Why you got rejected in the first round of interview (For Designers )

I got to interview many designers, and I had to reject some in the process. Here are all the reasons why this happens:

I got confused too before when I got rejected in these first rounds, even though everything was going so well! why?

Here are some reasons why you might have been rejected.

The format for a first-round design interview usually is

1. Your introduction
2. The company shares their details
3. You explain some of your prior work
4. Further questioning and finally
5. You get to ask some questions as well.

Alright, now how do we mess this up…

Reasons for rejection

Your interest and the company's interest don’t align. and you won't even know it:

A company hires someone because they need specific work to get done by them.

The key word here is “specific”; the hiring team already knows what projects they will need the new hire to work on and what skills they will need to look for.

On the other hand,
We have no clue what the hiring team is looking for in us. We proceed to introduce and share our projects like any other interview, and we hope whatever is shown at some point is connected with what the hiring team was looking for.

On the hiring end, they also have to really look into the details to look for things they need.

In the end,
Many times, when you are shooting blindly and the things you showed were not the things the hiring team was looking for, you get rejected.
(Even when you have a project that has all the things that they were looking for.)

How can you avoid this fate?
You can fix this by asking the first magical question in your interview

When an interviewer asks you to share your work, ask this:

“Before we start, you know I just want to contextualize how I show you my work so could you tell me a little bit about your goals for ______ (company & product) and where do you want to take it in the future? And what kind of work do you want to do?”

something along these lines. I have used this

1. This let’s them tell us what exactly they are looking for
2. After hearing this, we can look at our portfolio and share projects that can show them some examples of the skills they are looking for, a solution to the problem that they are having, and so on.

We see the potential, but you are just not ready yet.

I hope hiring teams actually share this with the candidates because this can help them in the long run.

Because if you made it to the interview, that means we saw some potential in you, and we want to see how good you actually are.

This happens often when we see potential on paper and, while interviewing them, notice that they have the potential to be a great fit for the role but at that point , you see some glaring weakness in their skills

How can you avoid this fate?
If you think this might be the reason for the rejection, you can reach out.
and ask why this might have happened and they will point out what they saw

Note to Hiring managers: if you are interviewing someone and you feel this way, do share it with them on the call itself they can improve on it for the future

Bad communication

One of the major tools you need as a designer or specifically a Product designer, is communication (In English)

This actually happened during an interivew (they probably meant something else)

Among the things hiring teams look for in a candidate, this tops the list most of the time. and when we notice all the skills but find that they are not able communicate their ideas, we have to reject them since designer need to collaborate with a lot of teams while working

Today specifically in India, this is the barrier that is keeping many talented designers from larger companies and abroad opportunities.

How can we fix this?
The best fix is to practice it well overall, but for this scenario, practice how you explain your ideas and design this can help you cross the interview even if you think your communication is a bit weak overall

Projects that are not relevant

Loops back to the first point,

I just wanted to point out to people who present things that are not relevant to what the position is for: when you present a website design for a UX design interview, there is a mismatch that gets rejected.

I was once asked to present things I worked on using Apple’s Human interface Guidelines. I didn’t have any, so I tried to fumble my way through it, but it didn’t work got rejected just like that.

It is hard to avoid this fate
If you are in this position, just accept your fate and get better at it for next time

These are a few things I have noticed that have been making it difficult to cross-interview, specifically the first round. There are many things to consider for the later rounds as well; maybe I will cover those in the future.

Here is another magic question for coming all the way:

Ask this close to the end of the interview if you know this is a senior manager you are talking to

“You personally as a ________(Person’s role) what are the things you need to succeed in and what could I bring to the table that could help you personally”

Along these lines,

It can reveal more about the role and help you highlight examples on how you can help them with their problem. lets example, if they want to make a better design system, you can give examples on how you can help.

Overall, these magical questions are pretty much meant to reveal the right things from the interviewer so that we can then use them to show targeted skills to them

Hope this was helpful

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