The first minutes of your interview set the foundation. Poor requirements gathering leads to designing the wrong thing.
Interviewers intentionally give vague prompts: "Design an autocomplete." They want to see if you ask the right questions.
You'll learn to extract:
- Functional requirements (what it does)
- Non-functional requirements (how well it does it)
- Constraints (what limits you)
Good requirements gathering shows senior-level thinking. Juniors dive in. Seniors clarify first.