Hello to all of you who work in the field! I am applying for jobs, and I have a screening interview coming up with a pretty noteworthy company. I understand that the process is probably different for every company but I want to get a general idea of what to expect. When you do the coding challenge part of the interview process, do you have access to a console at all to debug your answer in case the JavaScript algorithm doesn’t work the way you expected? Or do they typically do everything on a whiteboard? Are they looking for correct answers, or do they just care about your process and see that you know how to approach a problem? What have your experiences been?
Thank you for your help. <3
That depends. One way to test people is “white boarding” where you write the code on the white board. In theory, with an online interview, they can just ask you to open up a text editor and do it that way. Obviously you don’t get output. Often you’re writing that in pseudo code. Usually (I assume) they are more worried about the ideas and not the nitty gritty of the language.
Sometimes you will be given a link to a coding challenge site (like leetcode or whatever) and be expected to solve it in their IDE, with their unit tests.
Are they looking for correct answers, or do they just care about your process and see that you know how to approach a problem?
It really depends. But yeah, your process and attitude are definitely being observed. They are trying to figure out if you would be a good fit. I highly recommend, talking as you work so they know what you are thinking and have a positive attitude - you want to seem like someone that they want to work in the next cubicle.
I’d recommend looking at some videos about coding interviews. Some people actually film actual interviews. Some people present mock interviews. (Keep in mind that some of those are for elite companies, so don’t freak out.)
And if you look on glassdoor, you can sometimes look up the company and people will talk about their exact experiences interviewing for that company. The specifics might change, but the general idea will probably be the same.
But all in all, I probably did 20 coding interviews. Every one was different.
Thank you for your response. This has all been really helpful information! I really hope I can do well in the interview.
Good luck on your interview 
Thank you so much!! 
I would also say that the book Cracking the Coding Interview is a good thing to read. It also has an excellent section on algorithms. Their in Java, but that is close enough to JS that you can get the idea, and the idea is more important than the language.
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