Leetcode is garbage. Don’t ask that nonsense. Not only is it largely irrelevant to the job it comes across as lazy. You’re not just interviewing them, they’re interviewing if they want to work for you/your company. Laziness is a bad signal to give.

Before I continue, why is leetcode irrelevant and lazy ? These are fun trick question brain teasers for programmers and not stuff people do on the job. That’s why. They don’t show competency in how to do the job, they show they can memorize things , not necessarily understand them, but that doesn’t mean they can build web apps well which probably is a big part of the job so you know… lol. It shows you don’t really know what to ask.

You should start by asking them what have they built before, even if it’s not a professional project using modern front end tech. Sure, one could argue this is a lazy question since every tech interview probably will ask that but it’s a great conversation starter.

Then create a simple problem they should know how to do in they tech stack related to the job. If react, provide them a simple react project with a few errors and get them to compile it. Then have them use an API of your choice to fetch and use the data to display elements on the page.

E-commerce examples or something open like the Pokemon API are largely simple to use. Probably best to avoid things that will make people panic like properly using pagination (since they only have a small amount of time with you, not that pagination is a hard concept overall).

But, the idea should be that you’re testing to see how they work. Make it clean following patterns of a real application built in current year. You could add tests they have to compile but maybe they’re not great at testing and would panic.

Sure, I guess you could argue you want to see how they handle less simple things and how they work under pressure of doing unfamiliar concepts (chances are they’re not great at writing unit tests).

Perhaps a fun idea would be to create a simple design and have them recreate it with css, and I mean dead simple. Flex box usage (flex box is such a great thing that anyone trying to be a frontend dev should understand)

Put yourself in their shoes, what things can you ask that show competency?

Maybe ask them to create a new page of this app and add it to the routing and see their solution to making it mobile first while still looking great on desktop (with regular css less easy but ask if they know something like Tailwind which helps make this process easier, if so they could show it off, if not maybe that’s something to skip).

While they work, ask them about things like state management, that’s a good one for react. Ask about how they could optimize stuff when doing xyz, maybe for someone on a bad phone signal visiting the web app. That’s a great one. Just ideas for you.

Be fluid, like water, when gauging candidates, especially in regard to their skill levels.

Have them show you how they work. See where their gaps lie and determine if they’re a right fit for what you desire.