want to do it even better, I also suggest you join an online course for active learning like the Master the Coding Interview course by Andrei Negaoie on Udemy. This will provide a boost to your preparation.
2. Programming Interview Exposed
This is one of the first books I read on programming job interviews, before that I wasn't even aware that there are books to help you cr.ack technical job interviews.
Like the previous book, this also contains questions from various important topics for coding interviews like a binary tree, linked list, string, SQL, networking, problem-solving, and puzzles.
If you have to buy just one book, then buy the previous one, which is more up-to-date, but if you can afford it, this book will also help you to learn and understand coding problems better.
If you want, you can also combine this book with these best System design courses for coding interviews to prepare for System design better, which is often the most difficult topic to cr.ack on programming job interviews.
3. Algorithm Design Manual
This is just a terrific and fantastic book on Algorithm, it's the best book you can expect to cr.ack some of the toughest programming job interviews in the book like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple's technical jobs.
The book contains questions based on algorithms and data structure, and if you can solve them on your own, you are fully ready for job interviews.
It also includes some solved question which teaches you how you can apply algorithms to solve real-world problems. In short, one of the must-read books to do cr.ack a programming job interview.
By the way, if you struggle to solve coding problems, particularly the new ones which you have never seen before then I highly recommend you join Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions course on Educative.
It's a great course to essential coding patterns like two pointer approach, fast and slow pointer, merge intervals, sliding window, etc, which can help you to solve 100+ coding problems in real interviews.
And, if you like this course, I suggest you opt for Educative Subscription because Educative has a lot of interactive, text-based course to prepare for key coding interview topics like algorithms, data structure, dynamic programming, object-oriented programming, multithreading, database, etc. and it just costs $18 per month (50% discount now).
4. Elements of Programming Interviews
This is another essential book for preparing programming job interviews. It is one of the rare complete books which covers coding, data structure, algorithms, and problem-solving.
This book will provide excellent material for preparation if you are preparing for startup jobs and jobs on reputed software companies like ThoughtWorks, Amazon, and Twitter.
5. Programming Pearl
This is one of the oldest books to prepare for a technical job interview, but as they say, "Old is Gold," this book is truly remarkable in teaching you the fundamentals of computer science and programming. Some of the classic questions from this book, like sorting 1 million integers with very little RAM, are still popular.
This book is not a replacement for any excellent algorithm book like Introduction to Algorithms or Algorithms 4th Edition, but it complements them. It is also an exciting book to read, so you won't fall asleep while reading this on your commute to the office.
6. Java Programming Interview Exposed
This is the must-read of the book if you are preparing for a Java programming job interview. Since Java interviews not only focus on coding and programming but also on Java fundamentals, knowledge of Java APIs like JDBC, Java Collection Framework, JVM Internals, and popular frameworks like Spring, Hibernate, JUnit, etc.
This book helps you to prepare for all those apart from standard coding and data structure and algorithm questions. The book is suitable for both junior and senior-level Java developer job interviews.
7. Coding Interview Questions
This is the book from one of my favorite authors Narasimha Karumanchi, which is also the author of one of the best data structure and algorithm books for Java programmers, The Data Structure and Algorithm Made Easy.
You will find a lot of frequently asked Coding questions from Tech job interviews in this book. The author has also done a great job of explaining the solution, their time and space complexity, and how you can improve your solutions by applying tried and tested techniques.
8. Dynamic Programming for Coding Interviews
This is another excellent book to prepare for programming job interviews. This book solely focuses on Dynamic programming techniques for problem-solving. The authors of the book Meenakshi and Kamal Rawat have done an excellent job of explaining how you can use dynamic programming and recursion to solve a problem like how do you compute the 80th term of a Fibonacci series.
The book is also fun to read. Btw, if Dynamic programming is your weak link, then you can also check out these best dynamic programming courses on Udemy to brush up on your dynamic programming skill.
This is another excellent book for a technical job interview, which will teach you about standard algorithms and how to use those algorithms to solve a particular problem. They give you step-by-step guidance on applying a known algorithm to solve unknown problems.
This book is particularly useful for candidates preparing job on big tech giants which focus on innovation like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, ThoughtWorks, Intel, etc.
10. SQL Puzzles by Joe Celkos
The SQL queries are an integral part of programming job interviews, and this book has some of the best SQL query challenges you will ever see. Once you have gone through the puzzles given in this book, you should be comfortable dealing with any kind of SQL queries on interviews like join based, aggregation, functions, and correlated subqueries.
11. Algomonster
This is not a book but a very useful resource to prepare for a coding interview that I come across recently. This website is specially created to prepare and get succeed in FAANG interviews. It doesn't teach you how to solve a particular coding problem but how to find the underlying pattern which can then be used to solve many more coding problems.
Apart from reading one of these books, you can also join Algomoster to get a boost to your coding interview preparation. You will learn the most important patterns and get results in the shortest amount of time possible.
It contains more than 48 Patterns, meticulously Curated by Google Engineers, and more than 325 Lessons and Problems, 678 Illustrations along with Object-Oriented Design and System Design questions to make yourself completely ready for your next coding interview.
You can subscribe to Algomonster now for just $99 (69% discount) and give your interview preparation a new edge. Here is also a nice diagram from Algomoster which tells what patterns you should learn for your coding interview.
That's all about some of the best books to prepare for technical interviews for programming jobs. The list includes books that will teach you all essential topics for interview, like data structure and algorithms, system design, algorithm design, SQL, dynamic programming, programming language like Java, as well as the soft skill required to cr.ack a programming job interview.
The first two books in this list are a must-read for any level of programmer like both fresher's and experienced because they will refresh all essential topics for software development jobs.
Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like these book recommendations, then please share them with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or suggestions or any book you want to see on this list, then please drop a note.
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