Part-2 Landing Your First Design Internship!

Manisha Goenka
Nov 5 · 8 min read
Self-illustration

Note: This is part 2 of 3 about how to become a successful UX Designer. If you haven’t read part -1 and are interested to find out how to get into a design program click here

Also, if you’re just looking for the list of short learnings about getting your first design internship, scroll past to the bottom and there is a nice summary listicle to save some time.

I felt a lot of emotions during my first internship. When I started, I too had the imposter syndrome and was nervous about sounding so obviously stupid. I was excited to attend design workshops and pumped up to show off my design and presentation skills. I also attended lots of intern activities like ‘lunch and learns’, mentoring session with my buddy, etc. and used to bring a notepad everywhere (lol! even to the bathroom) since I did not know when I have to start taking notes. My internship experience turned out to be much more than what I had anticipated. I learnt a ton during the 12 weeks of being part of the checkout team at Walmart eCommerce. I have written all about my experience in my portfolio.

This journey of getting an internship was in no words easy. I applied close to 100 companies in a span of 3–4 months and heard back from 13 companies for interviews. I got offers from just 2 of them. It was a great learning experience for me and taught me the do’s and don’t when it comes to applying. This article is a series of 3-part articles I am writing to help, inspire and develop more empathy towards my fellow design graduates and others who are passionate about design. For this article, I reached out to a few friends and they shared their internship experience. Thank you, Connie and Jared, for helping me out.

For the first few years of my career, I treated every day at work like it was a job interview. I was lucky to be a member of a skilled research team with a manager who continued to challenge me and encourage my growth. — Jared Rosso (HFES alumni 18’)

Let’s get straight into it!

PRIOR TO APPLYING:

Something I wish I did before I started my internship search was to connect with recruiters of the companies I was interested to work. Sending a note introducing yourself in LinkedIn is effective and lets you circle back to the recruiter after you have applied for a certain role. Even if you got rejected you can still ask the recruiter for some feedback which is definitely better than no insight into what went wrong. I would suggest to proactively take 15–30 mins out of your daily schedule to do this exercise. You can even do this while you are at the coffee shop. It would not take a lot of time if you have the message ready.

Create an excel document to track your application and interview process — name, position, location, status of your application, hiring manager info, recruiter info to connect on LinkedIn. You can make it as simple or sophisticated as you want. It is basically for you to refer and see how you are doing. Don’t stress too much about what information you put in.

What you need to start applying:

Resume — Keep it as simple as possible. Fancy resumes are a nightmare to ATS (Application Tracking Software). A simple resume with fonts like Arial, Calibri is easy to parse and increase your chance of getting through the first hurdle of the process. Use one color in the resume to highlight important things.

Cover Letter — This is optional for most companies but it does not hurt to have one template and modify it.

Portfolio (a.k.a. your entry ticket to any interview) — My recommendation would be to add 2–3 projects. If you don’t have much you can just add 1 project and maybe work on a side project within 1–2 weeks and add that. An example would be to conduct a heuristic evaluation and write a detailed report explaining how would you redesign a website/app.

LinkedIn profile — Keep your LinkedIn updated with education, previous experience, awards won, projects, etc. List all the skills which you think are relevant to you. Also, work on your bio and make it personal. Recruiters and hiring managers going through your profile should get a glimpse of your personality strengths and interests from a quick glance.

APPLY, APPLY & APPLY:

Image Source: 2by22 Blog

There is no right time to apply. It just depends on when you have 2–3 decent projects to showcase in your portfolio and an updated resume. Based on all the advice I had received back as a student applying early always gives you more time and opportunities. Towards the end, you might find a few opportunities. Being on the company side, I now see how the process, budgeting and offers are rolled out.

The headcount, budget are all finalized based on quarters (4 in a year). So teams are running against clocks to select, interview and give candidates the final offer and allow the candidate to accept the offer. There may be a lot of back and forth to this process. So companies want to finalize and finish the process early spring. At my company, the final offers are given in February and candidates are finalized in March.

“Apply widely! Especially on your first internship because you want to learn as much as you can. Be picky later.” — Connie Jiang (HFES alumni 18’)

INTERVIEW PREPARATION:

It pays off to be well organized with your interview preparation. You can use tools like Evernote, Dropbox or anything else you prefer. A simple google search will give you lists of UX design/research questions. Prepare answers for these questions based on your previous experience or from other sources. Also, detail out your design process and make it as clear as possible. Companies don’t care a lot about how many UX activities you have incorporated in it but they care about how the research was used to make design decisions and how iterations were done and what was the result of the usability testing. If you feel you are not very sure about your design process, do some research on what design process do companies follow, reach out to industry folks or post on Twitter and I am sure you can get some help.

All the notes will be helpful during phone interviews which you can refer to during the interview. Apart from your portfolio, it would be nice to write a short version of how you completed a project to walk through during the interview. It might be harder to explain the long process in your portfolio line by line and the interviewer would not be interested in a longer explanation.

INTERVIEW PROCESS:

The interview process varies slightly from company to company. Usually, it is a 3 step process.

  1. A recruiter reaches out if there is a match and sets up a phone screener. This is not a technical round and it is just an opportunity for the recruiter to introduce the company, get to know your education background, availability, visa situation, and other general things.
  2. Once this is done the recruiter will send you an invite for a phone interview with the hiring manager/design manager and ask you for 2–3 blocks of time. This round would be technical and the interviewer is interested in your process. He/she can ask you to walk them through a project and also give you some behavioral questions to try to gauge how you handle difficult situations.
  3. Optional step: There can be a take-home design challenge where you will be given one or multiple design prompts. You will be given a deadline and instructions on deliverables and how to submit the final documents. Usually, you get anywhere from 3–7 days to complete this challenge.
  4. After this comes the final onsite round. You guessed it! The company will either invite you to their office or some provide reimbursement or fly you out if necessary for a full day of interviews. This interview will consist of multiple rounds 4–5 which is a mix of portfolio presentation, white-boarding, behavioral round and 1:1 and includes lunch with a designer/employee. The lunchtime is for you to relax to ward off stress and prepare for the rest of the sessions. Even with the lunch session, If you can be curious and get to know more about the company and the employee rather than just eat quietly. It will be a long stressful day so get a good night’s sleep and drink lots of water.

DO’S

  1. Be one step ahead of your interviewers. Early early and bring cables, dongles you will need, water bottle.
  2. Clear your desktop of all the clutter if any and only keep the files you need for presentation.
  3. Always get clear requirements from the recruiter about the presentation. Ask them questions about including gifs, images, and videos and follow their recommendations. The last thing you want is for the content to not work during your presentation.
  4. Proofread your presentation as much as possible. I can’t stress how important this is for everyone.
  5. Optional tip, if possible try to view your presentation in large 85” screens. You can use your classroom projectors for this and get a feel of how the slides will look.

DONT’S

  1. Refrain from having a conversation about compensation, benefits, etc during your interview. It is not helpful
  2. If you have previous design experience do not speak ill about that position or your manager.
  3. If you do not know the answer to the question don’t fake it. There is humility in accepting that you don’t know some things and are willing to give your best efforts to learn and grow.

ADVICE FROM OTHER ALUMNI:

  • If you do know something or are confused, vocalize it.
  • Be confident in yourself.
  • Opportunities will come if you focus on building the reputation of being a hard worker, knowledgeable UXer, and a good person.
  • Be memorable — Companies interview a large number of candidates per week, make sure you stand out.
  • Don’t let rejections bring you down! Take advantage, learn from it each experience and use it to do better.

SUMMARY:

  1. Connect with recruiters prior to applying to companies
  2. Check out your university’s career hub/portal for opportunities.
  3. Update your resume, LinkedIn, portfolio, cover letter, and any other social media handle.
  4. Be organized in your preparation. Use Evernote/dropbox/note-taking app for convenience and saving time. Clearly write about the project you want to talk so you can refer them while you speak in an interview.
  5. Be prepared for the interview by keeping your notes handy and preparing for all the possible questions
  6. Arrive early for the onsite round and be memorable since companies meet a lot of candidates regularly.

Finally, never give up and keep searching for your North Star ⭐️ one way or the other you are going to find it !!

P.S. Thank you again to my friends Connie and Jared for their valuable contributions

👋 This is my second article

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📭 Email manishagoenka88@gmail.com for design collaborations or just coffee

Manisha Goenka

Written by

Interaction Design @Intuitive | Tea Lover | Design Thinking Ninja | Regular at Megaformer | IG @creative_lamaa | The more I learn the less I think I know

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