Interview preparation is daunting, especially for roles requiring new problem-solving skills or creative thinking. But what if prepping could be less about grinding through textbooks and more about engaging in fun, yet challenging activities?
Like any challenge, it can be easier to work through if there are rewards. Enter the world of gamified interview prep — an approach that uses puzzles, logic games, and strategy exercises to develop the skills that interviewers are looking for, without the monotony.
The key is to simply never stop preparing for interviews. My goal was to make interview prep so fun that I am always ready—from a technical standpoint—to move on if the job market changes unexpectedly.
In this post, I’ll share how I gamified my interview prep experience designed to build technical agility and long-term skill retention. Like learning to drive, these skills become second nature—even after a break—and keep me motivated and eager to practice. It’s a process I’m still refining and documenting, so this page is a work in progress. I’m sharing it now to give others a glimpse into my approach — and for easy reference, as I continue building it out.
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Resources
If you enjoyed this post on interview prep, consider reading my other career posts. You can find a list of resources I used to gamify (or, at least, study) certain aspects of the interview process below.
Where to find jobs?
- Handshake
- InfoSec Jobs
- Community Specific Job-Boards
- Many security Discords have them too
- Career Connect – RIT specific
- Lime Connect – for people with disabilities
- WiCyS – Women in Cybersecurity
Practice interview questions and general info
- Glassdoor
- Leetcode (premium subscription recommended)
- Blind
- Levels.fyi
Books
- Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Repositories
- Security Engineering at Google: My Interview Study Notes by Grace Nolan
- “I am a security engineer at Google and these are the notes from when I was studying for the interviews. This is my first job in security and a lot of people have asked me how I studied. My notes consist mostly of a list of terms and technologies to learn, plus little tidbits that helped me remember certain details. I’ve included interview tips and study strategies which are just as important as knowing what topics to study.”
- Olivia also made private copy of this, but this main repo (linked above) is still being updated.
Interesting articles
While the articles shared may not always be directly useful, they can be insightful, thought-provoking, or simply entertaining. Please note that any content not authored by me does not imply my endorsement.
Card games
- Jane Street Math Card Deck
- Backdoors and Breaches – Incident Response Card Game
- Emily Post – Mind Your Manners: A Game of Etiquette Trivia
Software
Algorithms and data structures
Algorithms and data structures
- HackerRank
- LeetCode
- Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Coding challenges
Coding challenges
- Exercism
- HackerRank
- LeetCode
- Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Regex
Regex
System design
Books
Books
- System Design Interview: an Insider’s Guide by Alex Xu
- System Design Interview: an Insider’s Guide – Volume 2 by Sahn Lam and Alex Xu
Playlists
Playlists
- System Design Interview Walkthroughs by Hello Interview*
Threat modeling
Articles
- A PASTA Threat Modeling Example by Nick Kirtley
- Threat Modeling Overview and Cheat Sheet by OWASP
- 55 Threat Modeling Interview Questions & Answers for 2025 by Misbah Thevarmannil
Playlists
- Instant Threat Modeling by SecuRingPL
Security
Detection engineering
Detection engineering
Articles
- Demystifying the Process: Threat Detection Engineering Interviews by Julie Agnes Sparks
Datasets
- CloudTrail log set by Scott Piper
Videos
- 27 mins – Crash Course in Detection Engineering by Julie Sparks
- 12 mins – Finding the Most Valuable Data: The Pyramid Of Pain Explained by StudioSec
- 10 mins – Build a Pro-Level Detection Engineering Strategy by John Hubbard
- 47 mins – Leveling Up Your Detection Engineering by Fred Frey and Andrew Rector
Incident response
Incident response
Penetration testing
Penetration testing
Web
System administration
Linux shell
Linux shell
Vim
General career
Being Glue and other advice for mainly women
Your job title says “software engineer”, but you seem to spend most of your time in meetings. You’d like to have time to code, but nobody else is onboarding the junior engineers, updating the roadmap, talking to the users, noticing the things that got dropped, asking questions on design documents, and making sure that everyone’s going roughly in the same direction. If you stop doing those things, the team won’t be as successful. But now someone’s suggesting that you might be happier in a less technical role. If this describes you, congratulations: you’re the glue. If it’s not, have you thought about who is filling this role on your team?
- Being Glue by @whereistanya
- Why Women Volunteer for Tasks That Don’t Lead to Promotions by Linda Babcock, Maria P. Recalde and Lise Vesterlund
Start date: 3 Nov 2024.
