Welcome to The Careersy Dispatch – Hands-On Edition.
This page is your sandbox for mastering AI-assisted technical interviews.
Copy-paste freely and make it yours—the more you iterate, the sharper your interview game.
| Step | Action | Practical Details |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Build a Prompt Vault | Centralise reusable prompts for coding, testing, docs and reviews. | • Create a Notion database with fields: Prompt, Tags, Expected Output, Last Tested.• Tag each prompt with language/framework + role.• Aim for 100 prompts by Friday. |
| 2. Rehearse Aloud | Narrate your prompting + decision‑making as you code. | • Record 15‑min sessions with Loom.• Focus on clarity: what you’re asking, why, and how you’ll validate output. |
| 3. Add Guard‑Rails | Force the model to self‑critique and document risks. | • After each code suggestion, ask: “Add inline comments for edge cases & complexity.”• Run pytest (or equivalent) to catch silent failures. |
| 4. Post‑Interview Debrief | Send a concise recap to the interviewer. | • 3‑bullet email template:1️⃣ Where AI saved time2️⃣ Where you over‑ruled it3️⃣ Key improvement you’d ship next |
How to use: Duplicate this table inside your Notion DB, test each prompt in your preferred LLM, tweak parameters, and log results.
| # | Prompt (copy‑paste) | Tags | Expected Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | “Create a CRUD REST API for {{EntityName}} in {{Language}} with unit tests and Swagger docs.” | Software | Controller, routes, tests, OpenAPI JSON |
| 2 | “Optimise this SQL query for cost on BigQuery and explain the changes.” | Data Engineer | Refactored query + cost breakdown |
| 3 | “Generate a React table component with virtualised rows and Typescript types.” | Software | React component + TSX file |
| 4 | “Refactor the following function for readability without changing complexity; add docstring.” | Software | Cleaner function + docstring |
| 5 | “Write pytest unit tests achieving 95 % coverage for the provided Flask app.” | Software | Pytest file + coverage report |
| 6 | “Produce inline comments explaining time/space complexity for this algorithm.” | Software | Commented code |
| 7 | “Convert this synchronous Node.js function to async/await with error handling.” | Software | Async function + error handling |
| 8 | “Add pagination, sorting and filtering to this Prisma query.” | Software | Updated query snippet |
| 9 | “Explain three architectural options to scale this service beyond 1 M RPS.” | Product, Software | Bullet list of architectures |
| 10 | “Identify OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities in the snippet and suggest fixes.” | Security, Software | Vulnerability list + patches |
| 11 | “Generate a docker‑compose file for Postgres, Redis and the app container.” | DevOps | Compose YAML |
| 12 | “Create a Helm chart with rolling updates enabled for this deployment.” | DevOps | Helm chart files |
| 13 | “Transform CSV to Parquet with PySpark and enforce schema.” | Data Engineer | PySpark script |
| 14 | “Write a SQL aggregation to calculate MoM growth from this table.” | Data Engineer | SQL query |
| 15 | “Produce an Airflow DAG that runs daily and emails failure alerts.” | Data Engineer | Python DAG |
| 16 | “Generate docstrings for all functions in this Go file following conventions.” | Software | Updated Go file |
| 17 | “Create a React Native login screen with form validation and error states.” | Software | RN component |
| 18 | “Write Cypress e2e tests for a user signup flow.” | Quality, Software | Cypress spec file |
| 19 | “Migrate this MySQL schema to PostgreSQL; list incompatibilities.” | Data Engineer | Migration SQL + notes |
| 20 | “Add feature flags using LaunchDarkly SDK to this feature.” | Product, Software | Code diff + instructions |
| 21 | “Generate a Terraform module for an S3 static site with CloudFront.” | DevOps | TF files |
| 22 | “Propose 3 baseline ML models for this dataset and compare metrics.” | ML, Data Science | Model list + metric table |
| 23 | “Fine‑tune a BERT classifier on the supplied CSV; output F1 score.” | ML, Data Science | Training script + score |
| 24 | “Write an AWS Lambda in Python to resize images on S3 trigger.” | Serverless, Software | Lambda code |
| 25 | “Eliminate N+1 queries in this Rails controller.” | Software | Technique list + sample code |
| 26 | “Generate an ASCII ERD diagram from this SQL schema.” | Data Engineer | ASCII ERD |
| 27 | “Draft a PR description summarising changes, testing and rollout plan.” | Product, Docs | Markdown PR body |
| 28 | “Create a GitHub Actions CI workflow for Node + Jest + Docker build.” | DevOps | YAML workflow |
| 29 | “Suggest five DDD‑compliant names for this micro‑service.” | Product | Name list |
| 30 | “Add i18n support to this Next.js page using next-i18next.” | Software | Code diff |
| 31 | “Generate a k6 load‑testing script hitting these endpoints.” | Performance | k6 JS script |
| 32 | “Write a bash one‑liner to tail logs and highlight ERROR lines in red.” | Ops | Bash command |
| 33 | “Create a Makefile with build, test, lint targets for this project.” | DevOps | Makefile |
| 34 | “Develop a Kafka consumer in Java that commits offsets manually.” | Data Engineer | Java code |
| 35 | “Explain CAP trade‑offs for migrating MongoDB to Cassandra.” | Architecture, Product | Trade‑off table |
| 36 | “Generate a Swagger/OpenAPI spec from these Express routes.” | Docs | YAML spec |
| 37 | “Add JWT authentication middleware to this FastAPI app.” | Security, Software | Middleware code |
| 38 | “Write a shell script to rotate logs older than 30 days.” | Ops | Shell script |
| 39 | “Draft an RFC template for proposing backend breaking changes.” | Product, Docs | Markdown template |
| 40 | “Create a GraphQL schema for User, Post, Comment with connections.” | Software | Schema SDL |
| 41 | “Refactor this CSS to Tailwind classes; preserve visuals.” | Front‑End | Tailwind markup |
| 42 | “Write BDD scenarios in Gherkin for the password reset flow.” | Quality, Product | Feature file |
| 43 | “Generate TypeORM migration scripts from current vs desired schema.” | Data Engineer | Migration SQL |
| 44 | “Add dependency injection to this Flask route using flask‑injector.” | Architecture | Refactored code |
| 45 | “Tune garbage collection settings for a high‑throughput JVM app.” | Performance | GC settings guide |
| 46 | “Produce a Helm values override file for staging environment.” | DevOps | YAML file |
| 47 | “Create a Git pre‑commit hook to run go vet and gofmt.” | DevOps | Hook script |
| 48 | “Generate a cron expression for 02:15 on weekdays Sydney time.” | Ops | Cron string |
| 49 | “Add WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility fixes to this HTML snippet.” | Front‑End | Updated HTML |
| 50 | “Document SLOs for an API with <200 ms p95 latency and 99.9 % uptime.” | Reliability | SLO doc |
| 51 | “Design a train/val/test split strategy for time‑series data.” | Data Science | Strategy description |
| 52 | “Draft a post‑incident review template focused on root‑cause and actions.” | Reliability | PIR template |
| 53 | “Write a service‑level feature toggle config using Unleash.” | Feature Flags | Config file |
| 54 | “Add server‑side rendering to this Vue 3 app with Nuxt.” | Front‑End | Nuxt config |
| 55 | “Suggest 3 monitoring alerts (threshold + rationale) for a Redis cache.” | Observability | Alert table |
| 56 | “Generate a data contract spec for event‑driven pipeline.” | Data Engineer | YAML schema |
| 57 | “Explain how to shard a PostgreSQL database for multi‑tenant SaaS.” | Architecture | Sharding plan |
| 58 | “Create an OKR set for a product launch of a payments API.” | Product | OKR table |
| 59 | “Design an AB test plan to validate checkout funnel change.” | Product, DS | Test hypothesis + metrics |
| 60 | “Generate Cucumber tests for a shopping cart micro‑service.” | Quality | Feature file |
| 61 | “Draft a DAGSTER pipeline for daily ETL with partitioning.” | Data Engineer | Dagster code |
| 62 | “Refactor this Pandas code to Polars for speed; benchmark.” | Data Science | Polars script + timing |
| 63 | “Create a Databricks notebook that trains XGBoost and logs metrics.” | ML | Notebook |
| 64 | “Implement data versioning with DVC for this project.” | ML, DS | DVC config |
| 65 | “Generate Kubernetes HPA config for 70 % CPU target.” | DevOps | YAML HPA |
| 66 | “Explain approaches to zero‑downtime migrations.” | DevOps | Technique list |
| 67 | “Produce a Rust implementation of an LRU cache with tests.” | Software | Rust code |
| 68 | “Create a Slack bot in Python that reports build status.” | Ops | Bot code |
| 69 | “Draft a stakeholder update deck outline for sprint review.” | Product | Slide outline |
| 70 | “Generate SQL to detect outliers using MAD for numeric columns.” | Data Science | SQL script |
| 71 | “Write a Java Spring Boot controller with pagination and sorting.” | Software | Java code |
| 72 | “Add OpenTelemetry tracing to this Node.js service.” | Observability | Code diff |
| 73 | “Draft acceptance criteria for migrating on‑prem to AWS.” | Product, Architecture | Criteria list |
| 74 | “Create an ELT pipeline with Fivetran and Snowflake; diagram.” | Data Engineer | Diagram + steps |