UX designer transitioning from Brazil to Europe (Part 2): how did I go through the hiring processes
Part two, where I walk you through each step of the process and share my learnings along the way.
👉 Part 3 is already available!
In the first part, I gave you the big picture: after developing my whole career as a UX Designer in Brazil, I decided to relocate to Europe just a few months before the Coronavirus outbreak.
In this second part, I’ll guide through all the learnings that I got from several (remote) interviews, finally getting job offers in July of 2020.
This text is intended to show you a more practical side of things. The tips I give can be applied as well to in-person interviews, and are supposed to work when things are back to normal… but who knows what that means!
Before that, a few messages I'd like to reinforce.
It's a learning process
Going through this experience was a learning process, and I believe that the learnings itself were a positive outcome.
My main goal from the beginning was to get an offer, as early as possible, no doubt about it. So why in the world would I value "lessons learned" other than that?
1. Because it shows you some progress
This is something I've heard a lot from design peers moving from Brazil to other countries:
You eventually get better on interviews and hiring processes.
Because yes, you have to tell about who you are, in a language you're not used to, and persuade people about your value. The hard part is that you have to show up for several interviews and it might end on a rejection more times than you wanted.
The fulfilling part is that — if you stick to the game — you'll see yourself going further each time. You'll nail it! And it will be rewarding.
2. Because this might be the only thing you'll have for a while
Especially during the pandemic, where many companies (as of September 2020) are still in doubt about hiring, you might see yourself working hard for getting a job and finding that this was in vain.
To me, it wasn't. I can't count how many times I updated my portfolio (more cases, better descriptions, etc.), or did a specific preparation for a job interview, got rejected, and the next minute I was using the same improved material.
I don’t want to push too hard on Pollyanna’s side of things, but I really believe you can use this knowledge in your work as a designer, for instance, helping your team to hire other people or presenting your work better.
The different steps and "vibes" of a hiring process
There's a certain flow while hiring designers. I've been on both sides, as a candidate, and as a hiring manager. Most of the processes I went through or that I helped to promote were like this:
- Application
- A screening interview with HR
- Interview with the manager
- Portfolio walkthrough
- Design exercise
- Final interview(s)
- Offer
It makes sense to be like this, although sometimes processes can take too long — and it feels even worse when you add long breaks between interviews.
Some processes might have a slightly different form, with stages being merged into one (for instance, Interview with the manager merged with Portfolio walkthrough, or Design exercise embedded into Final interviews) or changing the order (Design exercise as the first step… please don't do that!). There's always room for improvement and experimentation!
A message for non-experienced or entry-level folks
If you’re starting your career as a UX Designer or other related roles, you might be asking yourself: where do I fit in? Are those tips also applicable to me?
I'd say, yes. Although companies, in general, are looking mostly for experienced designers, it's most likely for them to do a "copy+paste" from what they're used to. Also, because you can adapt those steps to any level. Pro-tip: run if asked to showcase 5 projects in the portfolio for a junior position!
Now, let’s dig into the challenges of each step and how to be prepared.
1. Application
If getting a job is your greatest and most important goal — as I believe it must be! — then getting the first interview is "the" opening door for that.
There are some ways to get this first chance to chat: 1) applying directly to a position that's open, 2) being referred by an employee to that position, 3) getting to know recruiters in a company's event (ex: meetup) and talking about the specific role, 4) making an unsolicited application for a job that's not open yet. 5) …
For the purpose of this text, let's focus on the first and second.
👉 Applying directly to a position that’s open
Getting noticed at this moment can be challenging because generally, it will depend on these four artifacts: Cover Letter, Resume, LinkedIn profile, and Portfolio.
Cover Letter
Is where you write about your motivations for applying to that company and to that particular role. When I asked a recruiter (you can do that too) how a cover letter should look like, she said that:
For me it is important that it is easily readable, not too long and fuzzy*, that it states why you want to apply and why in particular for this role.
* Fuzzy: difficult to perceive clearly or understand and explain precisely.
When talking about your past experience, accordingly to a text on how to write a well crafted Cover Letter and echoed by this other (both very instructive), you need to:
Explain how you made impact and how it relates to the position.
This is also valid for any other following moment of the process: find what's important in your experience that might help the recruiting company to connect it to their needs. How will your past experiences help them achieve what they are trying to achieve? And before you ask: yes, the best companies will also look at how they can best help you to achieve your career goals.
Resume
Your Resume or CV will be the medium through which companies get to know your past experience, supported by your LinkedIn Profile. As this article defines more precisely:
The goal of a CV is to showcase your experience, key skills and which technical skills you bring to the role.
I would add also that recruiters are craving for the impact of your work as a designer, so try the best you can to describe it.
When writing about each experience, remember to focus on impact & not grunt. For example, instead of saying ‘Designed X for Y’ say ‘Accomplished X by implementing Y, which led to Z’.
Check this excerpt above and other tips like how to visually structure your Resume etc.
LinkedIn profile
Your LinkedIn profile is directly related to your Resume. They share the same goal of showcasing your experience and accomplishments. The main difference I see: LinkedIn allows rich media to be associated with your profile more easily, besides allowing you to eventually exchange messages with recruiters and people from the company you're applying to.
Some people might also look at it with more attention than your Resume, so you better keep both updated.
The best resource I found for optimizing my LinkedIn profile was an online course called Rock Your LinkedIn Profile. It's listed on LinkedIn Learning, which can be accessed only with a premium account (but there's a 30-day free trial). There are plenty of tips on how to choose a profile photo, headline, skills, etc. but the most remarking tips are related to the:
- "About" section: she recommends that you structure it in paragraphs derived from the questions a) Who are you? Two or three sentences that summarize who are you as a professional, b) What do you do? Your magic, c) Why does your work matter? The difference it makes in the world, and d) What's the contribution or impact you're making? Your mission or purpose.
- "Experience" section: while talking about each of previous or current job, the structure she recommends starts with a) some context about the company, especially if it's not a well-known one, b) bullet points with what you did in your job (ex: redesigned the onboarding process for a restaurant app — most of the profiles stop here) and the impact of your work (ex: …which brought an increase on user engagement by x%).
Portfolio
And finally, the portfolio, which is undoubtfully the thing that will take most of your time.
The text 5 Ways to Improve Your Design Portfolio Today helped me with two things:
- Working on the word count: since many Portfolios are too lengthy (he talks about and an average of 1.300 words per case), they usually go unnoticed. Working on that can be a design exercise itself! I did and it paid off.
- Getting crucial things answered: questions like "What is the human problem you’re solving? What was the actual outcome of this work? What is one example of how this started out more complex and you simplified it over time?", to quote a few. They can bee addressed briefly here and will certainly pop up later in the Portfolio walkthrough. (More questions here)
Regarding the structure of each case, it took me some time to get it right. I tried the recommendation from the author above (problem, solution, prototype, and outcome), but it didn't work well for me.
After some mentoring with my friend Carlos Rosemberg, he recommended this structure, which I found to be great both for the online Portfolio as for presenting it with more depth:
- Context: What was the problem at hand, the background for the project, or a given business goal?
- Approach: What did you do as a designer? How did you add value to the team?
- Results and/or Lessons Learned: What was the impact of your work? What did you learn (especially if the project is not finished yet and you can't measure it)?
Lu Terceiro leads a great project called Project Portfolio Canvas, which helps people to document their projects in a very structured and intuitive way from this template.
And finally, there's also a piece of good advice in this podcast from Jared M. Spool who emphasizes the importance of telling about the parts of the project that were particularly challenging, or about what sets you apart from the crowd:
I think the biggest advice is to always be yourself. (…) The number one critique that I have these days, people always show me their portfolios. They show me their resumes and I read through this stuff and I think to myself this is good stuff, but I don’t see you here. (…) What was hard and how did you overcome that? How did you get this result? Help me understand what you learned in that process. (…) That’s what I’ve learned the hiring managers want to see. (…) How did you navigate your way out of not knowing at all what the hell you were supposed to be doing.
👉 Being referred by an employee
Another path to get yourself noticed is being referred by and employee. It might be of some help if the company gets hundreds of applications.
Being referred shows you have a strong network, or you're building one. If you don't know anyone from the company, there is an approach that can help, which is introducing yourself to someone who works there. It goes more or less like that:
- Go to the company's LinkedIn page and then to the list of its employees.
- If you got connections that work there, great! If not, try to find people with some affinity (ex: UX designers, people with shared connections, people from your hometown…)
- Connect to the person and ask her/him about working at the company, the challenges, etc. to really build a relationship.
- Eventually, ask if she/he would recommend you for a specific role.
Even when being referred, most of the time the company will decide to move forward based on your Portfolio and Resume. And while it means that you got some (special) attention, proving your value from this moment on is entirely on yourself.
2. A screening interview with HR
The first interview takes around 20-30 minutes. It's designed to be a quick chat. Some questions might even be included in the application form (more on this), in order to invest time in what really matters, which is knowing the candidate or the other way around. The main questions that will arise are:
- Who are you? A quick introduction about yourself as a professional.
- Why are interested in the position, and working for the company? Your motivations. Showing your excitement at this moment (if that's true) doesn't hurt at all! :)
- What makes you a good fit for the job? Similar jobs or experiences you had in the past.
- What's your availability? When you can start.
- What are your salary expectations?
- Do you have any questions for us? This final question will be present in all interviews. It's a space for you to validate if this company will make you happy as a Designer.
The best you can do to prepare for this screening interview is getting to know about the company, its services, its segment, etc. The most specific you get about the role, the better. Companies are looking for a good match from the start, so should you as a candidate.
3. Interview with the manager
Once someone from the hiring team understood you can be a good match, she/he will schedule an interview with the manager/lead for that position. This interview can happen in conjunction with the Portfolio walkthrough, and sometimes someone else from the design team can be involved.
As I understand it, it's an extension of the previous step, with more depth. You'll certainly get questions about previous experiences that are related to the role you applied for. Both hard and soft skills are assessed. The interviewer(s) can have a sense of how you communicate through the interview itself.
As companies want to get more specific each time and get to know how you talk about your work, it generally leads to a formal presentation of your cases, which is the next step.
4. Portfolio walkthrough
This step can involve anyone from the team who (hopefully) knows what the company is looking for in the candidate's previous experiences. The interview can take from 1 to 1,5 hours.
Candidates are expected to present their work in a structured way, but preparation might differ from one process to another. Here are some cases I went through:
- Presenting one to three cases with a slide deck
- Using the same slide deck but only as a starting point, where I also shared my screen to show some files (a board, a report, a photo…) and the conversation was more focused on my thought process, and the decisions I've made
Bonus points if you can demonstrate how you interacted with (multidisciplinary, agile) teams. As this can be difficult to show in your online portfolio, this interview is a great opportunity.
5. Design exercise
Very, very personal note: If you went through some design exercises, design challenges, or take-home exercises — I did, a lot— you can get a bit emotional about the subject. These emotions often being frustration, when not rage. I'll get back in a moment about this.
Design exercises are intended to test skills like framing a problem, planning and/or executing some form of user research, designing interfaces, presenting your work…
Generally, it comes in the form of an open brief describing a problem, often related to the problem that the company's product already is trying to solve. The company suggests a time frame for you to invest (4 to 8 hours), and in the end, you deliver a file with your proposition (PDF). Sometimes you have the chance to present it, sometimes they judge the file alone. This presentation takes more or less 30 minutes.
Another form of design exercise is the "whiteboard challenge". As the above-mentioned take-home tests, this exercise is meant mostly to see how you think, how you organize your ideas, prioritize them, and interact with other people from the "team". It is performed live (remotely these days), and it usually doesn't take more than 2 hours. The output is some sketches and sticky notes representing your thoughts visually. If you want references, there is a great article on how to evaluate a designer with a design exercise and another with a list of 17 exercises that even became a book.
As I said, I did a lot of these tests, especially the ones with a take-home exercise. When I was recruiting designers, I applied and reviewed dozens of them. From my experience, the take-home challenge has the same problems that were pointed out in this text regarding Portfolios: they can be painful and don't show what you need to know, as a recruiting team.
Here is the kind of feedback I’ve got after spending a whole weekend and submitting a test to a company:
We’re not moving ahead. The test assignment that you have completed didn’t solve the problem. I hope we can stay in touch for future opportunities.
Simple like that. 😡
In a given moment, I stopped accepting the take-home tests, and I even formulated an answer looked like this:
Dear recruiting team,
Thanks for sending me the instructions, but after giving some thought about the subject "design challenges", I decided not to pursue with the test you proposed.
I know this might have consequences in the hiring process, and I’m open to discussing both the reasons why I’m refraining from doing it, and what are the alternatives I can offer if you’re open to hearing.
Why not?
In general, the main reason comes from doing a few tests and not getting a single line of feedback from companies, apart from them saying it wasn’t what they were expecting.
In more detail, I don’t want to do practical, take-home, challenges anymore because:
1) They take a time that could be used to generate real value for companies I work for, or in any other activities where I have to dive deep these days
2) There’s not enough contextual information for you to work. You don’t know the user, the team, or the real limitations of working within this product. (this one leads to a proposition, next)
What can I propose as alternatives?
1) I once did a test where the company asked me to walk them through a product of my choice, and talk about what worked and what didn’t, in my analysis. They called it a Design Investigation. Again, the context is still missing here, but It didn’t require heavy preparation and I was able to show how I think as a designer, what do I care most…
2) I’ve done take-home tests before. Although they have the problems I mentioned, I can present the output to you, in order to show my thinking process. For my actual work process, I’ll be happy to walk you through my Portfolio.
I hope you understand my points and we can get to a settlement here. We can set a new call to talk about it.
There are other issues I could eventually add to the “Why not?” part, but let’s leave to another day 😄. The most interesting is the reactions that I eventually got from 4 or 5 different companies I refused to do the test.
Startup-ish, cool companies argued that "they needed to provide a standard process for their candidates", meaning that they couldn't compromise on a process they themselves defined. On the other hand, a large and traditional bank surprisingly adapted to one of my propositions, even though this "caused some turbulence" (in the manager words). A round of applause for them! 👏
To end this section on a positive note, regarding "What can I propose as alternatives?", I believe the whiteboard challenge is what works best because they have a limited time-frame and they don't ask for any special preparation. Better still if it's not related to the company's problem space, this way interviewers won't be so biased or won't have an "advantage" over the candidate.
6. Final interview(s)
Ah, the final interviews! The mixed feeling of having accomplished something great, but at the same nervous about what is coming ahead. As a recruiter gently put to me, probably to help me relaxing and avoiding eventual frustration from a negative outcome:
You have come really far in this recruitment process and this is a huge accomplishment, so be proud of yourself!
Some companies would fly you to their headquarters for on-site interviews. You’d get to know the space, sometimes lunch with people from your potential new team. But this was before COVID-19.
Anyway, the format of multiple interviews on the same day was kept, some including a whiteboard challenge. It can be from 4 to 6 interviews, 1 hour each, with one or two interviewers at each session. It's very intense but once you finished, it's a relief and a joy! 😊
The most important thing the company wants to validate here is the cultural fit. Will you be productive within this organization? They assess that through behavioral questions, those which come often in the form of "Tell me a time when you…[insert a situation here]".
The best way to prepare is by reflecting on relevant situations that you underwent in your life and structure it using the STAR technique. It's an acronym for a Situation in which you found yourself, a Task or a Goal you needed to perform, an Action you took as an individual (not as a team), and the actual Result you got.
Some companies have their values or principles published on their careers page, it’s worth taking a look. Situations will be linked to each of the values, or to specific things the role demands.
My tip on how to prepare for these behavioral questions: think as many situations as you can in that format (STAR) and pull them as needed during the interviews.
7. Offer
The time will come when you get an offer! Luckily, more than one. That's the best time for you to:
- Analyze whether the company is offering you a fair compensation package and negotiate
- Think about what might be the best career move (between two or more offers, or staying in your current job, or whatever matters to you)
- Enjoy the moment! 🎉
Application funnel, or… "don't take it personally"
It might be frustrating to hear this — and maybe your experience will be different — but in many cases, the proportion for each stage of the process can be something like:
- Application: 100%
- A screening interview with HR: 20–25%
- Interview with the manager: 12–15%
- Portfolio walkthrough: 8–10%
- Design exercise (or investigation): 6–5%
- Final interview(s): 3–4%
- Offer: 1–2%
As one person mentioned in a conversation between Brazilian designers already settled in Europe:
I think the average “conversion” is really low… for me it was something like: I applied to 100, got interviewed at 15, went to finals on 5, and I had 1 or 2 to chose. Don’t feel bad about rejection, it’s (almost) never personal.
These are approximated numbers based on our experiences and also from a few people that I know. This can change drastically depending on where you are. Applying locally might increase conversion significantly. As I mentioned in the first part, apart from being Brazilian, I’m also a German citizen. When my wife and I decided moving to Germany, with our 7-years-old daughter, this helped to boost the number of companies interested in my profile and eventually willing to make an offer.
Other things like past experience can influence the conversion too (for instance: if you worked for a multinational company or a Unicorn).
What happened in the end?
I applied for more than a hundred jobs. There are friends who applied for just a dozen. And there are people who weren’t even looking, were contacted directly by a company and eventually got hired. Who knows how your story will look like, what role lucky will play, but it won't hurt being prepared to work even before earning your first salary.
I'm in Berlin at this moment, settling with my family (I was in Munich before) and excited to start my new job in a few days. Between multiple offers, I chose one in Germany — between 2 other countries in Europe — and the company whose challenge most resonated with me at this moment.
It's just the beginning of a whole other story that I'll eventually share with you.
This series is about my experience moving from Porto Alegre, Brazil to Berlin, Germany. I hope this text and the other ones will help you, UX Designers, Product Designers, UX Researchers, UI Designers, and other roles in the tech industry to find your way relocating to Europe, or elsewhere.
Feel free to talk about your experience commenting on this text or getting in touch with me.
