At the end of the week, I’ll be having my first ever interview for a junior front-end developer interview. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on what to expect? All I know is that I’m supposed to go over some of my projects with the team.
What should I be prepared for in terms of questions? Also - what types of questions should I be asking them?
Thank you for your help!
You might get asked specific questions like “What frameworks did you use?” followed by more specifics like “How do you handle state management”?
You also might get asked open-ended “essay questions” like “Describe your thought process as you ____. Walk me through how you do ____.” It’s the kind of question I like to ask in tech interviews, because it amounts to “show me your work”. I want to know someone hasn’t copy-pasted their portfolio and can explain the pieces to me.
Then there’s semi-vague ones like “How familiar are you with ___?” … or FSM forbid, any question that starts with “On a scale of 1 to 10 …” 
From my experience, I’ve only done one where I had to explain my code, they just picked apart my code and asked me what that certain section was supposed to do and why it was necessary or if it could’ve been done in a better way. It’s sort of a way for them to make sure you know what you are doing and didn’t just copy paste from GitHub or Stack Overflow to make something work. But as long as you can explain it you should be good to go. Being that it is a Junior position I don’t think they are going to be to hard on your code, depending on how long you have been programming that is.
In terms of questions, it’s going to vary between companies. Mine didn’t ask extremely difficult questions, mainly they asked simple questions to make sure I knew the basics and, again, being that it is a Junior position I can’t imagine they are going to throw a curve ball at you.
Oh and you may be given a code project. The process for those I’ve always followed is like this:
Write a prototype: Hack together something quickly that does the bare minimum. Don’t worry about quality. It can be a script in another language if you like. If it’s HTML, it could be unstyled or just barely. This just shows you can get something done quickly.
Reimplement the prototype properly as part of the larger app.
Keep everything all in git and make frequent commits. You don’t have to necessarily use a methodological git workflow like feature branches and standard commit messages. In fact a stream-of-consciousness flow of comments on the master branch is easier for the person following along to see your work.
Concentrate on writing good-quality code, unit tests and all, even if it means not finishing by the deadline. Any company worth a damn will prioritize quality of programmer output over quantity – given a reasonable minimum of the latter of course.
I think for a junior position it is important to show that you really want this job and you are willing to learn. Also, if you don’t know some technology or don’t know an answer - say it straight, but mention that you will definitely learn about it. If company looking for a junior - they expect that you don’t have a lot of experience, but you are able to learn quick and invest your own time into it.