Why this chapter exists

When I sit down with juniors who are two weeks away from a client interview, I used to tell them "just practice more". That was useless advice and I knew it the second it left my mouth. This chapter is what I wish I had handed them instead.

The first two chapters covered what clients look for and how interviews are structured. This one is the part where we stop reading and start doing. Think of it as a training plan you can run alongside your day job, not a course you binge on a Saturday.

Here's what we'll work through together:

• Lesson 1, Build Your Personal Schedule: Block 30 to 45 minutes a day on your real calendar, before 9am or after the kids sleep. I'll show you the slots that actually survive a sprint.
• Lesson 2, Refresh and Adapt Your CV: One CV per role family, not one CV for everyone. We'll cut the 2018 jQuery project and lead with the React work the client actually buys.
• Lesson 3, Strengthen Your Technical Core: A revision loop across HTML, CSS, JS, and your main framework, using frontendmasters, MDN, and an LLM as a sparring partner (not a tutor).
• Lesson 4, Practice Explaining and Answering: Record yourself answering "tell me about a hard bug" on your phone. The first playback is brutal. That's the point.
• Lesson 5, Live Coding Prep: Run 45-minute timed sessions on a CodeSandbox starter, no Copilot, no Stack Overflow. Sweat now, calm later.
• Lesson 6, Offline Assignments: Handling take-home tasks like the 3-day React dashboard, including how to scope down when the brief is too big for one weekend.
• Lesson 7, Behavioral Stories: Write 8 to 10 STAR(R) stories from real projects. The second R is for Reflection and clients ask for it more than you think.
• Lesson 8, Applying Your Stories: Mapping one story to three different questions, so you stop freezing when the wording shifts.
• Lesson 9, Build Your Calendar: Combining everything into a repeatable 3 to 4 week schedule you can re-run for the next interview, and the one after that.

A small honesty note. I built this roadmap for outsourcing interviews specifically (EPAM, Endava, Cognizant and similar outsourcing shops). It also works for product companies, but the CV and behavioral chapters lean toward the staffing side of the world.

Lesson 1 is where the calendar block earns its keep. I'll show you the three slot patterns that have survived real sprints, and the one that always collapses by Wednesday. See you there.