How was your web development coding interview for a job?

One possible source of both extra practice and confidence building is to use some of the online coding challenge sites. One I've enjoyed is Codewars, but I know there are others around.

The puzzles are ranked, and range from general problem solving to extreme mastery. You can start with the lower levels for practice, and once you can solve some of the upper-level problems it should give you a big confidence boost. You don't need to be able to solve them all, I'm sure a lot of professional programmers can't do that.

I can help you out a bit by giving you examples of the questions I was asked at my interview for Smartbear. Currently I am working as a Junior JavaScript Developer/Full-Stack Engineer. The main topic of my interview questions was obviously JavaScript, so if you want to be a front-end developer make sure that you are extremely comfortable with the language. Basically you should understand the following:

• Objects
• Hoisting
• Scope
• Dom Manipulation
• Recursion (Maybe not as required, but it's a big plus if you know it)

For my coding test, I was asked to create an accordian from scratch, and after that they changed some of the specs of the accordian to see if I could still make the required changes.

The onsite interview that followed was mainly about web development and javascript. So I had to solve a scoping problem, a hoisting problem, create a few objects, and recursively build a solution for finding files within a directory.

Finally make sure that whatever you add to your resume you are at least semi competent in. For example, if you say you have experience with MONGO DB, make sure you can at least define it, and create a new document. If you say you know REACT, then make sure you can explain the Virtual DOM, creating components, and dealing with state. (These are more of a lie detector sort of thing to make sure you are not just adding stuff to your resume).

Now these are for Front-End Stuff. If you are applying to be a general software engineer, then you need to be competent in Algorithms and Data Structures, which is an entirely different ballgame.

I am going to front with you because I don't want you putting yourself on the wrong type of pedestal. You need to build a portfolio of more than just a demo site of html/css/js. Most websites are not going to boil down to that. If you are applying to be a Front-End Developer then chances are you will be working with a web application. So you need to be able to actually program some stuff, so instead of just building general websites. Create a github account and try to build stuff like todo list applications, or a website that makes use of an API (for example build a weather app that shows you the weather information from your area).

In term of psyche, most of it is just mind games, most people are better than they think they are. So being confident really helps (but try not to be arrogant, there is a major difference between being confident in your abilities and arrogant in them).

In my honest opinion the best way to actually get experience in interviews is to actually interview. You will know when you are ready, once you are comfortable programming in a particular language. If you can look at a job posting and say, yeah, I am comfortable with at least one of the languages they mention, and am at least familiar with everything else, then you should be fine applying for that job.

Best of luck to you!