How to pass JavaScript interviews. Guide for Junior Developers

hi guys one of the most common questions that they see in developer groups is the question about how do I pass the interview for a JavaScript developer role or for a web developer role what are the questions that they might ask me on interview what should I learn how should they behave so generally the set of questions about how do I make my interview successful let's see so I decided to make this little video and talk a little bit about how to pass interview how to prepare to interview and what to expect from a JavaScript developer interview and obviously there are different roles and Industry defined like junior developer middle developer senior developer tech lead and maybe solution architect whatever and the expectations from all those roles will be totally different so I will not even try to explain all kind of roles in this video what I will do in this video I'll just focus on junior developer role because the junior developers are the ones that need the most advice as far as I see at least right they haven't really passed yet lots of introduced they don't have that experience so they don't know what to expect so I think this video going to be kind of useful for them right and at this point you might be asking like who are you who's that guy sitting on the other side of the table and going to give me the tips about interview how do I know what is the good ways to pass interview that is the fair impression so let's take it off the table right away I'm working at a solution architect right now and part of my job response to do this part of my role is conducting interviews right so during last year I have accepted roughly 50 people on their job positions and to do that I need about 150 maybe hundred seventy interviews over all right so that means a lot of things for you so I talked to many people in different nationalities different cultural backgrounds different levels of expertise and my role is pretty much to figure out whom of them will be creative a person of them will be heart removal will not be hired at this moment right so I see this typical patterns of errors that people are making all the introduced same things over and over again so I decided to find out to share this information with you guys and you might be thinking of this moment like so why do you do that try to what is my interest to share those those advices right will this make my life as the interviewer harder I just because there will be like people who watch this video they will be coming to interview prepare they will know how to be able know what to say and they will seem better than they are right and then I will accept some people that are not as good as they seem to be right this is definitely not true in fact I consider myself to be quite an experienced - interviewer so if somebody will try to fool me right I pretty much think that I will be able to tell that right based on the technical level based on the level site questions it is not hard to discover right but on the other hand it will make my life easier people will be able to present their best parts it will be interesting parts of that background there are skills in the way that is easy for me to understand right because oftentimes you see the person that is a great engineer but he's just so bad passing interviews he just can't present his great size his great skills that he in fact has right and that makes job harder I'm not easier so um with that in mind let's jump in and talk a little bit about what is expected exactly from a junior developer I'll be honest with you conducting interviews for junior developers is in fact harder than conducting interviews for seniors why well for seniors always have to do is to death their existing skill level so they can do right now while for juniors what you need to do is to test what kind of developers will they be in a year what is their potential for growth right and if you are pausing the interview for a junior developer position this is your job to show that you have created any of the goals that you are genuinely interested in program and all you really need to have is a great mentor by your side to point you to the mistakes to guide you through best practices and you will become a fantastic developer new year I show that and pretty much the job is yours right so now let's go through a couple of difficult questions usually they start interview with some questions about life in your experience and what you generally do and usually then they jump to the technical part right so let's follow the same pattern so the first question is usually like tell me about your background and about the project that you have accomplished and the juniors are usually like I don't have any projects which is not a great thing to do right you may not have the commercial projects maybe you're not yet working maybe it's your first job right so you might be asked Revit hack I would get those projects from write but it is not necessarily a commercial project that the interviewer is asking about if you have a github repository where you do something that you like to do in your spirit I may be a built a JavaScript game on camels maybe you're building some websites to just help your friends to choose the best stopping for pigs and you just did that yourself to test some new technologies to try how to build it with MongoDB and angular and JavaScript and you're just exploring things right share that information telling that yeah I've got the github repo please have a look at it the code is not perfect with nobody's expecting perfect code from you at this point just make it as good as you think you can and this is already plus 100 right no projects at all versus I do have my hobby projects I'm doing programming right now even though I'm not paid for that I'm doing that because it is my hobby that's something that I enjoy doing this is a great answer already so don't hide those projects make them public make them visible and tell about them on the interview if you have a chance try to talk a little bit about the future improvements that you see in this project and the technical challenges that you have and having technical challenges is pretty normal right everyone has those challenges junior seniors middle architects just on the different levels of course and if you're talking about those challenges I guess that shows that you have plans that shows that you have something to learn something to account planning your head how do you want to all as a developer and on the other side and interviewers himself he might be engaging into conversation right he might be suggesting you how to solve those problems and at this point he starts to close your eyes you are already on the interview that you start to work in the team and that kind of increases your chances of passing introduced if you show yourself being good team at the right straight away let's go to the next question and next one I actually I actually hate this question this is one of my most terrible questions that I never asked myself but I know many interviewers do and this is the question about how do you see yourself in ten years I mean it's the worst one it's not the worst because of the question itself it really I don't like questions that are leading through that are manipulative that are trying to get information that are really not asked right so what this question we ask is are you interested in development or you just want like become maybe a manager right so if you will answer I want to become a manager in terriers right then be prepared to answer the question well why are you going to become a JavaScript developer then why don't you go to a management work why don't you find I don't know some junior manager position and start or can management why don't you read management boots and waste your time doing all this programming stuff right because indeed this is not a straight path and it is a genuinely your answer right now right think about it you don't have to be a developer in order to be a manager in fact I know several people until my good friends that are great amazing managers but they are not developers at all right so you don't have to be a developer to be a manager in software development right don't do that mistake don't waste half of your life doing things that you are not enjoying doing the other good question can be this one is actually my favorite and I open times ask it's as very straight questions what are the ways that you learn new things about technology right so the YouTube channel blog posts whom are evolving on Twitter etc on some show what I really want to hear is that person has the answer right I don't really care what will be back exact answer I really want to hear some answer right because if there is no answer and the person is sinking a lot and he is like well and reading books and yeah reading stuff so if person can't answer that quickly that means that he is actually following right that means that he doesn't really spends his own time to learn these things and the chances are that he will start doing that in the junior developer position in my company they are quite slim correct it might be a deal traitor in fact right it might be the end of interview like mentally for me my dude and Patriots person can not answer the question how he evolves right - would be prepared for that question read books read some books that are recommended to treat find couple of YouTube channels to poll because this is something that you will have to do if you want to become a better developer right if you want to become that Rockstar junior that becomes middle and senior developer it's just like few years boost his career do you that you really need to do that so let's summarize those as called like salt skills question and personality questions for the personality questions your best strategy is I'm a developer that it's just passions I'm doing development and my first time I learned in my spare time and why I need job well because I need money everyone needs money and also I want members and great team to work with that to guide me through the best practices and eventually I will become a better developer right again I'm not suggesting you to lie and pretend right just be that person and that hoping would help define for you if you are that person if you're not do you really want to do development because doing programming when you don't enjoy it is a terrible job doing programming when you do love what you do is create job the best job in the world so now let's jump into technical questions because even though I'm not expecting much usually from three developers I do expect some skills to be there and some fundamental knowledge to build upon right so I want somebody who is eager to learn and who has enough knowledge to start learning so let's start from JavaScript I think javascript is for web developer pretty much the most important part for junior developer I can forgive some gaps and knowledge in HTML CSS I don't think that is too hard to learn for JavaScript I do really want to see somebody who knows the language fundamentals at a good level even for junior developers you need to know JavaScript so if you have right now a choice whether to go and learn react or whether to fill your gaps in JavaScript please go and fill your gaps in JavaScript because I see many people that are just so eager to jump in those like modern very fashioned high P words like react angular learn those things boo you know GS everything right so it is great when you know those things that it is useless if you do not know the fundamental basics the JavaScript language itself that those frameworks are built upon because you will be suffering you will not be able to debug even some primitive things and you will not be to be able to use the language itself to a good level so what I mean by good level of language so let's talk a little bit about JavaScript right so what are there you need to understand functions right what's the difference in passing a function calling a function this kind of things how this keyword behaves very confusing topic but if you just spend several hours and really go through this subject understand it and play with a couple of examples it is not hard to master a prototype chain good to know again a little bit more advanced subject but it is not hard because prototypes or just the objects at the end of the day may be something from a synchronous design patterns right how to create a function that accepts all back and calls that callback right what is the way to bus the errors who call that all those or very basic stuff for jello script lens and you should really know that and usually to test that things I don't like really to ask and listen to the answer because again like a line of code can tell me more about a developer than like half an hour conversation I usually give a keyboard and ask to solve a little code assignment right so I'll give you right now one of my favorite called assignments it's not normally one of course but this is one of my favorite so this code assignment that I right now have here on my screen in this Allah code has had bugs right the idea behind this code is that some person some may be up to near he tried to build the object that will keep account of the clicks that you click on the button right and this code somehow doesn't work so what I usually ask to do is not to rewrite this code completely but instead to go through this code and find those bugs and explain why those bugs are in place not why they are in place but why would code doesn't work with those back in place right and what is the right way to fix them so if the person is able to do that with just this little assignment it shows like 2/3 of what I want to hear about the fundamentals of JavaScript right if you will not be able to do that quickly I will start giving you hints if you fail the stuff completely probabilities and now go at all right so what are the other things that's usually an interviewer will be paying attention on if you have a call to assignment and it contains some sort of box that you need to track right or if you're writing your own code please make yourself comfortable with a debugger again it's not hard but even from middle and some senior developers I often see they start debugging with console walks which is a bit of a shame it takes much more time and it's not as powerful just going through developers tools and a web browser opening and putting a breakpoint and seeing the whole state of the application it's not hard at all but still I often times see people like they see the error and they total what they don't know what to do that's right make sure that you know how to read the error how to find the line that is earth has happened in and how to put the breakpoint and see why this error is happening there right by the way if you will be interested I can make a separate video and just go through this code explain those things right but yeah do it as an example try to do it yourself maybe you'll find it entertaining and for those of you who will just try this little assignment for practice right I'll leave the link and the description for this video and remember this as the code that I'm giving for junior developers and salsa for metal developer saying just to start talking about something so this is a must at least two-thirds of the school you should be able to debug and find the issues there ok so what I will also ask maybe if this is a junior developer role I'll talk about both maybe I'll ask if this thing is familiar to a developer maybe about the event propagation event model in the browser this is something that is also good to know I would ask something like how to prevent the browser from doing the default behavior like you click the link but you don't really want the browser to go somewhere you're submitting the form and you don't want the browser to submit it in fact you just want to catch that event and do something like maybe put the alert box but do not send the form itself right so those are the questions about the prevented default install propagation rate so for CSS again I'll just ask a couple of very basic questions usually I will not give the CSS markup to junior developer I just want him to be able to fix basic things so the basics of markup like are what is the CSS selectors how they work couple of basic selectors here and there and the how properties work right are they able to region are they extended so this kind of things that person has a basic understanding that's pretty much fine for a junior developer so a lot but not the least going to be HTTP protocol I think that it is it is quite important subject because this is how web talks to each other right at the end of the day this is how the sense your HX request is how a web page appears in your browser and yet there are many people even on like mineral developer positions and senior developers sometimes that are completely lost when I asked to explain the basics of HTTP what is the structure of HTTP message like headers and body and all those kind of things they are lost right so what I expect from a junior developer is to understand that HTTP text based protocol there is the matter information headers there are different kind of methods that you can call a resource with right you can quote was posted people it was get well the junior developer knows about to eat have don't know batch that well he thrown quite a task junior right but at the very basics the difference between post and get not only factual difference right not only the fact that in get you're passing the parameters on the header and then goes you're passing the parameters in body rate it's not the only difference I would be interested in semantical difference right that post is really adding the resource somewhere adding something you write like adding new book to the collection of books on the server well get is getting the distinction of that resource getting the structure right so and all that for example expect the system to be changed if you're doing the get request the state of the system to be changed so this is this is pretty much all for the technical questions at this point I think I will run out of time on interview right if I have gone through all these questions this pretty much will give the end of the hour and I don't really like to have long interviews that are longer than one hour and usually at this time you have the last and sometimes it might be the most important part of interview for you it is the Golding part right is the summary part where you have a chance to talk to the interviewer the closing parts of the interview looks like this pretty much so thank you very much for coming if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer right and don't be humble at this point don't think of this guy's probably running to another meeting I shouldn't really ask questions now it's not a good strategy at all so do ask questions ensure that you are interested in project that you will be the part of right by the way if you don't know yet what is the project like ask question what is the project like or what is the technologist step if I would be the part of the project what will be the technologies that I'm missing what should I like learn and usually this is like a default question that you should always ask what I'm doing this because again if you're not asking it what it means means that you don't really care what you will be maybe this is a project and goal and I'm just for fun asking about the JavaScript and CSS and in fact I'll just make you write in some thirty year old language or 50 year old language right so just kidding but anyway just ask about the project ask about what are the major technologies there ask about the challenges right what is the major challenges for what are the hardest part in this project technologically right you don't really care about management issues or delivery issues you care about technology at this point right and the last but not least the most important questions make sure that you ask it make sure that you figure out the time boxes right if you need to just make sure to ask combat much more time do I have for my questions right but do ask this crucial questions out of this interview could you please me give feedback about how well I did what do you think from your perspective are the areas that I should learn better I that I should study and work on right because in fact even if you succeeded that's great if you failed that interview it was still a great experience for your age you learned a lot about your gaps but oscillating sure you were to make those gaps explicit it is super useful for you but it will also show the interviewer that you do care to become a better developer right and it will give you one extra point that at the end of the day might be the point that will open you the doors for the job positions right so but that's pretty much it that's that's your strategy for the interview the junior developer thank you very much for watching if you have any additional questions just let me know in comment and if you liked this video if you think it will be useful to learn a little bit more about middle developers senior developer positions just write me a line leave me a comment and yeah if you find this useful consider subscribing to this channel and thank you very much see you in the upcoming videos bye

Channel: Juriy Bura

Views: 70,572

Rating: 4.8912892 out of 5

Keywords: javascript, interviews, job

Id: nX0ajFKB2E0

Length: 21min 36sec (1296 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 22 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/benabus]

I feel like the best way to pass a javascript interview is to know javascript.

[u/dont_forget_canada]

USE THIS SIMPLE TRICK TO PASS ANY JAVASCRIPT INTERVIEW:

"I PREFER NESTING CALLBACKS INSTEAD OF PROMISES AND I DEFINE EVERY VARIABLE IN THE GLOBAL SCOPE"

^{^} FULLPROOF BELIEVE ME

[u/iFart_69]

just say - "Javascript n Java is same"

[u/m8XnO2Cd345mPzA1]

I guess we should all watch this because at the rate JS frameworks move there's a new framework every few months... So we go from senior developer back to junior developer whenever we try and switch jobs. For example, if I've been working in same job for 3 years and only used vanilla JS and jQuery. Since then React has come out, Vue, Angular 2.0 bla bla bla. New job listings now requiring skills in React etc. Now I'm back to "junior" developer because I have no job experience with any of that new stuff. But guess what I'm "senior" enough in vanilla JS to make my own SPA or framework. Also I know for a fact I don't even need a short-lived flavour of the month framework from someone other company to make sites or apps properly.

[u/jiblet84]

1. Somewhat know either React or Angular 2, and have some familiarity with the other. Vue, elm, etc are nice to knows. React or Angular 2 will make you more marketable because more companies are looking for them.
2. Know this keyword, scope, let vs var vs const, object destructuring, arrow functions, es6 modules/classes, fetch (or similar), and the build process for JavaScript (gulp/webpack/yarn). Be able to have a conversation about modern JavaScript.
3. Have someone practice interviews with you. A lot. Questions like "Tell me about yourself" should be automatic.
4. Make an app with 1. and 2. and put it on GitHub. Have it pull information from .json or a API and do something with the data.
5. Be passionate, have excitement for JavaScript and the position.
   

Hard passes for hiring include no interest in the position, no passion/excitement for JavaScript, limited knowledge of JavaScript/programming fundamentals, cockiness, victim complexes, or not able to hold a conversation. Most places don't look for someone who can make speeches, but being able to communicate at work is important.

Hard passes on the company include no interest in modern JavaScript, backend technologies (java, php, etc) that are heavily integrated into front end, any probing if you're comfortable working overtime on consistent basis, or low pay/benefits. Midwest you shouldn't go below 60k at a junior level, or 80k at a senior, not sure about West Coast.

It may seem like a lot to know, but as a Junior you should be able to add value on day one, even if it's just a small update. If you owned a bakery would you hire a junior if the person didn't know how to turn on an oven, or make bread?