Welcome to the hiring process for JavaScript Developers at Kinsta! We’re excited to see that you’re interested in working with us. 🥳

In this document we want to share how we conduct interviews so you’ll know what to expect.

Above all else, we strive to create a friendly atmosphere that promotes good-natured technical conversations between equals.

Who Will Be Present?

Usually, there will be two Kinsta team members present. We will occasionally ask a third team member to join us to make sure we train our team members in the appropriate technical and soft skills needed to conduct great interviews.

Will I Have to Complete Whiteboard Tests?

No. We have nothing against testing during interviews, but we don’t believe such tests are particularly helpful for determining technical proficiency for us. We would much rather have a casual conversation about your exposure to and experience with technologies our Development Team works with on a daily basis.

What Sort of Questions Will Be Asked?

We do have some standard questions we ask, although they may come up in different forms depending on the flow of our conversation. Most questions will be casual in nature, focusing on your experiences and on you as a person; we don’t generally utilize “trick” questions or “gotcha” strategies in interviews.

Your Experience With Technologies We Use

What we are most interested in is your specific experience with the technologies we use, particularly React, Node, GraphQL, Typescript, Jest, Storybook, and databases. We love to hear about specific stories related to your use of these technologies, such as:

  • Projects you’ve worked on that utilized them
  • Particularly nasty problems you’ve come across that we may be able to relate to
  • Success stories you’ve had — things you’re proud of in your career

Don’t forget that everyone participating in the interview struggled through learning these technologies and may even be at a lower level of understanding in some of them than you are. It is absolutely OK to speak of difficulties openly; we’ve all been there!

We prefer to spend the greatest chunk of our time in interviews learning about your experiences with these technologies and sharing our own similar failures and successes.

Tell Us What You Are Passionate About

We also like to talk for a few minutes about anything that you are interested in, are super enthusiastic about and you could talk about for hours on end. We are a diverse group with a wide range of interests so don’t be afraid to share what you genuinely love, I can guarantee we’ll be able to relate   We find enthusiasm about a topic amazing in and of itself and really enjoy listening to people talking passionately about their interests.

Other Questions

Some other questions that commonly come up:

  • What brings you to Kinsta?
  • When would you be able to start?

Questions We Will Not Ask

There are some questions we particularly dislike. We will likely not ask you any of the following:

  • What are your greatest strengths?
  • What are your biggest weaknesses?
  • Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
  • Why should we hire you?
  • Why do you want to work at Kinsta?
  • Are you a team player?
  • Any manner of unnecessary fictional scenario (e.g. “How many paperclips do you need to reach to Alpha Centauri and back?”)
  • Any manner of contrived personality question (e.g. “If you could choose between the ability to be invisible and the ability to fly, which one would it be and why?”)

If you still really want to tell us which superhero you would be (or secretly are!), please do feel free to. However, we don’t believe any of these questions will reliably give us insight into your professional skills or your soft skills, so we won’t ask them ourselves.

Check out our current openings!