How To Prepare For A React Interview

A big part of some interviews for React development is building applications as a take-home project and answering some questions about the library. Other companies have the traditional computer science interviews, much like algorithmic coding challenges, then the dreaded white-board interview that may make you cry into your pillow at night. This is especially true for FAANG companies. FAANG is known as (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google). Although Facebook did change its name to Meta, the acronym should be MAANG. Over the course of this article, I hope to inform you how to prepare for a React interview in the best way possible.

There are two main types of interviews for software developers. These interviews are domain-specific and computer science and functional interviewing.

Domain Specific Interviews

Domain-specific interviews usually happen at start-ups because they do not have the resources that big tech companies do that usually have the computer science interviews. When I had a few interviews for React developer jobs, I usually participated in these types of interviews. Learning computer science fundamentals and techniques are important for these types of jobs too, but it might be more important to try to master the library or framework you are specializing in.

Practical knowledge is much more important than theory in a domain-specific interview. If you went to a Bootcamp as I did, you will probably perform a lot better at domain-specific interviews than computer science fundamental interviews, because Bootcamps usually focus more on practical skills rather than theory.

Especially in these types of interviews, it is important to have a rock-solid GitHub and make a lot of awesome projects that you can showcase to employers in the given technology that’s required for the job posting.

Although algorithms, computer science fundamentals, and theory are not as important in these types of interviews, it is still important to practice coding challenges, because it will still help our career development.

Where To Get More Practice In Domain Specific Interviews?

If you want React jobs, build a lot of React Projects. Download a great IDE, like Visual Studio Code, and commit to working on the project daily.

I found a lot of courses that go through the fundamentals of React. There is one course, in particular, I love where you are guided through a lot of React Projects that you can showcase in your portfolio.

React Tutorial and Projects Course

This course is a best seller on Udemy and offers over 48 hours of content. I know that you may be excited, but don’t binge all 48 hours straight over 2 days, I don’t think that would be healthy for you…LOL.

Computer Science and Functional Interviews

The dreaded computer science and functional interview questions make every developer who partakes in a career in software development question his life choices. Some people would rather be bitten by a raccoon with rabies than partake in this torture. Other people, like me, are hesitant but willing to tackle the challenge and knock this type of interview out of the park, like Babe Ruth. If you can do this, you will surely be the Babe Ruth of coding. Ok, I digressed a little bit. Back to the main topic.

In these types of interviews, an understanding of computer science and algorithms is really paramount to your success. Since Boot Camp graduates, like me, are taught the practical side of software development, it is important to use different resources to get the theory.

If you went to a four-year university, much like my senior developer friend did, hopefully, these types of interviews will come more naturally to you, or at least you will have more theoretical knowledge than those that graduated from Bootcamps.

Where To Learn Computer Science and Algorithms

Data Structures, Big-O notation, sorting algorithms are foundational for computer science. Below you will find a list of three places where you can get great computer science knowledge.

Platform	Class	Price	Free Trial
Codecademy	Computer Science	$39.99/month, $19.99/month billed yearly at $239	7 day
Pluralsight	Four Semesters of Computer Science in 5 Hours	$45/month	10-day

Another resource that a lot of developer friends told me about is not so much the website but a book. I hear that Cracking the Coding Interview is one of the best books when you’re preparing to practice for a computer science and algorithms interview.

Once you have a basic knowledge of computer science and algorithms, it is important to put your skills to practice by checking out coding challenge platforms. It may be hard to know what types are better than others. It is so common that companies use Leetcode for their coding challenges, although, I find Leetcode really hard to understand.

Where to Practice Coding Challenge Interviews

I find that many platforms are easier to understand than others. After investigating different platforms, I found that I really like Edabit. They have tutorials in Javascript and Python and are completely free to use with over 10,000 coding challenges. Of a lot of the big coding challenge platforms, I find that the UI is really clean. Overall, Edabit is really beginner-friendly.

Once you get really good Edabit, you can tackle challenges at Leetcode or HackerRank. I think Leetcode or HackerRank is for more advanced users anyway and their challenges are a lot harder. These two platforms have a more comprehensive UI than Edabit and could be more beneficial in the long run.

Final thoughts and Conclusion

I hope I gave you a few good resources that you can use to practice the technical part of programming interviews. If we are pursuing to be a React Developer, we hope that we get the domain-specific interviews, at least I do because the take-home projects are way more fun. However, it is still important to practice coding challenges and learn more about computer science which will help you in the long run.

If you want to know where to get awesome React education, check out my awesome article.

Learn React

Thank you for reading my post. Leave your comments below to participate in this engaging community. Be sure to sign up to receive updates of more incredible articles.

Share my article on social media and follow me on Twitter for extra content.