Design Interviewing
I recently started a new role (as in, yesterday) and I was inspired by a friend’s post on her engineering interview experience to publish an article on my recruiting experience for product designer. As she mentioned, recruiting can be mysterious, frustrating, anxiety-inducing and the more transparent we are about it, the better. Best practices and interview structures are also constantly evolving, so this is specific to my particular experience in 2021, but I’m hopeful that someone will find my experience useful in their own product design interview process.
Why I started interviewing
Let’s be honest - even though the Bay Area is full of smart and accomplished people, there’s a certain amount of cachet that comes with being attached to a ‘big tech’ company (FAANG, FAANGU, whatever it is these days). When I would get asked where I worked, quite honestly, saying “Oh, you know, [FAANG]” meant something; because it comes with it a host of perceptions: that you’re the best at what you do, you make gobs of money, you “made it”. However, what many people don’t realize is that there are many ways to get inside big tech and to execute that level of work. Technically, I’ve been doing FAANG work since the beginning of 2019. The agency I worked at that time worked almost exclusively on outsourced FAANG projects; we often got company emails and badge access designating us as “V” - vendors. I led a project for a particular client that really liked my work. They asked me if I would want to come on directly as a contractor for them, instead of being hired through my agency. They would pay less, I would get paid more. They offered me a stellar rate, and I accepted.
The truth was, I made a higher base than even some senior designers at the big tech company, but by being a contractor I was leaving a lot on the table: not only in terms of equity and bonuses (which can more than double a designer’s base salary), but also also discipline-specific things such as investment towards career growth and structured mentorship; and life-things such as solid health insurance and other wellbeing benefits. I know that there has been a lot of talk about how big tech companies treat their contractors (many of whom do the same work as full-timers) as second-class citizens. I maintain that I had a great experience with my team and felt that I had a good rapport with my managers, who genuinely wanted me to get put on projects that interested me and scheduled 1:1s to connect with me on a weekly basis. However, just the fact of being a contractor means that I was a second-class citizen — for all the reasons I mentioned above. Obviously, it’s great for the company to keep this workforce of contractors, and it’s no secret that it’s hard to get converted to full-time status, even if you’re excelling in your role.
Listen — I have my qualms about tech compensation as a whole and a no small amount of guilt over how absurd the amount that we make is, especially in the Bay Area. But I know that it’s equally important for me to be compensated fairly for the level of work I was doing. (I also want to say that my former teamwas very supportive and understanding of my decision to leave). As I move into a period of my life where stability is paramount — I’m edging into years where I’ll be thinking of having children; where maternity leave, fertility benefits will start becoming a consideration; where I’ll have more impetus than ever to take care of my health; etc — I knew that the best thing to do was to move on. My former manager(who had also moved on to another role by this time) and another design manager were extremely frank with me in that they thought that me being a contractor and leaving a laundry list of benefits on the table was not an ideal situation. But I was so intimidated by the prospect of interviewing, mostly because I had never really done it before. (That’s a story for another day, but essentially, I was brought on directly to my previous job through my client; and the interview process to get hired at my previous agency was not a the most traditional process).
What I needed to prepare before applying
Once I decided that I was going to start interviewing and started thinking of what I needed to have done in order to interview; the initial design seemed like by far the easiest part. For designers especially, there’s a lot of prep work that needs to be done since we’re judged mainly on our portfolio of work. I knew I needed to have three main things done:
1) Resume: I mean, yeah. It took me about an afternoon to make this. I knew that the presence of a FAANG company on my resume was going to generate some interest, but I made sure to include clear impact metrics in bullet points: “I improved usability of key flows by X%, I pitched a client that ended in a project with $X revenue”. I had a product manager friend review my resume and give me critical feedback.
2) My portfolio website. This is the most important component; and this took me a solid 3 weeks and tons of late nights in front of the computer. There is nothing more irritating than realizing that you somehow just lost or misplaced all the hard work you’ve done; or digging through a million slide decks to try to make sense of a project you completed 8 months ago.
But alas. I mentor designers at an online bootcamp and I always tell them that it’s simple: “no portfolio, no job.” I knew I needed to have 2-3 solid case studies; that ideally spanned mobile, web, emerging tech, etc; and each case study should showcase something that I brought to the table as a designer (my design “superpowers”, if you will). My case studies had to be thorough but not rambling; the reviewer should be able to clearly understand my user and problem space; see my process and follow along; as well as quickly understand the impact of my design once it shipped.
3) Portfolio presentation***. Once you pull your hair out and weep and cry and write your case studies, you then have to turn those case studies into a more palatable set of slides to present during your interview; first to the hiring manager and then to your on-site panel. This does make sense as a concept— a surprisingly percentage of my time as a designer is spent making slide decks to show stakeholders; and both presentation and storytelling are crucial design skills. But god, is it annoying.
***I transferred my case studies to slide format after I had confirmed some interviews — that’s because I for each company I was talking to, I had to customize each presentation based on the company and role I was interviewing for as well as their requirements (the standard was 2 case studies, but some wanted 3+).
Finding & applying to interviews
I thought for a while about the kind of companies I wanted to apply for. I obviously knew that I wanted a full-time role, but I as I thought about what I liked/didn’t like at my previous position, I came up with a list of criteria that I used to apply to companies. It wasn’t always immediately apparently whether a company met that criteria - some of it was apparent in the job description (I mainly steered away from all-remote companies); while other factors became apparent during the interview process itself (such as company culture, work-life balance etc).
My criteria
A strong design culture: One of the things I liked about working at my previous agency was the tight-knit product design community that would host and attend product design events; have regular design crits, etc. It’s not to say that Google doesn’t have that; it just had to do with sheer size and also the fact that the department I worked in was largely hardware and interaction-design centric. I wanted to find strong mentors and also have the opportunity to mentor more junior product designers.
Work—life balance: As I mentioned above, I’m going into my early 30s; a period of life that will be marked by supporting my partner as he finished his psychiatry residency and starts his board-licensed career; having kids, buying a house (god I hope), etc etc. It was important to me that I have the support and flexibility to do those things as well as pursue other hobbies I’ve developed, such as my wine education journey.
A guaranteed path towards a hybrid remote/in-office work model: I really, really miss being in the office and interacting with coworkers. It’s good for my mental health and helps me focus more; contrary to what others say, my output is way higher when I’m in an office space. I also feel that being in person is important for key parts of the design process such as brainstorming, workshops and user testing. Also - who doesn’t love free snacks, coffee and LaCroix? So I optimized towards companies that had a brick-and-mortar office in San Francisco.
A mission with immediate impact and clear, measurable goals: The work I did in my previous role leaned towards the conceptual — essentially I was working with really, really smart people on new interaction languages and emerging interfaces that could potentially see widespread adoption in the span of…years, if not decades. I wanted to work on a product that was growing fast and was making a positive impact in users’ lives already.
Coworkers who could become friends: I’ve always considered my coworkers to be a main friend group, one that socializes not only in office but also outside of the 9-5. I joined my agency in 2019 and my coworkers became my core group of friends — we did way too many happy hours, ran around San Francisco, picnicked in Dolores Park, and just generally hung out all the time. I joined my previous company during the pandemic and while that certainly made things difficult, it’s also a bit of a culture aspect: many of my coworkers were older with families; living in South Bay and with way less time to go happy hour-ing or picnic in Dolores Park. And while I’m not looking for that exact same dynamic that I had with my agency coworkers in 2019, I do want to be able to joke around with my coworkers and feel that they care about my life outside of work; and vice-versa.