How to Get a FAANG Offer — You Can Do It!(Software Engineer Guide)

From Mindset to Execution: A Practical Guide

Landing a job as Software Engineer at a FAANG company (Facebook/Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) can feel out of reach. You may think it’s only for Ivy League grads or top-notch naturally gifted individuals.

But here’s my perspective:
It might take time, but with the right mindset, structured preparation, and sustained effort, landing a FAANG offer becomes a very achievable goal — no matter where you’re starting from.

How do I know?

Because I’ve been on the other side — stuck failing interviews at different stages, with a resume that couldn’t even pass Big Tech screening filters.

But I turned it all around:

Landed a FAANG offer as Software Engineer(L5) at Amazon from my first attempt;
Ranked in the top 2.5% globally on LeetCode contests and 750+ solved;
Scored 96/100 on ResumeWorded’s resume review;
Received 15+ middle, junior, intern offers after completing 50+ interviews by the age of 22;

The FAANG acceptance rates are below 2.5%, so how can you boost your chances to get an offer? In the spirit of think win-win, here’s a full breakdown of what helped me — a preparation system you can follow.

This guide breaks it into six categories: Mindset, CV, Algo interview, Relevant Experience, System Design, Behavioural rounds.

👉 If you’re looking for support — whether it’s resume feedback, mock interviews, or just advice — happy to help on LinkedIn.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely my own and do not reflect the views of any current or former employer. This guide is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional or career advice.

1. 🧠 Mindset: Own Your Path

I believe that the foundation of any successful FAANG journey is a mindset. You can always learn new things, but can you commit to a long-term goal, find like-minded people, and cultivate the mindset needed to make consistent progress?

A few core principles from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People are especially relevant: Begin with the end in mind, Be proactive, Think win-win, and Put first things first. I recommend at least reading a summary of this book to get a good grasp of these ideas and why they matter.

The 7 Habits empower you to take charge of your life’s direction. By making the right decisions today, you can steadily grind your way toward FAANG regardless of your current knowledge.

So, create a plan for 3 months, or even 1–3 years 🗓️ — adopt the right mindset, stick to your plan ✅, and everything else will follow 🚀.

2. 📄 CV: Clear, Relevant, and Results-Driven

Getting into the FAANG interview loop can feel unpredictable and frustrating. While you can’t simply tweak your resume to pass every screening — teams have very different experience needs — a well-crafted, impact-driven CV can significantly boost your chances of getting into the interview loop.

Recruiter screening phase is essentially the first interview after you apply to FAANG. It’s not about listing everything you’ve done — it’s about showing why it mattered.

👇 Here’s how to get the most out of your professional history:

Build your CV using Overleaf. Clean one-page formatting is key — not fancy visuals. I used this template.
Use Google’s XYZ format: Accomplished X by doing Y, resulting in Z. It helps your impact stand out.
Use ResumeWorded to fine-tune structure and wording. Aim for a score of at least 85+.
Keywords: Some companies use automated screening (ATS) to match keywords, so make sure your CV highlights relevant skills for the role you’re applying to. ResumeWorded’s example of such a screener.
After that, get a professional review. I highly recommend services like IGotAnOffer or TryExponent, which provide expert feedback tailored to what FAANG recruiters prioritize.

I improved my resume from 64 to 96/100 on ResumeWorded, and that change directly led to more interviews and CV screening passes even without referrals.

Having a perfect-score CV with strong metrics still doesn’t guarantee you’ll pass the recruiter screen — because your technical background matters.

Recruiters often hire for specific teams with unique needs, so passing one screen could still mean rejection from another. See the ‘Relevant Experience’ section below for more details.

3. 💻 Algo interview: Leetcode grind

Algorithmic interviews are among the hardest to clear without proper practice. You will face tasks focused on data structures, algorithms, and problem-solving techniques.

The good news? You can build expertise by consistently working through LeetCode problems — it’s a skill you can train like any other.

When I started, I struggled even to pass online assessments. I’d spend half a day stuck on a single problem, feeling discouraged. But over time, that changed.

Today, I’ve solved 750+ problems on LeetCode and rank in the top 2.5% in contests. That progress didn’t happen overnight — it came from treating coding challenges like a skill to master.

👉 Check my LinkedIn post here for the full journey, and explore this GitHub repo for patterns, snippets, and prep tools.

🔑 Key Milestones on the FAANG LeetCode Path

Start Smart: Begin with Easy/Medium problems that have high acceptance rate. Learn to use tags, hints, discussions and similar questions. Study basic CS concepts with LeetCode Explore or curated topic lists.
Master the Patterns: Most problems follow recurring patterns. Learn them through resources like Blind 75, NeetCode 150, and LeetCode cheatsheets. Over time, you’ll recognize patterns from problem constraints and descriptions.
Build a Note System: As you solve 150+ problems, track struggles and insights. I used a Telegram channel and GitHub repo to log key takeaways — including post-interview experience. LeetCode discussions often reveal follow-ups, optimizations, and deeper understanding — don’t skip them.
Simulate Interviews: Practice solving problems in a random order (without relying on curated lists or specific topics) to mimic real interview conditions. Add time limits and try solving past LeetCode contests(easy/medium/hard questions) to build focus under pressure.
Mock Interviews: Get comfortable articulating your thought process as you solve problems. Use platforms like igotanoffer to get an expert feedback.
300+ Problems Solved: Around the 300-problem mark, you’ll start feeling confident tackling a wide variety of questions — but the FAANG bar is higher. It’s not just about solving problems; it’s about solving them fast, under pressure, and with clear communication.
Join Contests: Contests train speed and performance under time pressure. Prepare templates/snippets for common algorithms to save time.
Peak Readiness (750+ solved, Top 2.5%): You’ll feel confident tackling most algorithm rounds. Shift focus to real interviews, and use your code snippets to refresh core algorithms beforehand.

Of course, algorithm skills go beyond interviews. But you don’t need to solve 1,000+ problems or win a gold medal in competitive programming to pass interviews — what you need is a solid problem-solving approach: spot patterns, break down unfamiliar problems, test ideas, and explain your thinking clearly under pressure.

With deliberate practice, you’ll hit that switch where interviews feel like just another problem you enjoy solving.

4. 💼 Relevant Experience: Scale and Trajectory

FAANG companies tend to follow a standardized interview process for Software Engineering roles, emphasizing general problem-solving rather than domain-specific technologies. That’s because many roles are transferable across teams, so adaptability and core technical skills often take priority.

You don’t need to have worked at massive FAANG-like scale — but you do need to show that you’re capable of thriving in such environments.

At the same time, your past work still plays an important role for the team matching, behavioral interviews, and overall career direction. So it’s worth asking yourself:

Is what I’m doing today helping me grow, contribute meaningfully, and move closer to roles I’d be excited about down the road?

Here’s my suggestion based on career stage.

🔹 If you’re early in your career or want to change expertise domain:

Target product-focused companies that are large enough to build solutions for S&P 500 clients but still small enough to offer ownership and fast growth opportunities (late-stage startups). In these roles, you’ll have the opportunity to make a measurable, real-world impact by owning key projects and delivering value directly to customers.

🔹 If you already have a solid track record:

Focus on how you present it. Highlight the scope, complexity, user experience, and outcomes of your work — see the CV, Behavioural interviews sections for tips on how to frame this effectively.

5. 🏗️ System Design: Think at a scale

System design interviews assess your ability to architect software systems. You’re asked to design a real-world distributed application — like a messaging service, video platform, or one of its core components — on the spot.

At their core, these interviews focus on service-oriented design and test whether you can:

🔹 Break large-scale systems into logical, modular components
🔹 Choose suitable technologies (databases, caches, queues, etc.)
🔹 Justify trade-offs (latency vs throughput, consistency vs availability)
🔹 Handle edge cases, failures, and plan for scalability

The good news? You don’t need hands-on experience building massive systems. With targeted preparation, you can build the design intuition and technical judgment needed to succeed.

🔧 How to Prepare

Start with “System Design in a Hurry”
It’s one of the closest resources to actual interview conditions. Practice sketching diagrams on platforms like Excalidraw, speak your solution out loud, then compare it with the reference design.
Learn core approaches with trusted resources
Use Grokking the System Design Interview and ByteByteGo to explore common design patterns and real-world architectures. Take notes on technologies and approaches used to solve design problems. Keep in mind that these designs often cover more than what you’ll have time to demonstrate in an interview, so don’t feel pressured to memorize every detail.
Do mock interviews with professionals
Sessions with FAANG-level interviewers (e.g., via IGotanOffer) help you build confidence and develop real interview strategies — from structuring your approach to thinking on your feet. One session per interviewer isn’t enough; doing multiple sessions with the same coach lets you cover a wider variety of design question types and better understand expectations.
Additional Resources
For deeper understanding, Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann is an excellent but more advanced read — goes beyond interviews, yet valuable if you want to master distributed systems.

🔍 Be Ready for Different Types of Design Questions

System design interviews aren’t always about well-known systems from a list. Depending on the company and role, you might face questions on mobile, internal solutions, or even OS-level design. Focus on learning a structured design approach over memorizing specific systems.

6. 🗣️ Behavioural rounds: the situation behind the code

Strong technical skills alone aren’t enough. Many candidates stumble in behavioral rounds — where they’re expected to demonstrate how their approach to work aligns with the company’s values, such as Googliness or Amazon’s Leadership Principles or Netflix cultural memo.

While technical interviews are pass/fail and can be trained for independently, behavioral interviews reflect your actual work expertise and level as an engineer. These often come in the form of:

“Tell me about a time when…”

Learn to describe your past work clearly and meaningfully — so interviewers can understand your impact, judgment, and growth.

📚 Amazon Leadership Principles(LP) = a Universal Prep Framework

Amazon places heavy emphasis on behavioral questions — every round includes them. Learning Amazon’s Leadership Principles(LPs) is one of the best ways to build confidence and structure your responses for behavioral rounds.

Even if you’re interviewing outside Amazon, LP-style preparation is a generally beneficial framework because it covers broad leadership and behavioral themes that align with the cultural values of many tech companies.

Key Resources to start with:
🔗 Detailed breakdown of Amazon’s LPs and how to demonstrate them
🔗 How software engineering behavioral interviews are evaluated at Meta

🧠 Build a Collection of Experiences: Structured and Impact-Driven

After reviewing LPs, create a collection of cases using the STAR(R) method. Here’s a suggested approach:

List 15–20 key projects or situations

These can be long-term projects you led or contributed to (taken from your CV, etc.), plus specific situations involving tough decisions or challenges. Write each briefly, focusing on outcomes, trade-offs, and impact.

👉 This becomes your starting set of work examples for behavioral interviews.

Identify the Leadership Principles demonstrated

Longer projects often span multiple phases and challenges, highlighting different principles along the way. Give each example a concise heading and note which Leadership Principles it demonstrates.

👉 You’ll build a useful mapping between your examples and the principles they demonstrate.

Structure each case using the STAR(R) format

Use the Situation, Task, Action, Result + Reflection approach to turn your raw examples into clear, compelling responses. Quantify the results, emphasize your personal contributions(not just your team’s), and highlight the scale.

👉 You’ll end up with polished STAR(R) cases aligned to key Leadership Principles.

Practice your responses using mock interviews

Work through each Leadership Principle individually — note common mock questions related to each LP and talk through your answers. Consider hiring a mock interviewer (e.g., via IGotAnOffer), preferably someone from your target company, to get expert feedback and sharpen your delivery.

👉 You’ll build a solid set of LPs, typical questions, and well-rehearsed answer outlines.

💡 Additional preparation tips

Don’t underestimate behavioral interviews — prepare thoughtfully. Expectations around Leadership Principles vary by level, so choose experiences that reflect the depth, scope, and impact aligned with the role you’re targeting.

🎯 Final Thoughts: This Is Achievable for You

Succeeding in FAANG interviews isn’t about luck — it’s about actually passing them. In this guide, I’ve shared exactly how to prepare for that.

Many people have done it — including career switchers, non-CS grads, and those who faced multiple rejections before landing offers.

This post lays out a structured preparation system that covers every major interview type, along with the materials that worked for me — refined over time to be as efficient and focused as possible.

You’ll find guidance on the key areas: Mindset, CV, Relevant Experience, Algorithms, System Design, and Behavioral Interviews.

🧭 Suggested Timeline: Allocate 3–6 months for algorithms, followed by 1–3 months for system design and behavioral rounds — then review and update your CV.

With the right mindset, consistent effort, and smart practice, a FAANG offer is absolutely within reach. Wherever you’re starting from, this process can get you there.

👉 Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn if you have questions, want feedback on your CV, or are looking to do a mock interview — happy to help!

How to Get a FAANG Offer — You Can Do It!(Software Engineer Guide) was originally published in Javarevisited on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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