Why To Talk About Avoid List?
We discussed Ideal Javascript Interview and now is time to cover things that are better to avoid during the interview. The Avoid List is also important because it helps to create better interview experience for candidate and it will be a good advertisement for the company.
Number of guides are available online with a list of questions to ask during the javascript interview and some of them even marked as “a must”. Choose questions for the interview wisely because lots of guides are pure clickbait and they were not updated for many years. Questions listed there can be dated and irrelevant, and will affect interview process in a bad way.
Irrelevant questions raise a red flag for an experienced candidate.
So lets discuss what to avoid! 💬
Javascript Interview Avoid List
What Would Be The Result of ‘1’ + + 77++ + new Map()?
Most of “Best Javascript Questions To Ask in 20XX” guides have this question and its position is close to the Top 10. The only hope and the only explanation that this is just a clickbait… even if so, it is the harmful one, because it can be used during the interview.
The main issue with this question is a complete disconnect with day to day development. This question would not help to identify any valuable skills that you can bring to the team.
It is a red flag for a professional developer because it would bring unspeakable questions “is it still possible to push code like this to the company’s code base?”, “what code standards company has?”.
Instead of looking for candidates that can compile interpret this code it would be more beneficial to hire someone who can integrate a type check instead.
jQuery To Complete Live Coding Challenge.
Do you use jQuery in the current code base - if yes, you can move to the next topic as it a valid question for your use case.
If you’re looking for experienced developer in React, Angular, Vue or any other library why to bring jQuery? jQuery is a great tool but a lot of companies moved away from it to a different tech stack, so many JS developers have not seen it for years. Just leave the past behind and don’r ask it if you don’t use it, shift focus to prepare questions about technologies that you use on the daily basis instead.
Live Coding Challenge Vanilla Javascript DOM Manipulation.
This one is falling in the same category as the jQuery question.
Modern libraries have been introduced to simplify DOM’s manipulations. An example of a useless question - to put text into p, and than put p into div that already added to another div. 🤯
Two Weeks Home Assessment.
Over the years I’ve completed many home assessments without defined time limits and I simply hate it. Tasks should have a clear definition of done and outlined expectations. When tasks are not defined, developers can easily spend 4-8-20 hours and still find things to improve.
Author Note:
In my early career it lead to many sleepless nights as I’ve tried to squeeze 20h work into 2-3 days to complete those tasks as soon as possible. I thought I would have a better chance to succeed by submitting it early.
Now my favorite home assessment option is timeboxed and automated task that is limited to 3h maximum. Candidate can start the task when it suits the most and have the result in couple of hours with automated validation.
Coding Tasks Without Pre-Testing.
Online code tools have a predefined list of tasks so companies can use them during the interview. Often those tasks can be more complex than expected because tools are imperfect and buggy (like HackerRank) so it could lead to unpleasant experience for candidates and difficulties for HR to find right candidate for the role because of high level auto rejections.
If you use one of those tools, always try the task yourself first! Also, ask colleagues to complete it. Only via this way you would know if this task is doable.
Regexp Memoization.
⛔ - Google.
Google is absolutely OK during the interview, you can see what and where candidate is looking for. No one remember Regexp, no one.
Allow Google. What the point to reject someone for a typo in the pattern to remove a special character from the string?
Backend System Design.
Often frontend developers were asked to complete Backend System Design. Many companies do not have frontend developers trained to perform this type of interviews, so backend engineers drive it.
Database sharding will not help you to find a great frontend developer, I would say the result would be opposite.
Tell me about 2015
Time reference is completely irrelevant because a lot of developers joined the industry after the year you refer to. Not everyone remembers a time before and after ES6. Ask about async/await directly and do not focus on what was before. Choose questions that would help to assess today’s knowledge. This is not a history exam after all.
Author Note:
In the early days of my career I’ve joined a company where we were using PHP 5 and, after some time, management has decided to organize assessment for developers. (don’t ask, I know it sounds silly today, but at least I’ve a story to tell!). After making this ‘great’ decision, management started looking for different ways how to perform it.
One day, without prior announcements, an external consultant has arrived to perform the assessment in the one-to-one interview way. The consultant had a great selection of questions about PHP 4 and differences between two versions, 4 and 5. Now, can guess the outcome? After this assessment I’ve been working a number of years with PHP and still have never seen PHP 4. Not a single time.
To sum up, please be careful when using time references during the interview as it wouldn’t help you at all. Especially, if there is no legacy code in company’s codebase.
Ask about up-to-date technologies instead.
Focus On Weak Spots.
Do not prepare list of progressively degrading questions where the only goal is to find a weak spot. Always focus on what candidate can bring to the team and avoid interviews where you just want to proof that candidate cannot answer some questions.
Don’t try to use questions listed above during the interview - it is an Avoid List after all. Just a reminder. 🎗️
Final Cheat Sheet
✅ Be:
- positive
- supportive
- role model
❌ Stop:
- being late
- being arrogant
- being bossy