My second-stage interview for a UI Developer (JavaScript/React) role was quite different from what I expected. The session focused almost entirely on CSS, with questions that were extremely detailed. Some of the terms were things I heard for the first time, and I’m honestly not sure how reasonable it is to expect candidates to recall such terminology on the spot.

CSS is of course important in frontend development, but the level of detail in the questions felt excessive for an interview. I’m not sure how well this kind of deep theoretical questioning reflects the practical requirements of the actual role.

Additionally, I remember the interviewer mentioning that their background was in a different area; at that moment, due to the stress, I couldn’t hear clearly and felt somewhat disconnected. I’m not sure whether this may have influenced the level or direction of the questions. Overall, the experience was disappointing for me.

I haven’t received any feedback yet, so I’m not sure if I should even be writing this now, but honestly I’m feeling pretty down at the moment. 😟

What is BEM? Explain!

Let’s say you have a React component that you are currently using in one application. You now want to reuse the same component in another application. How would you structure this so that the component can be shared and used across multiple apps?

This is another interview question that was clearly very clear in the interviewer’s mind, but came out quite vague verbally. However, it’s possible to guess what they were trying to ask.

Suppose you have a page in React where you render a list of cards. The data comes from an API, and each card has different content, so their heights will naturally vary. Each card is a reusable component. How would you structure this and handle the fact that each card may have a different height?