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The Interview

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David Coleman edited this page Mar 2, 2017 · 2 revisions

How does the Hack Reactor interview work?

  • There are two facets of a successful Hack Reactor interview, and it is important to understand that both are necessary for matriculation to the immersive program.
  • One facet involves demonstrating a detailed understanding of javascript syntax.
  • The other facet involves implementing English-language problem statements with code.
  • Successful execution of the syntax facet of the interview will have demonstrated your familiarity with Javascript as a programming language. In that sense it is a bit more "academic", but extraordinarily valuable during your time at Hack Reactor and beyond.
  • The word problems processing facet of the interview demonstrates your ability to function in a professional software engineering environment, albeit a compressed version.

What do you need to succeed at these interviews?

  • You need to "pattern match" to the interviewer as someone who can do the work at Hack Reactor and beyond, in a professional manner. This may sound complicated, but it is quite simply a matter of courtesy. Your interviewer was in the same position that you were, passed the interview and succeeded during the program. You should consider if part of the test to be able to work with this person, learn what you can from their demeanor, and demonstrate your abilities in a way that your interview can confidently attest to your skills.
  • You have to be able to write clean, working code, while demonstrating an ability to explain why your code matches your english spoken approach to the problem.

How do you prepare for these interviews?

Think of the preparation effort as being distributed across multiple levels:

  • Level 1a: Basic building blocks
  • Level 1b: A booster shot of higher-order functions
  • Level 2: Problem-solving practice with the building blocks
  • Level 3: Live performance of problem solving

I'm assuming that students in this preparatory program in particular don't need much of Level 1. If that assumption is off based on your early performance then we will address that. It is the assumption of the instructor that you are here to refine and polish your abilities in levels 2 and 3.

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