The Technical Assignment

It’s very likely that the company you are applying to will give you a technical assignment to be completed in 2-6 days. Your performance on the assignment will determine to a large extent whether you will get the internship or job.

At first technical assignments might seem like a daunting challenge, but understanding the mechanics and learning the right approach will help you feel more relaxed and confident about them.

Technical assignments are usually a simulation of the work you'll be doing for that company and they give the hiring manager an understanding of your skill set. Starting your internship or entry-level job with real understanding of your skills will help you in the short term as the company will know how much support you will need moving forward.

A few important things to keep in mind when working on technical assignments:

• It might happen that the company expects you to use a technology or framework you don’t know. If this is the case, you can always ask to use a technology you feel more comfortable with but it might also be the case that the company wants to see how well/fast you can adapt to new things and learn.

• Ask questions! If something is not clear in the assignment, feel free to ask for some clarifications via slack. Keep in mind though that it might also be that a technical assignment keeps things open and unclear on purpose. Companies do this so that they can see how you will implement it, but of course also how proactive you will be in asking questions.

• Try to do something extra; to show that you are pro-active and enthusiastic about the company it's good to show off a bit. Try to put an extra feature in the assignment, don't just literally do what the assignment says. It can be as simple as adding a cool animation, but could also be a whole extra feature.

• Once you are done with your assignment and you submit it to the company, it's very likely that you will have a followup call where you will be asked why you made certain choices while working on the project and to explain some code. The best way to be ready for this is to know the in and outs of your code (line by line) and follow the technical interview tips.

Resources to Practice Interview Code Challenges:

• Frontendmentor - The website provides coding challenges at different levels for free.

• Hackerrank - Popular Platform that companies also use to provide you with a coding challenge. You can get certified (for free). They have an interview preparation kit.

• Leetcode - Another popular platform for companies to share coding challenges with applicants.

• CodeWars - Provides more technical challenges for JS. A bit more gamified. More technical.

• FrontendPro - Front-end coding challenges.