Status: New Grad, MS CS
Work Experience: 6 months through internships
Location: USA
Date: August 20, 2020

Interview Process

There were only 2 rounds:

1. Phone Interview (~20 min)
   • Technical recruiter contacted me on LinkedIn to schedule a call after going through my application.
   • Questions included:
     • Introduce yourself
     • What do you know about Antra?
     • Tell me a little about your previous experience with React and other web technologies
     • What is your current work authorization status?
     • Are you willing to relocate?
   • The recruiter then talked about the company, benefits, policies, etc.
   • There was also a simple coding challenge through CodeInterview to reverse a string using JavaScript
   • Finally, I had to pick a day for the Skype interview (I chose the following Wednesday)
2. Technical Skype Interview (~30 min)
   • This was with a Senior Software Engineer.
   • Questions included:
     • Introduce yourself
     • Tell me about a recent project you worked on, preferably on the front-end
     • What is the meta tag?
     • What do you know about cookies?
     • Explain what the CSS box model is
     • What is padding?
     • If I had a div with the width property set as 100px and then later added some padding, would the width now change or remain the same?
     • Do you know something about box sizing and border box?
   • At this point, I shared my screen and had VS Code open after being asked what IDE I use to code in JavaScript. I ran a demo.js file in a Node environment to show the results for the remaining questions:
     • Type console.log("Hello");. What does this do?
     • Given the following code snippet:

       let myMath = new AntraMath(10);
       myMath.add(5);
       myMath.multiply(2);
       let res = myMath.done();
       console.log(res);
       Write a constructor function called AntraMath() so that the value of res printed is 30.
     • Does your approach create new add() and multiply() functions for every single object. If so, how can you solve this problem? Are you familiar with ES6 classes?

Result: The recruiter contacted me the very next day and I received the invitation letter to join their 6-week training program. Based on performance, full-time employment will be offered.

Thoughts

Overall, the entire process was both an enjoyable and educational experience. Both my interviewers were friendly and they asked if I had any questions for them at the end of each interview. I was really pleased with how smoothly everything was conducted and how everything was clearly communicated to me as well.

Being an international student with just about a month left to get a job during these uncertain times, I am really grateful for the opportunity.

I hope this post benefits someone in their job search at some point in the future.

Preparation

1. W3Schools
2. MDN