The complete roadmap to mastering Data Structures and Algorithms for placement interviews — from Arrays to Dynamic Programming.
Prioritize these topics in your interview prep — sorted by frequency in real interviews.
Foundation of all coding interviews. Master sliding window, two-pointer, and prefix sum patterns.
Reversal, cycle detection, merge — standard interview staples.
Monotonic stack, BFS with queues, expression evaluation.
Traversals (DFS/BFS), BST operations, LCA, diameter — one of the most common interview topics.
BFS, DFS, topological sort, Dijkstra, Union-Find.
Knapsack, LCS, coin change, DP on trees/graphs. Essential for top companies.
Top-K problems, merge K lists, median in stream.
Autocomplete, word search — common in Google/Amazon.
Subsets, permutations, N-Queens, Sudoku solver.
Know all O(n log n) sorts, binary search on answer technique.
A realistic week-by-week plan to go from beginner to interview-ready.
Arrays, Strings, Two Pointers, Sliding Window
Linked Lists, Stacks, Queues, Recursion
Trees, Binary Search Trees, BFS/DFS
Graphs, Topological Sort, Union-Find
Dynamic Programming (1D, 2D, DP on trees)
Heaps, Tries, Greedy, Mock Interviews
Re-read the problem, ask clarifying questions, and list edge cases before touching code.
Think of brute force first, then optimize. Identify the data structure or pattern (sliding window, BFS, DP).
Write readable code with meaningful variable names. Don't rush — interviewers value clarity.
Trace through your code with the examples provided and your own edge cases.
Discuss time/space complexity and how you'd improve the solution if you had more time.
For senior roles: what happens if input is 10^9? Discuss streaming, distributed approaches.
TomoLink has curated DSA question banks for TCS, Amazon, Google, Infosys & 50+ companies.
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