Web Dev Interview Questions

What programming languages are you familiar with?

The hiring manager here wants to make sure that you have experience with a breadth of different programming languages and, most importantly, that you're adept with whichever coding language used by that company. To answer this web developer interview question, it is once again important to review the job description and prioritize whichever coding languages are demanded. Be honest if you're more familiar with certain languages than others – for instance, perhaps you have used HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript extensively in your current position, but you have only scratched the surface with Ruby or SQL. It is also a smart idea to give the hiring manager an idea of the specific applications you have for each programming language.

• How would you describe the role of a Web Developer? What are the most important aspects of the job and why?

• What are the advantages of HTTP 2.0 over HTTP 1.1?

• What is the difference between ID and Class selector?

• What is the difference between null value and undefined value?

• How is HTML different from XHTML?

• What is type coercion in JavaScript?

• What is an ETag and how does it work?

• What is the difference between responsive design and adaptive design?

• What is progressive rendering in HTML?

• What is the difference between span and div tag in HTML5?

• What are CSS selectors? Name some.

• Explain quirks, full standards, and almost standards mode.

• What is HTML5 Web Storage?

• What is the difference between ES5 and ES6?

• How do you organize your class modules and assets?

• How would you explain APIs to non-technical stakeholders?

• What is the difference between black box and white box testing?

• Please explain big-O notation in the simplest terms.

• What do you think will be the biggest trends in future web development?

• What is the biggest difference between developing for mobile and desktop?

• Provide a basic overview of push technology. What are its benefits and drawbacks?

• How can Page Visibility API be useful?

List of Web Development Interview Questions: Technical Questions

Technical interview questions put your web development knowledge to the test. In these questions, you need to explain how you would apply your skills for various problems or tasks.

For technical interview questions, it’s important to clearly articulate your thinking and process. Any real-world examples you can provide illustrating how you applied these skills will really make your answers resonate with hiring managers.

A few examples of technical Web Developer interview questions include:

What are the advantages of HTTP 2.0 over HTTP 1.1?

This technical question is meant to test your overall knowledge, explore your experience level with both HTTP 2.0 and HTTP 1.1, and ensure you have the communication skills that a good Web Developer needs. In other words, it is important to provide a concise and easy-to-understand answer. HTTP 2.0 improves search engine rankings, consumes less broadband, and offers better loading speeds.

As a Web Developer, how do you optimize your site's loading time?

There are many different ways you can reduce the page load time, including cleaning the web code, minimizing redirects, caching, choosing smaller images or reducing image size, removing extraneous widgets, and reducing lookups. Explain to the hiring manager how you then check the speed (perhaps using Google PageSpeed Insights) to verify the success of your actions, or to see if further effort is needed.

• Can you describe your workflow when you create a web page or web app?

• What specific languages are you working with?

• Which web development tools do you use?

• If you have five different style sheets, how would you best integrate them into the site?

• How do you organize your JavaScript code?

• How do you manage your time during a development cycle? What methods do you use for estimating how long specific development tasks will take?

• How do you take into account SEO, maintainability, UX design, performance, and security when you’re building a web application?

• As a Web Developer, how do you optimize your site’s loading time?

• How do you make sure your websites and applications are accessible to users?

• Walk me through the process of creating a web page from scratch.

• How do you check other people’s code for bugs?

• What user interface and security principles do you consider when building a website or online application?

• Give an example of a website or web application that you don’t like. What would you change?

List of Web Development Interview Questions: Personal Questions

A Web Developer often has to collaborate with other departments, so employers are seeking candidates that would be a good overall fit with the company.

Personal questions can reveal a lot about a job candidate outside of their technical qualifications.

Personal interview questions for a Web Developer may include:

How do you keep on top of web development industry news and trends. How do you apply this to your work?

You need to show your interviewer that you are passionate about the development industry and determined to stay on top of the latest trends. Try to provide a diverse list of specific web development blogs and vlogs, social-media influencers (Jeff Atwood, Jeffrey Zeldman, Brad Frost, Sara Soueidan, and Rachel Andrew are a few popular senior developers on social media), YouTube channels, and more. You could bring up an interesting article or webinar you saw recently. It is also worth mentioning if you have a circle of colleagues or professional contacts who enjoy sharing interesting development-related content.

• Tell me about yourself.

• Talk about your preferred development environment.

• Tell me about the projects you’re working on (or have worked on) in your spare time.

• Where do you see yourself in five years?

• What are your interests outside of development?

• What kind of team environment do you thrive in?

• What got you into coding? Why are you interested in a career as a Web Developer?

• What are your favorite types of projects to work on?

• Are there any particular projects at our company that you are excited about?

List of Web Development Interview Questions: Leadership and Communication

At any stage of your Web Developer career, leadership and communication skills are two important qualities to have. To assess your leadership and communication abilities, employers may ask questions such as:

Explain JavaScript to me in a way that even an inexperienced techie could understand.

JavaScript is a programming language that is used for dynamic content, which refers to animations, graphics, newsfeeds, slideshows, autocomplete suggestions, interactive forms, or anything else on a web page that changes, moves, or shifts without the user hitting refresh. JavaScript is also essential for developing mobile applications, creating browser-based games, and working on a website's back end. JavaScript is so widely used that major web browsers can render JavaScript without downloading any additional programs or compilers.

• When have you solved a problem that didn’t involve coding?

• How would the Web Developers/Project Managers you have worked with describe you?

• How do you communicate your progress to clients and/or stakeholders?

• Give me an example of how you would describe web development to someone who is completely new to tech.

• Do you like working as part of a team while you’re coding? What do you think contributes to a successful team?

• How do you help your team members improve their coding skills?

List of Web Development Interview Questions: Behavioral

With behavioral interview questions, employers are seeking to understand how your past behavior may translate into the current position. Focus on explaining the situation or problem, how you handled it, and the result or outcome of your actions.

Behavioral interview questions for Web Developers may include: Tell me about a project you're particularly proud of. What did you do that worked out well?

Tell me about a time you had to respond to negative feedback.

Even an entry-level Web Developer has likely faced criticism at some point. The hiring manager will be looking to see that you have the communication skills and service-oriented attitude to respond in a professional manner to negative criticism and ultimately use it to improve the quality of your work. Still, you should not choose an example where a client was unhappy simply because of poor work. A better example would be a time when a client or stakeholder was not pleased with a web application or product even though it was developed according to an agreed-upon plan. If you can then describe how you pivoted from your original plan to create something that everyone was happy with, it will show that you are adaptable and devoted to customer service.

• Tell me about a project you're particularly proud of. What did you do that worked out well?

• Tell me about a project that disappointed you. What would you change?

• Tell me about a time you had to respond to negative feedback.

• Tell me about a time when you got stuck while coding. How did you work your way through the problem?

• Describe a time when you dealt with negative feedback.

• Describe a time when your program didn’t run. How did you troubleshoot your code?

• Has your team ever failed to meet a deadline? What went wrong and how did you address the situation?

• How do you handle conflicts on your team?

List of Web Development Interview Questions From Top Companies (Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft)

To give you an idea of the range of questions that may come up during your interview, we have put together a few examples of Web Developer interview questions from some of the top tech companies.

• How would you implement integer division if your language did not offer it?

• Vertically and horizontally center an element on the screen using CSS.

• Implement a SortedMap in JavaScript.

• How would you make your web pages load fast?

• Write a JavaScript function that creates HTML based on a given input dataset.

• How would you make this markup more accessible?

• Outline how you would implement a chess game in a programming language of your choice.

• What is the importance of CSS selectors? Where do you use them?

• How would you reverse a linked list?

• Design a webpage, which can auto-post new posts when you reach the bottom of the page by using JavaScript.

• Write the code to find the balance point of the array.

• How do you resolve conflicts with coworkers?