Tips for your next PD interview

Disclaimer: This article is purely my personal view, based on my own experience, and it doesn’t represent any company or organization’s view or policies, or generalize to the whole industry.

Recently I’ve been in many interview loops (~3/wk). And in my last role, I had been in more than 60 loops for Senior Designer interviews and trainings, which gave me a lot of insights on what interviewers are looking for in a more seasoned designer, so I’d like to share my 0.02 here. Might not be any “easy wins” but I do like to go a little meta on those points. (Fyi these observations and tips might not apply to Junior — Mid level designers since I don’t have too much experience interviewing them.)

Be bold but know your benchmark

1. Know how good your work is. Build some self awareness by benchmarking with others in the same market, similar industry, role and job title, etc, seek feedback among your peers and mgr and outside of your organization. This information is crucial for you to know where you are at, and then you can be very confident about what you can bring to the table. I’ve had people who has 3yr experience asking me “Should I apply for this senior role?”. To me, this is less about yoe but how you see/know yourself. If you don’t know or feel you have to ask this question, then you’re probably not at the senior level. In addition, do some due diligence to the company/role you’re applying for to see if your work is on par with that company’s product.
2. Understand your lever and use it. A lot of people find higher level designers don’t have a full portfolio, some(e.g from FAANG) just a link to the launched product , and some no portfolio at all, and people start to mimic that trend. My personal opinion is, you should not just mimic the surface level stuff, because you don’t know the back stories. Maybe those people have very strong network and they’ve proven them in the industry, have won awards, or did talks at international conferences, in LT positions etc. Think about what levers do you have? What’s something only you can do? If you don’t have any of those, set out a plan to grow there and be humble. Once I had a candidate with only Saas projects on their folio, and I mentioned they might not be a good fit for our biz since we were looking for people have tons of consumer product experiences. The candidate said “I know my projects are all 2b, but I want to switch to 2c in my next role”. Similarly, another said “I know my folio looks very dashboardy, but I guarantee you I have very visual eyes”. Let’s not debate if 2b designers can do 2c etc, my point here is that, how can you convince people you can do something without any evidence? You can’t just say “I have good aesthetics” while your folio site looks barebone and not visually pleasing.
3. Change your mindset from “am I qualified for this job?” to “how can I stand out among all competitors?” This one is a pretty common issue among a lot of the candidates. While it is generally true if you could do the job, you get hired. In the post-covid world employers are more selective purely because they can. A lot of them will compare candidates and choose the best fit for the role. So this goes back to benchmarking yourself and know what lever you have for this role, and sell yourself from that angle. Last meta point, you’re in control of how much you wanna sweat for a certain job. I did a mentor session once with a job seeker — after they showcased a hypothetical case study (not launched), my feedback was: maybe you could add in some personal ties there, why you wanted to do this project, why it mattered to you, so it doesn’t feel like just a task assigned to you. The mentee pushed back: “is this a requirement for all of the projects I showcase? Do I have to add it?” — No no no, of course you don’t have to add anything. And this is definitely not a formula for success either. Just like this post, take or leave it. You should decide how much effort to put into your folios and how polished they should be. But as an interviewer, with equal capabilities, I definitely would prefer the ones with a lot of passion in design v.s treating it as another job.

Own your branding and story

1. People love stories. This is also true in interviews. We’re always looking for the stories about you. It’s not just what you did in this particular project, what you’ve launched, it’s also your personality, demeanor, aspirations, all reflected in your presentation (and 1–1s). At a more senior level, you should’ve developed more leadership skills and strategies than just the craftsmanship. Do you have a good understanding of the business? What moves the needle and what is a blocker? Who are your competitors? Can you talk numbers off top of your head? Why are you working on this particular project? A typical answer I heard is “Our PM/LTs gave us this requirement that we need to develop xx features/products”. And you know this answer won’t satisfy me as an interviewer. What I really want to hear is — did you influence the product roadmap, how did you help elevating the thinking around the product, the experience, etc.
2. Tell us who you are. What’s your super power? What’s your design philosophy and tenets? How have you grown as a designer? And your case studies and 1–1 are just proof of these qualities you embody. Try practice your preso beforehand with friends/peers/mentors and then ask people what impression you left with them. And reflect on if that’s what you want the interviewers to feel. This can help you refine your personal branding. The best interviews I had made me feel not only impressed by the candidate’s fundamentals, but “to work with this person I feel so fun/ privileged/ chill/ supportive, etc”. And the worst interviews left me feeling no presence of the candidate. Think about characters you like from movies and shows and ask yourself, how did they leave you such a strong impression?
3. Stories have arcs. This one is obviously cliche, however people tend to overlook it. Many candidates talk about the project in the same sequence as how they actually did it. But interviewers don’t care about your winding stories, they care about the moral from the stories. The Three Little Pigs story isn’t about how pigs built houses and defeated wolves, but “hard work pays off”. So when selecting case studies and which part to highlight from your end to end project, try to put yourself in the interviewer’s shoes and think about what this project says about you. And then build your narrative with some context, foreshadowing, leading up to the climax of the story, and the ending. Never do the cookie cutter process: “Here’s the user research we did… these are initial design drafts… and here are some iterations… and this is the final design…”. With fairly established UX discipline, the processes should be no brainer to all Product Designers, so you shouldn’t overemphasize on the processes and frameworks. At the senior level, it’s less about “I followed the correct design process”, but more of “I know the framework, but by balancing business and customer needs and tech constraints, I made an intentional decision to follow/not follow these steps and here’s why”. I think curiosity here is key. Why do you do what you do? For example, why do you do user research for this particular project? Is it because it’s the “right process” to follow? Or is it a deliberate decision? I’ve encountered situations where I proposed to not do robust user research upfront. Why? From our historic data, competitive analysis and heuristic evaluation and product hunch, I already knew enough what I needed to iterate on, and with the small scope of the project the extra research seems unnecessary. Nowadays everything is “data driven”, but maybe sometimes, we should be a little more “emotion driven” or “instinct driven”? Like Tony Fadell points out, the reason some people allude to data for all decision making is because they lack the vision. They try to rely too much on “facts”, so that if the product fails, they can say “hey it’s not my fault, the data told us to go there”. But are you brave enough to say, my instinct tells me we should go this direction, when data is not available?
4. Once you have crafted your narrative, own your story and be not apologetic. There was one time I was interviewing a candidate, in the end we had a few minutes for them to ask questions. The candidate asked: “can I bring my pets to the office?” At the very moment, I was pretty surprised to be honest, among all of the questions they could ask, they asked about their pets. I told them I wasn’t sure about the policy since I was not a recruiter and suggested them asking the recruiter to clarify. And they really did reach out immediately to the recruiter for the question. Later I learnt their pet has some special needs so they would want to keep them close at work. Again, not to suggest what you should be asking during your interview, I gave the example to show that the question is important to the candidate so they asked. The story they’re telling me — I prioritize my pet’s needs, and I need a work environment that can accommodate that. As long as you are intentional, own your story and your decision making, then don’t feel apologetic about it.

Don’t ever say “I don’t have anything to say about…”.

Anyone who’s interviewed at Amazon probably knows the famous/infamous Leadership Principles. We have scripts that outline all of the LPs and potential questions to ask for each one. It always starts with “Tell me about a time you did xyz…”. Many complained about the behavior questions round and told me “I don’t have any examples to showcase this LP…”. Regardless of LPs, sometimes I ask candidates in portfolio reviews “Did you encounter any challenges during this project? And how did you solve it?”, I can tell their face sunk and got stuck quite a bit. This isn’t me being tricky and trying to seize the “gotcha” moment, but I think it’s important to have curiosity and take time to reflect in a given project. Before I started doing martial arts, I’ve never noticed my breathing patterns. And before I hurt my lower back, I never noticed my lower back affects so many daily activities I do. You get the idea. We don’t always notice things when living it. Reflections should happen often during your project, so you can pause and zoom out and see things you’ve not noticed before. You can write down those sparkles, new realizations, pivotal moments, etc, and they become the ingredients for your story later. On the other hand, if you really don’t have these experiences, be honest but thoughtful. For example, once asked “Did you iterate on your design? Or your first design is already good enough and you just launched it”, I have the candidate stuck “ugh… we didn’t really explore other ideas or iterate on it.” I appreciate the honesty but would have hoped to hear “I didn’t iterate for xyz reasons, but I know the design could evolve more from the MVP phase, and I was thinking we could do xyz post launch…”.

Bonus: Titles don’t matter that much nowadays

As the saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words”, in an era where everyone is a Lead Designer, Principal Designer, Design Lead, Head of Design, it’s harder and harder to evaluate someone’s expertise solely from the Resume or job title. You might argue that FAANG companies’ titles still have a lot of weight, but I’ve also seen extremely talented candidates from small startups and agencies, and others from FAANG that provided the answer “We did this project because it’s a LT ask”, etc. Not to mention FAANG is not every designer’s aspiration. Maybe titles could potentially get you a screening call, but once I see the work and hear your story, a much more clear picture is formed. Ultimately, you’re not calibrated based on your title but your performance during the interviews.

To sum it up, benchmark yourself, know your value, and then package it in a good story, build your personal brand and the impression you want others to feel, and own it. Be confident — “Yep, this is me. And this is what I can bring to the table. And these things are important to me.” And reflect often for learnings and opportunities to grow. The good stuff will come. Remember, hard work pays off.