You will be asked to join a video call for your technical interview. We use an interview platform called Evidenced.

You will be given a time-slot and link before Saturday. We expect you to be available from 10am until 5pm, even though you should only be needed for 15 minutes.

What to expect

• The interview will be 15 minutes long. It may end slightly quicker, or go on slightly longer - you don’t need to worry about timings, your interviewer will make sure you fit everything in.
• Your interview will be online. You can come into a class space to do your interview on your laptop if you prefer, or can do it from home - whatever works better for you.
• You will be asked to discuss features and code from the projects you have worked on during the Checkpoint. We will only ask you about the three projects you did in this Checkpoint. We will not, e.g., ask about your TV Show Project.
• You may have written this feature yourself, or it may have been written by someone else in your group. You are expected to be able to talk about them all.
• You will be asked to share your screen. You must be able to share your screen within 60 seconds of being asked. You will have an opportunity to practice using the interview platform before the interview day.
• You should be ready to share your screen and talk about any of your projects. We recommend you have all of your projects open in VS Code and a web browser before starting the interview, so you can easily switch to one.
• You are not expected to write new code in this interview. We may ask you things like “There’s a bug here, talk about how you would fix it” or “If we wanted this project to have an extra feature or work differently, how would you have to change it?”, but we will just be talking through it not writing new code.

What questions will I be asked and how should I answer?

You will be asked three questions. We will ask you:

To introduce yourself

We expect that you:

• Say your name
• Explain why you are applying to join the SDC
  • Your background that makes the SDC relevant to you (this can be recent or long-term!)
  • Your forward-looking hopes that makes the SDC relevant to you

To explain how one feature in any one of your three projects works

We expect that you:

• Could explain in high-level terms how a feature worked.
• Could frame things both from a user-facing and developer-facing perspective.
• Presented information in an intelligible order.
• Didn’t lose the interviewer, e.g. by going on a deep tangent, or by using terms the interviewer didn’t understand (without checking).

To explain how some code in one of your three projects works

We expect that you:

• Could convincingly explain every line of code asked about.
• Could make accurate predictions about values/state.
• Tied explanation back to the feature / requirements being implemented.

We are looking for conceptual understanding/sound mental model here, not rote learning.

You must do all of these things. But just like with demos, your answers should feel natural - it shouldn’t feel like you’re running through a list of bullet points you need to hit.

We can ask you about any feature or code in any of your projects. It is not acceptable to say “I can’t explain that because someone else wrote it”.

We expect you to be able to share your screen and show code from your projects in the interview.

What happens next

• Your interview will be recorded and scored against the rubric above.
• You will not get feedback in the interview itself. You will be sent feedback within a few days of the interview.
• If you passed, you will be invited to join the next SDC.
• If you failed, you will be given feedback and invited to discuss the best next steps for you.