First Interview Tomorrow!

Congrats! Don't be afraid to say "I don't know" and always tout your resourcefulness and desire to learn. Good luck!

Absolutely what @James MacDonald said — it's not about what you know but that you know how to quickly get up to speed.

Good luck and stay confident!

Awesome! Good luck! :)

Hi guys,

thanks for the comments!

I've just come back from the interview.

It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be!

They were all really friendly.

I basically went in and spoke to 2 colleagues who were asking me questions like:

1.Tell me about yourself? 2.Why do you love coding? 3.Where do you see yourself in 3-5 years time? 4.Have you used SASS/LESS before? 5.Have you used Bootstrap?

They brought up my sites on my portfolio and asked a few questions about it.

I can't remember all the questions but there weren't any difficult technical questions which I was expecting.

I haven't used SASS/LESS before so I was completely honest and just told them, but explained where my strengths were and how much time I was putting in to learning.

I then had about a 30 minute code test where they asked me to replicate a standard looking website.

It was hard in such a short space of time and especially in an interview situation. I got the general layout pretty much sorted without adding the images as they only had Photoshop and I usually use Illustrator.

Then I spoke to the founder afterwards and had a good chat with him about me and my ambitions and then the company and I asked him about his ambitions and his path. He was a friendly like the rest of the staff.

I don't know if I'm successful or not, but it was nice to have the opportunity to interview and puts some myths aside as to how complex I imagined it in my head.

Hopefully they offer me a position, but if not I'll carry on learning knowing I'm getting closer.

If anyone who hasn't been to an interview before has any questions then please let me know!

Thanks Joe

Hi guys,

thanks for the comments!

I've just come back from the interview.

It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be!

They were all really friendly.

I basically went in and spoke to 2 colleagues who were asking me questions like:

1.Tell me about yourself? 2.Why do you love coding? 3.Where do you see yourself in 3-5 years time? 4.Have you used SASS/LESS before? 5.Have you used Bootstrap?

They brought up my sites on my portfolio and asked a few questions about it.

I can't remember all the questions but there weren't any difficult technical questions which I was expecting.

I haven't used SASS/LESS before so I was completely honest and just told them, but explained where my strengths were and how much time I was putting in to learning.

I then had about a 30 minute code test where they asked me to replicate a standard looking website.

It was hard in such a short space of time and especially in an interview situation. I got the general layout pretty much sorted without adding the images as they only had Photoshop and I usually use Illustrator.

Then I spoke to the founder afterwards and had a good chat with him about me and my ambitions and then the company and I asked him about his ambitions and his path. He was a friendly like the rest of the staff.

I don't know if I'm successful or not, but it was nice to have the opportunity to interview and puts some myths aside as to how complex I imagined it in my head.

Hopefully they offer me a position, but if not I'll carry on learning knowing I'm getting closer.

If anyone who hasn't been to an interview before has any questions then please let me know!

Thanks Joe

They didn't have you do any whiteboard any code? You got to use a computer to try and replicate the site?

Hi Joel,

I didn't whiteboard any code.

They basically sat me down on a computer and gave me an image of a basic looking website and I then had to try replicate as best possible in 30 minutes.

I was quite surprised at how relaxed the interview was. I thought I was going to get grilled with loads of technical questions.

They offered me a position a few hours later.

If you have anymore questions let me know!

Joe

HEY! Congratulations!!!

So, I do have a question. I've talked to a few people who were going for front-end stuff and they were still grilled on js stuff in the interviews. It sounds like that's not the case with you. Could I ask you what the exact position was? I've been frightened mostly of whiteboarding js stuff, 'cause man, that's not my strong suit at all.

Well the position was front-end developer.

I was stressing out the night trying to learn all the questions here:

https://github.com/h5bp/Front-end-Developer-Interview-Questions

And in my head I imagined I was going to get absolutely grilled with a lot of these questions and then have to do the coding challenge.

But in the end they were really friendly and asked me questions about myself and why I code etc.

They asked questions like:

Do you know X language? Have you used X language before?

If I did then great, and if I didn't I was completely honest.

In the end I think they saw how passionate I was about it and I talked about Treehouse a lot. I think they respected the fact I'd put a lot of work in to my learning and that they could help me get up to speed quite easily.

I mean I don't know what other companies are like, maybe I just got lucky and landed on a really cool company.

But the chances are if you're stressing in your head then don't, it's probably not as bad as you think.

Show your natural passion for code and do as much research as you can and let it go.

At the end of the day if you're going for a junior position then they aren't going to expect you to write loads of complex JS. I think as long as you have a basic understanding and the zest for learning they'll admire that and that will give you a good chance.

Joe

Thank you so much for sharing this with us Joe, it's really helpful to hear things from the standpoint you have now.

And again, congrats :)

Thanks Joel.

Don't worry about it and keep going... you'll get there soon.

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing your experience. Now how has your first month been so far?

Hey Jaime,

thanks for asking. My first month has gone ok!

You're out of your comfort zone for large parts because you have so much to learn, but it's all worthwhile because you come away knowing a lot more than you did at the start of the day.

There's a few big differences from self learning to then going in to a job:

1. You come across flaws in your knowledge because you come across situations you wouldn't normally if you were making a site for yourself. If you make a site for yourself then you do it how you know how to, with a client they could ask for anything.

2. If you don't know a certain skill then you have to figure a way out to learn on that day/week. You don't have a month or two to spend learning a new skill. I'd say that's been the hardest part so far... sometimes you get stuck because you're unfamiliar with a language but again you learn so much from it.

I would also say this:

I never thought I could have learnt any faster than I have from when I started, but having now sampled working within a job there's no substitute to actually working around developers. They can spot your problems almost instantly and give great feedback.

All the best!

Thanks Kyle! You're doing a great job at Treehouse :)

Ok Jaime I can provide examples:

So the first website I had to make was with Wordpress. I actually didn't have that much experience with Wordpress so there were a lot of holes in my knowledge for e.g I find it hard to understand PHP and with Wordpress you have to read that within the code.

Also other instances where I've had to use SASS/Grunt in small snippets.

My point is that to be a good developer you have to become a good problem solver. If you get stuck at home what do you do? Head over to stackoverflow or the Treehouse forums and ask a question, and that's perfectly alright!

The problem with that in a job role is you don't have the time to wait around for a reply. You need to figure out things for yourself. I personally learn better from watching videos than reading code descriptions/examples. So for me i need to get better at looking online and finding solutions without having to wait for help for e.g I would feel reluctant to read the Wordpress Codex because i know there's a good chance I won't understand it by reading, but I guess that's something I need to get better at.

Joe