Hack Reactor Application and Interview
The Hack Reactor application was very short. I liked how filling in the application involved using Javascript. In hindsight, I wish I had filled out the application earlier. I wanted to save the HR interview as one of my last interviews, so I had delayed filling out the application. But by the time I did apply, most of the interview slots for the next couple of weeks were already filled up. I would recommend applying about a month before you want to interview and then choose a good interview time slot a month ahead of time. This will also motivate you to study!
The interview involved one or two non-technical questions. My interviewer then asked me a bunch of other short administrative questions. I felt some of them could have been just included on the application (ex. Do you understand that you cannot be absent at all during the program?). He also asked me what other programs I had applied to, which I didn’t think was necessary.
Finally, we got to the live coding portion, which took up most of the interview. This was my first interview doing live coding, and it was also the most difficult! I wish I had done another live coding interview before this one for practice. The coding challenge involved some functional programming, and the interviewer also showed me some ES6 concepts, which I had to use for some of the coding. The interview is supposed to be a pair programming session, but I felt like I was mostly working on my own and didn’t get much help from the interviewer. The problems started out easy and got increasingly more difficult. I got stuck on one problem that I didn’t finish during the interview. I figured out the answer after my interview, and I felt like I could have gotten the answer if I hadn’t been so nervous. I sent a follow-up email with my solution code just in case it might help my application.
About 2 weeks later, I found out I was accepted!
