Start Messy: What Failing Interviews Taught Me About Learning

FAIDAT TORIOLA — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 11:09:56 +0000

It’s been 3 years since I last wrote. If there’s anything I’ve learnt in the past year, it’s that waiting for perfection is a trap. I read this article by Aaron Francis and picked my ‘pen’ again.

https://medium.com/media/737dbbfeb765076f1dc87b492274027e/href

2024 wasn’t perfect. It was a year of “bombing” interviews and cold-mailing into the void. But in that messiness, I found the clarity I actually needed.

The Job Applications Phase

I started interviewing fully in 2024. I sent 100s of cold emails. I got ghosted, I got rejected, and I got very few interviews.

To be fair, I can only remember getting 1 interview from my cold emails, which didn’t go well.

I also applied on job boards, and I got interviews mostly from there. Oh yeah! I struggled through most of these interviews too.

The interview I got from my cold mail hits the most. I was asked a lot of questions that seemed simple, questions I have come across a lot. I either didn’t know how to articulate or went blank.

How was I not able to answer questions like,

‘Difference between var, let and const.’
‘Explain debounce and throttling.’
‘Explain hoisting and closure.’
‘What are the design patterns in javascript’
‘Promises vs Callbacks’

There were also other questions around web performance and web security.

I was very embarrassed in the course of this interview. It was so bad the interviewer made the situation weirder:
“Can you move on to the next question if you don’t know the current one?”

The HR also blurted out:
“You need to be fast; the interviewers need to get back to work.”

I couldn’t feel more weird. Felt like I didn’t amount to anything. I didn’t even set the time for the interview.

And this was an awakening call for me.

The Wake-Up Call

I realized that, despite writing code professionally for 3 years plus;

I need to learn a lot of theory/concepts.
I need to be able to explain these concepts clearly.
You could know a concept and not be able to articulate it.

For example, I recently came across a common interview question: “Explain the concept of destructuring assignment for objects and arrays.”

I use destructuring every single day, but if I were asked to explain it in an interview, I would have gone blank. Articulation!

I also started to see why people say interviewing is a skill you have to learn.

The Strategic Pivot

I decided to start from the fundamentals of Javascript. I started with javascript.info. I got a lot of “aha” moments.

For instance, despite 3 years of professional coding, I didn’t know about the Operator Precedence table. Also how the ternary operator earned it name — and lots more.

Discovering that was like finding the missing manual for a car I’d been driving for miles.

P.S: I don’t drive. Hahaha.

I was learning so much, but then the intrusive thoughts began:

The main one being “How long am I going to read for ?’’.

Additionally, to know something by heart, you have to read it multiple times.

All these seem like a life-long process, which is not ideal for someone who is looking to job hop now. I realized I wasn’t yet on the right path.

I consulted Claude AI, and this seems like the highlight of the response I got.

Your immediate problem isn’t knowledge — it’s interview performance. You failed some interviews on specific technical questions. Your response was to start reading javascript.info from the beginning, which is like training for a marathon by going back to learn how legs work. It’s not wrong, but it’s not strategically aligned with your goal.

Where I Am Now

I got recommendations/solutions, and the one that stuck with me is greatfrontend.com. I was really delighted, as I got a specific module that catered to my interview performance needs.

I love it more because it gives references at the end of each question, references that sometimes include my beloved javascript.info. So I just go back to read up there.

This is where I’m at. I hope this helps me greatly in preparing for future interviews. I wish to expand the duration I spend on reading, though. Hopefully, I get my wish fulfilled as I battle and fight against doomscrolling.

Take away

Whatever it is you have in mind to do, please start.

I knew I was bad at interviewing because I started it.
I started studying.
I realized I was studying wrong and pivoted to what seemed to be the right way.

If you’re stuck in planning mode on something, a career change, a learning goal, a side project, ask yourself: what’s the smallest thing I could do today to move forward?

Not the perfect thing. Just something.

For me, it was sending that first cold email. Then it was bombing that first interview. Then it was opening javascript.info. Each step revealed what I actually needed, not what I thought I needed.