I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Nearform in May 2024
Interview
Terrible experience, as others have pointed out. Uncomfortable and disturbing.
- Interviewers failed to show up on time - took ~15 mins of my interview time, and also made my anxiety worse. Zero respect from them.
- Interviewers did not have the code test ready - when they found the file it was deprecated and would not run right away.
- Interviewers did not introduce themselves, one stayed off camera the entire time lurking, making things very uncomfortable (this is against NF's policy, I was told by the recruiter afterward)
- My positive feedback was that I had a good understanding of the concepts and the code, and negatively I didn't make it to the second part, and didn't understand the initial full repo which is an important part of working on a team (there are multiple files, they were old and had filler that the interviewer even admitted they would *never* use - I'm also not on their team, they did not act like a team with the camera off and rudeness. They also took my time to review the initial code because of showing up late and not having the zip files.)
The recruiter acknowledge their fault in all of this, and stated they had not done interviews in a long time and admitted that the interviewers had not prepared or reviewed before my interview. They admitted the code was old and they had to fix it. They told me they have a strict on camera policy. I was not provided a second chance, even though I was referred to the position by a manager, and they had admitted fault.
From the recruiter - " The interview with you was the first in a while, and I really wish we had done it before your interview, but now we will make sure to focus on preparing the team and the interview exercise." They then took the job down - only for it to be reposted 5 business days later. Clearly not enough time to change internal processes.
I do hope they improve and reconsider their technical interview process. It's worrisome that candidates who are qualified and knowledgable are being held back because of managers who are not prepared or knowledgable about what they're attempting to test on. They need to do better.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
A react application - update lists, prices, filter content.
I applied online. I interviewed at Nearform (Montreal, QC) in July 2024
Interview
I recently went through an interview process for a full-stack position, and I'd like to share my experience. The process included a screening with a recruiter, where I was asked some basic JavaScript questions, and a live coding session with the development team.
For the live coding session, I received an archive containing a React app repository and was asked to add logic and components using hooks (controlled inputs, state management, context, etc.). I managed to complete about half of the requested tasks within the given timeframe. Here are the reasons why:
1. I was nervous due to my limited live coding experience, which significantly affected my speed of thinking.
2. The IDE autocomplete and linting were disabled. This meant that any import/export typo or a linting error had to be figured out from the compilation errors in the terminal or browser console. The same applied to API methods and standard loop blocks, which I had to recall from memory. This significantly slowed me down. I even voiced my frustration about the lack of autocomplete a few times and received feedback that I was "too dependent on autocomplete" LOL
Ultimately, I didn't get through because I didn't complete all the tasks on the list. However, I don't regret it, as I find this interview approach somewhat unfair. Most likely, the top candidates would either be those who game the system by applying together (where one collects the task and the other learns the solution beforehand) or simply ask recent candidates on Blind for the tasks, allowing them to complete everything in 15 minutes.
**Pros:**
- The interviewers were friendly. One interviewer mostly stayed quiet in the background. The Director of Engineering was very nice, often pointing out typos (like a missing bracket after API method calls) and highlighting existing template code for the functions I was about to implement.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Implement a controlled input component that uses app context and filters items onChange