Understanding Job Application Rejections: Reflecting on a Junior React Developer Interview

Navigating the recruitment process can sometimes be disheartening, especially when you put in significant effort and still don’t secure the role. Recently, I participated in a second interview for a Junior React Developer position, and while I felt confident in my performance, I was informed that my skills weren’t quite up to the company’s expectations. I want to share my experience and reflections to gain insights and perhaps help others facing similar situations.

About My Background

I am a self-taught developer with limited professional experience, but I have built a diverse portfolio of React components and websites. My journey has focused heavily on frontend development, and I’ve aimed to demonstrate my capabilities through personal projects.

The Interview Scenario

The role involved migrating a PHP-based website to React, and the interview focused on a scenario-based coding challenge rather than live coding. The task was to design a simple, accessible React form with specific requirements:

• Three input fields: First Name, Last Name, Email, each required, with placeholders and visual indicators (red asterisks).
• The First Name field limited to 160 characters with a live character count.
• Form submission handling (sending data to a mock third-party API that responds with JSON).
• Client-side validation with real-time error messages displayed under each field.
• Accessibility compliance with proper labels and ARIA attributes.
• Validation rules: required fields, email format checked via regex, max character limit, and duplicate email checking (simulated).
• Half an hour was allocated to plan and outline my approach.

My Approach

Given the brief time, I aimed to structure my development process clearly:

1. Initialized a new Git branch to protect the main codebase.
2. Reviewed the existing code to understand integration points.
3. Designed a single React component for the form, with internal state managing inputs and errors.
4. Structured state as objects, with dynamic handling of input changes.
5. Built the form skeleton with semantic HTML, placeholders, and ARIA labels.
6. Implemented change handlers and validation logic within the submit function.
7. Developed error handling, with messages displayed conditionally.

At this stage, the time ran out, but I had established a solid foundation, and the interviewers asked how I would handle additional challenges, such as:

• Sending data asynchronously to a validation service using useEffect and async/await.
• Improving UX by disabling the submit button during processing, showing loaders