A couple of months ago, I was hunting for a new job. I found myself going through lots of interviews and stressing a lot over preparing for them.

I’ve found interviews to be highly subjective to the company — you never really know what the company values or what hills they are going to die on until you actually are in the middle of an interview with them.

One company refers to you as a “Senior Frontend Engineer” and another says you’re a junior to them because you only know a certain framework like React or Vue but nothing about the underlying JavaScript that drives those frameworks. One company thinks CSS isn’t important because you can just use Bootstrap, and another company thinks if you can’t write your own CSS framework then you are doomed to be labeled a junior forever at their company.

Interviewers may care deeply that you can explain what closure is, and others may not even know what closure is themselves.

Fortunately, despite the subjectivity of these interviews, I went through enough to start to identify what I think are key pieces of information that companies want you to know, at least to land a frontend engineer role (specifically React-oriented since that’s what I know best), and how deeply they want you to know these things at the Junior, Mid, and Senior levels.

Being in the middle of preparing for these interviews, I realized that I also always learn better when I teach. So I decided to start doing a couple of mock interviews per month for people looking for a frontend position. I announced it with a tweet here:

The first person I helped was Erin Fox, who enjoyed it so much she left an amazing review!

Since this initial interview, dozens of people have applied to get a slot! It’s been really fun so far!

I was approached by G2i recently, who asked if they could sponsor my efforts in this! I’m so excited to announce that I am now able to do four of these per month because of their generosity! I love that they are so committed to helping the community by giving back in ways like this. They are especially wanting me to extend this help to underrepresented groups in tech.

G2i is a hiring platform focused on matching you with vetted engineers from the React, React Native, and native iOS/Android communities. They can help match you with remote engineers either full-time or contract. If you don’t have a team, they can also architect and build your application themselves.

How it works

First, you’ll apply by answering a few quick questions. Anyone who is looking for a frontend role (of any skill level) is welcome to apply, but keep in mind that at this time the only framework-specific questions I may ask are React-specific. All other questions are about regular ‘ol HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

If you are selected to be one of the four interviews I do each month, you’ll get an email from me with a link to book a time that works for you!

Be sure to study up, and we’ll get together for about 45 minutes and go through the interview. Each interview is 10–20 technical questions and there is absolutely no pressure from me (I can even help you along if you’re getting stuck somewhere). Sometimes it can help to take the pressure out of the situation so you can find out for yourself just how much you really know — this can translate into more confidence when you’re in a real interview!

Let’s go!

To get started, please fill out my application form. Maybe we’ll chat soon!

And a HUGE thanks again to G2i for sponsoring this effort!

‍J.C. Hiatt is Software Engineer & Growth Manager at Echobind, where he helps build awesome applications with JavaScript, React, React Native, and GraphQL and grow the community through education and training. He is also the founder of DevLifts, a developer-centric fitness company focused on helping developers live healthier lives. He’s an Egghead instructor, an organizer of multiple meetups, and the organizer of the annual MagnoliaJS conference held in Jackson, Mississippi. In his spare time, you’ll find him with his wife and dog. He is also a Reformed member of the Christian faith and is active in his local church. You can check his website out here or follow him on Twitter here.

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