I filled out an application on their career website and then received several emails from an AI platform they use to prescreen candidates. The technical portion was done on HackerRank. It was a one-hour coding challenge consisting of two parts: a React application and a Node.js module.

The hardest part was getting the React project to run on Windows. It was built to run on Mac and contained several strange modifications to the scripts in package.json, which I had to fix in order to run the project and then run the tests.

The first problem in the React project was simple. I was given the framework of a React address book application and tasked with making it a functioning application that passed the tests. Once I got the project and tests working, I quickly implemented it in about 10 minutes, then spent another 5 minutes adjusting the code to pass the tests for email and phone number validation. These validations weren't very good, so I had to basically write the implementations to match the expectations of the tests. I think the goal was to simplify it enough, since full email and phone validation implementations would be challenging from scratch for most people without Googling.

The second part of the test was stupid easy, so easy I coded it in 30 seconds and it passed the tests. You had to write a Node.js module that had three methods to manage an "inventory," which was just an array of strings containing product names. The methods were getList, add, and remove. It was very simple, but also a good test of seeing if someone understood how to build modules in Node.js.

Then the economy crashed, and they pretty much ghosted me, so I have no idea if they chose another candidate, have a hiring freeze, or what. I will say it is one of the easiest interviews I have ever done, but I have heard that this only applies to frontend roles, and that they put backend developers through a gauntlet of brain teasers, so your mileage may vary.

Build a phonebook in React