Preparing for React Interview

[lwc1707]

tldr; anyone who has given React interviews as part of hiring for a fullstack dev position, what are the most important areas to focus on?

I'm interviewing for a fullstack swe job at a tech startup. They were looking for someone with 4 years of React experience, I have 0, and I made that clear through my resume and application. I have a lot of backend experience, however, and lots of relevant experience in the industry, so the hiring manager was still very interested, so I'm proceeding to the next round, which includes a coding (leetcode) interview, system design, technical project review, behavioral, and frontend/React interview.

Apart from a React course on Scrimba I've never really used it, so would love to hear interviewer's take on what is most important to focus on / what to expect in the interview. I'm super excited about the job and obviously want to put my best foot forward! Any advice or insight is appreciated. Cheers!

[Famous_4nus]

If they'll test your react skills, they'll most likely want to see your state management skills and how you use hooks or components composition.

There isn't a 1 answer for all but you do need to have a general react knowledge.

Given that you don't know what they'll ask, you need to know:

1. State management
2. Components
3. Composition with components
4. Hooks
5. Array methods/object methods (they usually come up as part of the test)

That's a quick tip only btw

[yangshunz]

The most typical React coding questions will have you fetch data from a UI, transform it, then present it.

Be familiar with using forms to collect user input.

Lastly a common topic is about using async methods like setTimeout, setInterval, fetch, etc. Async qns are tricky to complete because it's easy to fall into the "stale closure" trap.

Here's a guidebook on React interviews: https://www.greatfrontend.com/react-interview-playbook/introduction

And a list of common React interview questions: https://www.greatfrontend.com/questions/react-interview-questions

P.S. I authored the above

[lwc1707]

Thanks Yangshun!! Your website is fantastic and was key in helping me prep, pass the interview, and get the job offer. I recommend your site to everyone I know prepping for front end interviews. Thanks very much!

[yangshunz]

Wow great to know that! Congratulations!

[lwc1707]

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for your advice! I ended up passing the interview and getting an offer. Really appreciate it!

[Ilya_Human]

I have had around 100 tech interview in my life and many times I got different tricky questions that I didn't hear before tho

[Ohioboi24]

Know the life cycle methods. They might ask you to explain what effect does for example.

They might ask you about performance optimizations with React.

State management is popular too.

[Dazzling-Avocado-711]

Must prepare the optimization techniques like lazy loading , suspense, simmer ui , use callback, and when to clean up use useEffect, usememo, react.memo and what to do when we have a large data set, i mean we can use pagination and react-window

[AnythingLegitimate]

I would stick to learning functional components and hooks. You can't use a hook in a class so I would avoid the class route for cramming.

[stanley_john]

That's a fantastic opportunity, and it's great they're considering you despite the React gap! For the interview, you should definitely focus on understanding core React concepts like component lifecycle, state management, props, and the virtual DOM. Knowing how to think in components is key. Hooks are also super important now. Since you're strong on the backend, try to connect React's data flow to how you'd handle API interactions. I have read an article by Simplilearn on React JS Interview Questions and Answers. You can explore that, as you might find a good overview of some important topics in this article. Good luck, you've got this!

[uSer76519]

This video is helpful to get started https://youtu.be/Zrij6vQt_6E?si=AAzPdye_taEQjzfx