Top 10 Front-End Developer Interview Questions and Answers
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall employment of web developers in the U.S., including front-end developers, is expected to grow by 23% by 2031. There’s also the added fact that this is also a lucrative profession to pursue, with developers making anywhere from $89,000 to $330,000 a year, depending on their experience, skills, and location. However, with such a handsome package and bright career prospects, landing a job as a front-end developer can be challenging. To help you prepare and improve your success odds, we’ve covered the most common front-end developer interview questions and the best ways to answer them.Â
Basic Front-End Developer Interview Questions
1. What are Meta Tags in HTML?
Meta tags are tags that are put inside the HTML page’s head tag and are important for the browser, not the interface. Meta tags always come in a pair consisting of a name and a value. Character encoding, title, and even description are all parts of meta tags.
2. What is Load Balancing?
Load balancing is a quick method for dividing workloads among several servers or clusters. Round Robin is the most widely used and basic load-balancing algorithm. This method divides requests in a circular pattern to ensure that each computer receives an equal amount of requests and is well-rested and underloaded.
3. How are JavaScript JavaScript and jQuery Jquery Different?
For simple activities, developers need to write a lot of code in JavaScript, but if they use jQuery, they only need to write one line of code. As a result, jQuery is more user-friendly for developers to deal with than JavaScript. Let’s look at some more distinctions.
- JavaScript is an independent language and can exist on its own. jQuery has to be converted to JavaScript for the browser’s in-built JavaScript engine to interpret and run it.
- JavaScript is a high-level, interpreted, client-side scripting language. This is a combination of the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) script and the Document Object Model (DOM). JQuery is a lightweight JavaScript library that contains only the DOM.
- JavaScript uses more lines of code as developers need to write their own code. jQuery uses fewer lines of code for the same functionality as the code is already written in its library. Developers just have to import the library and use the relevant function/method of the library in our code.
- JavaScript code is written inside the script tag in an HTML page and it appears as:Â
<script type=”text/javascript”>
alert (“This alert box was called with the onload event”);
</script>
 <script> </script>. Developers need to import jQuery from Content Delivery Network (CDN) or from a location where the jQuery library is downloaded in order to use it. The jQuery code is also written inside the script tag on the HTML page. It appears like this:Â
<head>
<script src=”jquery-3.4.1.min.js”></script>
</head>
4. What is Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)?
Cross-site Scripting (XSS) is an attack that occurs when a hacker utilizes an online application to transmit harmful code to a different user in the form of a browser-side script.
5. What is Meant by the Kiss Principle?
KISS stands for ‘keep it simple, stupid’. It’s a design principle that states that systems or designs should be simple and understandable to guarantee user satisfaction and interaction.Â
The KISS principle served as the U.S. Navy’s main design in 1960 to ensure the efficiency and simplicity of systems.
6. What is Coercion in JavaScript?
Coercion is the process of converting two distinct types of built-in JavaScript. There are two types of coercion: explicit and implicit.
It is called implicit coercion when JavaScript changes the value type to the expected type behind the scenes. However, when front-end developers want to change the value type to a certain type as per their needs, they use explicit coercion. Most of the time, built-in functions used to do explicit coercion in JavaScript are String(), Number(), and Boolean().
Front-End Developer Interview Questions
1. State the Elements of the CSS Box Model.
There are four components in the CSS Box Model:
- Content, which shows the prime content and text contained within the webpage
- Padding is a transparent border encircling the content (i.e. the amount of space between the border and the content)
- The border is a line around the padding (if there is any), and the content
- Margin is a transparent area surrounding the border (i.e. the amount of space between the border and any neighboring elements)
2. What is MySQL?
MySQL is a relational database management system (DBMS) that uses Structured Query Language (SQL )as its standard language for managing its database. Similar to other relational databases, MySQL uses a table-like structure to store data.Â
3. What is MongoDB?
MongoDB is a Not Only SQL (NoSQL) database that displays data elements using a structure similar to JSON, a text-based standard for encoding structured data based on JavaScript object syntax. The programmer must utilize MongoDB Query Language to modify MongoDB.
4. How Can You Make Your Web Design User-Friendly, and What Steps Would You Use to do so?
The steps that can help a front-end developer create a user-friendly web design are:
- Prioritize the user interface (UI) and the user experience (UX)Â
- Imagine and design a webpage that focuses on the users’ needs
- Test the website with users to ensure the ideal design
- Ensure that the website is mobile-friendlyÂ
5. What are the Benefits of Using CoffeeScript Coffeescript over JavaScript?
CoffeeScript has multiple advantages over JavaScript, including the following:
- Write less, do more: Developers need a very small number of lines of CoffeeScript for a large piece of JavaScript code
- Easily understandable: A simple syntax compared to JavaScript makes CoffeeScript, the abbreviated version of JavaScript, easy to learn. With the aid of CoffeeScript, developers record codes that are neat, obvious, and simple to understand
- Reliable: For the creation of dynamic programs, CoffeeScript is a safe and dependable programming language
- Readable and maintainable: CoffeeScript provides aliases for the majority of the operators, making the code understandable and maintainable, and the programs created in CoffeeScript are also simple to maintain
- Class-based inheritance: JavaScript doesn’t have classes. Instead, it has prototypes, which are powerful but hard to use. In the case of CoffeeScript, developers can make classes and pass them down. It also has properties that are instant and static, as well as mixins. It builds classes by using JavaScript’s built-in prototype.
- No var keyword: Developers can prevent unintentional or unwanted scope deceleration since CoffeeScript does not require the var keyword (var is a keyword to declare implicit type variables) to create a variable.
- Avoids troublesome symbols: CoffeeScript does not require the use of semi-colons or problematic parenthesis. Developers can use whitespace to identify block codes like functions and loops in place of curly braces
- Extensive library support: Developers can use JavaScript libraries in CoffeeScript and CoffeeScript libraries in JavaScript. So, developers using CoffeeScript have access to a huge number of libraries
Front-End Developer Interview Process
You must go through the three primary rounds to clear the front-end developer interview process.
1. Initial Phone Screening Round
In this step, you will talk to a recruiter about your skills and experience. Usually, the recruiter contacts you after you apply for a job on an organization’s careers page or through any legitimate job portal such as Indeed, Glassdoor, or LinkedIn. Hence, you need to insert the right keywords in your profile in a strategic way so that these job portals’ LinkedIn search algorithms can find your profile. If your background and experience match the job opening criteria, you may move on to a technical phone screening screen.Â
ALSO READ: How to Become a Front-End Developer in 2022: A Comprehensive Guide
2. Technical Phone Screening Interview
In this round, interviewers will test your approach to addressing problems. A hiring manager looking to fill a position in front-end development will ask you to solve a coding problem using a collaborative document. Initially, they will give you a problem to solve through trial and error, and then you’ll be given a document in which you have to write code to solve it. The hiring manager can change the problem statement to see how you react to different parameters.
Choose an object-oriented programming language you’re familiar with, such as Python, Java, or C++, for the technical phone screen round (an object-oriented programming language).Â
3. On-Site Interview Round
This is the final test of your technical skills. To simplify this round, interviewers have divided it into four stages.Â
Coding Round
This round involves resolving one or two problems related to algorithms and core data structures. Most of the questions will focus on arrays, strings, trees, graphs, and dynamic programming. This round tests your ability to describe intricate patterns of solution.
Systems Design Round
In this round, interviewers may ask you to structure an arbitrary system by following a set of parameters. By extracting the outcome, they can evaluate your understanding of scalable systems and the ability to design low-latency systems.
Behavioral Round
In this round, interviewers test your demeanor and character. They will assess your behavior by asking you questions about real-life scenarios from the workplace, such as how to balance work and personal life, how to deal with unpleasant coworkers or supervisors, and how you tackled a demanding former assignment.
Domain Round
During this phase, potential employers will focus on how well you perform in front-end development. In the domain round, you can anticipate more theoretical and situation-based questions.
Ace the Front-End Developer Interview with Emeritus
With rapid digitalization, the demand for front-end developers to build simple and user-friendly web applications is skyrocketing. This means that there is a high degree of competition as well. To get a head start, consider honing your skills and knowledge with Emeritus’ online coding courses. These programs offer you plenty of hands-on experience to ensure you stand out from other candidates at your front-end developer interview.
By Riku Ghosh
Write to us at content@emeritus.org
