Ask HN: How to prepare for a job change?

I work for a big tech company (not a startup in any sense of the word) we recently had massive layoffs and rumor has it 2017 and 2018 will be more of the same, perhaps on a smaller scale.

Looking at the landscape and judging by our performance relative to our competition I'm not sure this company can remain a market leader much longer, although I believe the death will be slow.

I feel like the writing is on the wall and I should take the next 6-8 months to really gather myself and prepare for interviews, but I am not sure how to go about this. My current job is the first post-graduation and I've done pretty badly in past interviews (last time I interviewed was about a year ago), what are the best resources to prepare for interviews, what should I look at to ensure I'm ready to change jobs (personal finance and market wise) and what are some of the growth areas within software engineering that would be hiring ?