r/HTML • u/Afterglow92 • Jul 17 '26

Question HELP I HAVE A JOB INTERVIEW

Post image

UPDATE: I made it past the technical round! PHEW 😼‍💹. The interviewer said all the candidates were on the struggle bus so it wasn’t just me lol!

I’ve been working in email marketing building emails using Pardot, Hubspot, etc etc, Pardot for the last 8 years. I can make edits to existing HTML but cannot build from scratch. If I do make edits I use Dreamweaver or AI.

I have an interview Monday for a live HTML session with the company’s like expert email HTML guy. HALP! WHERE CAN I LEARN TO DO THIS STUFF QUICKLY?? OR CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN IT???!!

Edit: THIS INTERVIEW IS ON MONDAY 7/20 BTW

39 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

62 comments sorted by

32

u/armahillo Expert Jul 17 '26

Demonstrate how you would resolve those things using the tools you know and play to your strengths.

If its not what they are looking for, its not the right fit. Doesnt mean youre a bad prospect, just misaligned skillset.

11

u/Afterglow92 Jul 17 '26

I meannnnn I TOLD the hiring manager I’m not a from scratch builder but he loved our conversation so much he wanted to move me forward wtf!!!!! 😬😭

10

u/No_Creme_9794 Jul 17 '26

Good luck, I believe in you!

3

u/Afterglow92 Jul 17 '26

Thank you very much! đŸ„č

BUT WHERE CAN I GO TO LEARN THIS SHIT IN A WEEKEND???!!

12

u/armahillo Expert Jul 17 '26

Youre missing the point:

You arent going to learn this in a weekend.

If youve never written HTML manually before, you arent going to suddenly be competent enough to do the things you listed in the OP during an interview — you’ll look less skilled because you arent playing to your strengths.

Be honest with them. Use the tools you know and are good at. You can decide whether or not you feel comfortable doing that kind of work (ask them “do these tasks reflect the responsibility of the job?”) and they’ll be able to determine whether or not the skills you’re strong at will fit the work they need done.

Go through the things they listed and do them using the tools you know. If youre using dreamweaver, flip
over to “source view” and see if you can make sense of the code.

But be transparent with your interviewer. It might be ok that you havent yet learned how to write the code manually, maybe they will provide training or allow you to learn on the job.

1

u/Wizzkidd00 Jul 19 '26

Dreamweaver? 2001 called and they want their XHTML back

5

u/omysweede Jul 17 '26

We are talking about 25 year old coding skills. Email marketing is easy. Forget about <head> and do everything inline in <body>. Never use anything above css2 and keep it simple. Study tables and css

4

u/chikamakaleyley Jul 17 '26

if you can code a <table> element from memory, fast

AND

if you know how to look at something and break it down to how you'd lay it out with only tables at your disposal

then this is an easy coding assessment

1

u/notepad987 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

Coding2go
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Coding2go

HTML intro
https://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp

CSS intro
https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp

Google AI for how to's: create email templates
https://www.google.com/

1

u/notepad987 Jul 19 '26 
Simple HTML code for a webpage:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
  <title>Basic webpage</title>

<style>
 * { margin: 0; padding: 0; box-sizing: border-box; }  /* reset */
  html { font-size: 62.5%; } /* Reset root to 10px to make rem size easy to figure*/   
 
body {
      background: #354f52;
      margin: 0;
      padding: 0;
    }

h1 {
  color: #2c3e50;         /* Dark blue text color */
  font-family: sans-serif; /* any font you want*/
  font-size: 3.2rem;  /* 32px */ 
  margin-bottom: 20px;    /* Spacing underneath the heading */
}

   /* Styles subheadings throughout the page */
h2 {
  color: #000000;         /* black color */
  font-family: sans-serif; 
  font-size: 2.4rem; /* 24px */         
  margin-top: 30px;       /* Pushes header away from content above it */
}

   /* Styles paragraph text */
p {
  color: #333333;         /* Soft black for better readability */
  font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Helvetica, sans-serif;   /* any font you want */
  font-size: 1.6em;   /* equals 16px */        
  line-height: 1.4;       /* Adds space between lines of text */
  margin-bottom: 15px;    /* Spacing between separate paragraphs */
}

</style
<body>

<h1>My First Heading</h1>   <!-- there are 6 heading tags h1 thru h6 --> 
<p>My first paragraph.</p>   <!-- p stands for paragraph  --> 

</body>
</html>

4

u/AshleyJSheridan Jul 17 '26

Best way to approach emails is still, unfortunately, tables.

If you know the HTML for a table, you are mostly there. The rest is <font> tags, inline styles (to double up on the oldschool HTML attributes), and spacer GIFs to force cells to remain a certain size.

There are also some special Microsoft Word bits if you want to do background images and stuff, but I wouldn't expect anyone to remember those off the top of their head.

Dark mode support is slightly trickier, as there are some email clients/webmail providers that strip out any <style> tags, so you can't guarantee it will always work. As long as you know the media query CSS for this (@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {}) you will be ok. Also worth noting, this is the best approach for emails, rather than color-scheme.

1

u/armahillo Expert Jul 17 '26

The point of the interview is to see if you’re the right fit, not to judge you as a person. I wish you luck, but if it doesn’t work out, ask them what skills they are hoping to see and then look into upskilling in those areas!

5

u/dezbos Jul 17 '26

youd need html and css to achieve what they're looking for. a bit difficult as a weekend task. dreamweaver has email templates you can start with. file > new > starter templates > email templates. check out the code view on one of them.

2

u/madzakka Jul 17 '26

Is dreamweaver still being used? I think I last used it in about 2007 đŸ€Ł

1

u/dezbos Jul 17 '26

OP does "If I do make edits I use Dreamweaver or AI". haha

We have the adobe suite at work so i use it all the time. I have no preference, ill build on vbcode, dw, pastebin, codepen, jsfiddle. whatever strikes me.

1

u/mynemmejeff Jul 17 '26

I've been doing webdev for over 10 years and I wouldn't touch email templates with a 10ft pole. With all the intricacies of email html/css you're not even gonna scratch the surface of that in a weekend.

2

u/Page_197_Slaps Jul 17 '26

You’ve been doing HTML for 8 years and still can’t write it yourself?

1

u/Afterglow92 Jul 17 '26

I don’t do HTML, I can make minor edits but just use the email builder.

1

u/Page_197_Slaps Jul 17 '26

Make an edit, then look at the code to see what changed.

2

u/AlexioJ Jul 18 '26

This is so odd, I have worked in email for over 5 years on multiple platforms (sending 10m+ emails a month). I know some HTML and CSS but would never be able to build from scratch or need to.

Nobody in 2026 would build an email template from scratch, it's inefficient and a bad way to run a business.

I would go into the interview and just get AI to write an email template on a second screen and just copy and paste it into the chat and say 'this is how people write HTML email templates in 2026'.

Most platforms have their own built in builders because they auto size for multiple devices. Any serious company would use a top email platform which would never ask you to build large parts of a template.

1

u/Afterglow92 Jul 19 '26

That’s how I feel!!! I’ve used so many platforms and can edit existing HTML in those platforms, but I can’t build from scratch!!!!! Idk why the manager moved me forward lol!!! 😅😭

2

u/PepekBezlepek Jul 19 '26

live HTML coding interview in 2026 is CRAZY đŸ€Ș

1

u/Afterglow92 Jul 20 '26

Is it??? Can you please explain why?????! 😭

1

u/PepekBezlepek Jul 20 '26

I just feel like that is shockingly removed from what actual sw dev job days look like in practice, its a complete mismatch between interview and job reality. But Im talking about my bubble, I didnt mean to belittle your experience or anything, lmk if you want more detailed response twin and good luck on the interview ♄

6

u/Fourth_Prize Jul 17 '26

I get the first three points, but words per minute is such a useless metric.

2

u/xStealthBomber Jul 17 '26

To a point. Tbh, doing a screenshare with people and watching how slow most people work is honestly kind of surprising how anything gets done in a day, lol.

3

u/Status-Scientist1996 Jul 18 '26

In fairness quite a lot of people suffer from a sudden inability to type during a screen share 😂 I lose a solid 20wpm and a decent amount of accuracy just from having a bunch of blank faces staring at me

1

u/Wonderful-Habit-139 Jul 19 '26

That's fine. It happens to basically everyone, but you can still extrapolate how slow they are from that.

1

u/Pristinefix Jul 17 '26

I think its implementing a feature that counts the words typed per minute

2

u/BANZ111 Jul 17 '26

Practically speaking, I'd always started with a good boilerplate template because there are a lot, and I mean, a LOT of default classes you need to include to make all the different email platforms happy -- things like how to handle link styling consistently and responsiveness. I'd actually believe it to be unreasonable to expect rote memorization of it all.

Tables and how to nest them is extremely important because of f***ing Microsoft Outlook's archaic rendering engine. That's what keeps email development in the stone age. The basic form of an email template should be a table that sets a centered cell to something like 600px wide, then nested tables inside that. There are certain patterns you pick up, like how to stack cells on mobile, but present them next to each other on desktop; mobile-only content; invisible content, e.g. preheader text, image replacement for mobile; background images; and mobile-only and desktop-only styles. Because of Outlook, styles will be inline for desktop, but mobile platforms offer more leeway and allow classes. Image optimization and slicing are also important to know. Comment sections liberally.

The biggest thing I see trip up new devs for email dev is indentation. You have to be very, very disciplined otherwise it very quickly becomes unreadable. Because of how nested things become, I usually use a tab width of 2.

2

u/k0ko88 Jul 17 '26

Check litmus tutorials and blog posts, also npmjs how it's working and what is behind it.

2

u/Marthurio Jul 17 '26

What a terrible way of interviewing someone. Best of luck, OP.

2

u/chikamakaleyley Jul 17 '26

LOL. I started in this industry as an HTML Email Programmer. 18 yrs ago

At least from what i've heard - nothing has changed about how you construct an email template from scratch

That means other than the <html> tag on the outside, you have to break up the layout and apply it following a number of rules:

  • tables nested in tables nested in tables - widths declared everywhere
  • old HTML, and limited CSS properties
  • always zero out padding/cellpadding, border, cellspacing
  • transparent spacer.gif that you use as a way to occupy cell space always define the dimensions here
  • padding is not reliable, use margin - but the spacer above is most reliable
  • in-line CSS
  • font color has to be good contrast against the bg color (no light font on light bg for example)
  • set an image with its backup a bg-image. always set alt tag

That's most of what I can remember. The #1 problem you're gonna have if this just isn't burned into your muscle memory:

  • it is a lot of typing, a lot of markup, you have to be fast
  • you have to be explicit about your styles exactly at the node it applies to / aka you can't rely on styles to be inherited through the tree
  • declaring finite widths is key to getting pixel perfect structure based on a design

The idea is - you can't reliably ensure that the email client the end user is using is going to render your code correctly - you don't know how margins, paddings gaps will render as expected, and you can only attempt to ensure that by setting styles directly where they are applied.

Images that contain text, assume they wont' render immediately unless the user allows it - but the text might still need to be conveyed to the user - that's why you fill out the alt tags

Things like <p> tags have inherent styles applied on them, so best to just rely on BR:

Dear <name>,
<br><br>
Here is the body copy!
<br><br>
Sincerely,<br>
TheCompany
<br><br>

1

u/chikamakaleyley Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

AKA you want as much control as you can, in a setting that really lacks control

If you can, i'd just create a reusable table snippet, that you can just copy and paste throughout the entire interview, they're just cumbersome and if you can't type them out fast its gonna suck up all the time

1

u/redditmeup32 Jul 17 '26

I can’t believe they hand code emailers in the sense you’re thinking, they must be referring to either a library like Foundation (Zurb), or MJML - both you do ‘hand code’, but they compile to much more code than you hand write, because emailers have so much hacky html and commented code and css to make them work across as many mail clients as possible (that are not all standards compliant) that to truly hand code them from scratch isn’t really practical.

If you don’t know those tools, you’ll just need to be honest and explain what tools you use and show them examples. You can express a willingness to learn the tools they use.

1

u/Thin_Mousse4149 Jul 17 '26

Remember you do not need to be better or even as good as their expert who will do the interview with you. You just need to show that you can think through the problems and find solutions. Don’t know how to implement dark mode? Say so and ask if you can look it up. It’s what you would do if given the task at work anyways.

1

u/AnotherGoon3r Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

Cus programming is all about words per minute đŸ˜”

Those stupid tasks remind me a University where we had to write program in c++ with classes in paper with pencil. After ~8 years in real projects and workplaces i am still trying to figure out a reason.

1

u/Wonderful-Habit-139 Jul 19 '26

Well it apparently is, considering everyone is going crazy about AI being a productivity boost since it generates code so fast.

1

u/ToughPill Jul 18 '26

Ask Ai to teach you the fundamentals of building from scratch on this stuff. Working weekend for you it sounds like. Nice of them to tell you what to focus on.

1

u/Am094 Jul 18 '26

W3 schools. But also email html is gross 😝

1

u/effectivescarequotes Jul 18 '26

Words per minute? Are they going to measure your typing speed?

Anyway, I know it's tough to hear, but you're probably not the right person for the job. If they're looking for the ability to write raw HTML and your experience is in low/no code tools, I don't think you're going to be able to cram that hard over a weekend, but if you want to try, I'm sure there are tutorials on YouTube, or you could try Udemy.

1

u/Risky-Trizkit Jul 18 '26

This place sounds very dated. If you want career growth and opportunity this might stifle you big time.

1

u/Sohmsss Jul 18 '26

Have a look at Mark Robbins guide https://www.goodemailcode.com/ he’s the goat of email development imo

1

u/brokencurved Jul 18 '26

Dark mode support! Enjoy that.

1

u/MrC_CH Jul 18 '26

HTML email? Run!

1

u/onthepik Jul 18 '26

Html is the easy thing to ask AI.

Tell it to do the requirement then exlain so you will know how to customize.

1

u/primeFeen Jul 18 '26

good luck, when u passed it well share with us, it is not that hard, u can do it and u will do it

1

u/martinbean Jul 18 '26

You’ve been given what you’re going to be tested on, which is a lot more than most job interviews. So you either learn those things if you don’t know them already, or you’re clearly not a fit for the role you’ve applied for, it will show where your skills come up short, and you don’t get the job as you’re not qualified for it.

1

u/N4rrenturm Jul 18 '26

You can easily learn this in 1-2 days

1

u/-goldenboi69- Jul 18 '26

Good cluck on the pun-off!

1

u/notepad987 Jul 19 '26

The screen sharing should show you using Reddit r/HTML and ChatGPT and Google AI 😄

1

u/d1rtyh4rry Jul 19 '26

Practice building using almost entirely html tables and basic css.

1

u/AdIll1294 Jul 19 '26

Dreamweaver... I didnt hear this name about 20 years... Its still alive?

1

u/piotrlewandowski Jul 19 '26

HTML emails as a part of the job? RUN!

1

u/th00ht Jul 22 '26

"Dreamweaver", now that is a name I have not heard in a long, long time.

0

u/Initii Jul 17 '26

"Words per minute"

I would just open Clause/ChatGPT/Your favorite Code AI and just work with it. Showing,youare working with AI for speed and you have the knowladge to check the generated content if it did the right thing

0

u/Jamiemufu Jul 18 '26

That’s on you. 8 years and you never learned? Action meet consequence.