Product design interviews — Learnings from a new grad
Tags: Recruiting, Tips, Job Interview, Product Design, Careers

As a senior university student, the need to balance a heavy school workload while preparing for job interviews at the same time in the middle of a pandemic can be stressful and overwhelming. Over the past few months, I’ve gone through the process of recruiting for full-time product design roles at companies such as Square Cash, Figma and early startups like HAGS. I was fortunate enough to receive job offers from some of these companies, thus I’m sharing my learnings from my experience. Hopefully, it can be helpful to you too :)

1. Know yourself

Companies try to assess candidates in a short period of time, so it’s crucial that you communicate in a concise way. Take some time to think through the following questions that interviewers may have about you.

Current priorities: Do you want to prioritize your core skill growth as a designer now? Or do you prefer the flexibility of being able to wear different hats to gain experience outside of the job role’s responsibilities?

Do you want to prioritize your core skill growth as a designer now? Or do you prefer the flexibility of being able to wear different hats to gain experience outside of the job role’s responsibilities? Values: What do you fundamentally care about? Is there alignment between the company’s values and your own?

What do you fundamentally care about? Is there alignment between the company’s values and your own? Past collaboration experience: How did you collaborate with your cross-functional partners? How did you resolve conflict or disagreements with team members?

Tip: Use specific examples to help illustrate your responses. Examples are a powerful way to show interviewers the value you can provide. Write these examples down so that you can refer to them during your virtual interview.

2. Don’t practice by yourself

Practice is important. Practicing with another design counterpart is especially important for a highly collaborative role such as product design. As an introvert, I hated interviews. The thought of my skills and ability being judged and assessed in a constricted environment was very stressful for me. I’ve failed many interviews before due to a combination of my anxiety hindering my performance during the interview and the lack of *collaborative* preparation before interviews. My negligence to actively seek external help cost me a lot of opportunities.

Practicing with other designers comes in handy for the portfolio review presentation and the whiteboarding problem-solving phase of the job interview. From my experience, I found it super helpful to practice my presentation and run through some whiteboarding problems with other experienced designers in the industry that have interviewed candidates. They are able to provide constructive feedback on how you can improve and be more prepared for the actual interview.

Rigorous practice with the help of other designers not only better equipped me to address unexpected questions from interviewers about my work but also helped ease a lot of anxiety I normally feel during interviews.

Tip: Having trouble finding designers to help you practice? You should apply to Out of Office Hours or UX Coffee Hours, these websites connect newcomers like you to veterans in the tech industry who volunteer their time, completely free of charge.

3. Always seek improvements

During the interview process, ask for feedback whenever you get the chance. Often, the very end of the interview is a good opportunity. Receiving feedback is a gift as it allows you to improve faster and increase your chances of performing better for your next interview. Additionally, it shows your potential employee your willingness and hunger for improvement which is one of the main criteria interviewers look for.

To go the extra mile, you can send a follow-up email to everyone who interviewed you. This can help end things on a good note and allow you to communicate the following important things:

Provide additional context: Use this opportunity to provide additional context or address any unanswered questions on what you presented during the interview. This allows interviewers to understand your work better. This can be a form of presentation, file attachment or a link to the project you talked about with the team.

Use this opportunity to provide additional context or address any unanswered questions on what you presented during the interview. This allows interviewers to understand your work better. This can be a form of presentation, file attachment or a link to the project you talked about with the team. Ask for feedback: There’s always room for improvement. Be the candidate that is always looking for ways to improve and grow.

There’s always room for improvement. Be the candidate that is always looking for ways to improve and grow. Show your gratitude: A short thank you note can go a long way as it shows your appreciation for them taking the time to chat with you and hear you talk about your work.

Tip: Don’t know the emails of your interviewers? Kindly request the recruiter to relay your message to the team.

Closing thoughts

Job interviews can be very stressful, challenging and exhausting. Try not to take on too many interviews at the same time to prevent yourself from getting burnout. Rejection sucks big time, especially when the stakes are high (eg. financial or visa reasons) please don’t be too hard on yourself. Remember, everyone in the design community is rooting for you, so don’t be afraid to reach out to people to ask for help. The worst feeling is coming out of an interview thinking you could’ve done better. As long as you are actively seeking improvements after each interview you had done, you will be just fine.

Thank you for reading, if you have any questions or thoughts on this I would love to hear from you! Feel free to send me an email or DM me on Twitter.