Moving to Paris as a Product Designer
If you’re not a traveler or adventurous explorer by nature, moving to a different country for a job might not be the easiest thing to do. However, I did just that a few months back.
Why change?
I’m from Slovakia and spent basically all my life in this nice little European country. When InHiro — a startup I helped build as product designer and co-founder — folded in early 2018, I took it as an opportunity to find a new challenge abroad. I spent 5 years with my own company, and letting go of it was super hard. A move abroad was also about “reinventing” myself as a designer — rediscovering joy of creating stuff, rather than worrying whether we survive another month as a company.
Looking for a new challenge
I was already interested in France and especially Paris, but here’s the thing — I don’t speak French. (You might think that in this cool new startup world, you only ever need to speak English and it should be fine, right? Right?? Wrong. Most of the companies still want French speakers to join their teams.) That’s why I only browsed opportunities actually written in English and — “hey! I know this logo!” … While browsing job ads for product designers, I stumbled upon a familiar one — that of Algolia. I knew it because we considered using Algolia’s solution to power our startup’s search engine.
And let me tell you, the job ad looked great. It was the right mixture of startup culture, interesting mission, and maturity of a company — I didn’t want to join a startup of 5 people once again. It also wasn’t too corporate (not my thing). To confirm that the position was suitable for non-French speakers, I reached out to Thomas Nivol, senior talent acquisition manager at Algolia, through LinkedIn. He invited me to simply apply for the position. Then everything went pretty quickly, even though it was late August and most of France basically shuts down in those weeks (seriously, don’t plan your job hunting for summer). After several interviews, I got an offer which I happily accepted.
Moving to France
Honestly, I thought moving to France would be somewhat easier.
However, Algolia has a great relocation package and offers assistance with finding an apartment, dealing with all the paperwork, setting up a bank account, signing up for health insurance and social security… and all the boring (but important) stuff. The company’s assistance started even before I actually joined, and made the transfer much easier. I was not the first foreigner to join the company, so integrating a new expat can also be seen as a team effort — my new colleagues turned out to be super kind and helpful during my first days (and ever since).
It just makes you feel good about the choice you’ve made, it’s much better to come to new work (in a new city, in a new country) when you feel welcome!
Product Design at Algolia
Currently, there’s 4 product designers at Algolia. Each of us is part of a different squad — we help design different features of Algolia’s search solution. For my first few months, I was assigned to the e-commerce team. I am in team responsible for building our extensions for Shopify and Magento e-commerce platforms.
This meant a shift in how I work as a designer. Both Shopify and Magento have their own design systems, so creativity (in terms of UI) is not really part of my job anymore. I focus mostly on improving the UX and user flows.
Being the only designer with the e-commerce squad also meant that I took upon user research. It’s important for the team to know our customers, and even if research is not my strongest point, each filled out survey or customer interview brings us closer to making better solutions.
Outside my squad daily tasks, I take part in other designer activities: we run Intros to Design Thinking, UX office hours or lead Design Studio workshops.
I feel all these responsibilities help me become a better designer in a friendly environment that is bigger and more mature than that in Slovakia.
Considering a move yourself? These 3 points helped me:
- Mindset: Even though it’s not something you do every day, I tried not to take it too seriously. I took the move as an adventure and opportunity to learn new things, and I could always return to my home country.
- Workplace expectations: It’s not only about the money. Try to find a company that makes you feel good — it’s going to have big impact on your first days and weeks. I knew I didn’t want to join a tiny startup, but not a huge corporation either. Algolia already has some maturity, and they also had experience hiring and integrating foreigners.
- Personal growth goals: I chose a place that I knew would help me grow as designer. I joined a company with experienced managers and awesome peer designers. It was also important for me to choose a company with a product that makes sense (in other words, I like working for a company that tackles search rather than a startup that works on yet another chat app based on emojis. Even though it might be good business too.)
What’s next?
Don’t get me wrong, I love Slovakia and it wasn’t like I needed to run away. It was more about experiencing something new, learning, and finding out “what else is out there”. So far, the move has proven to be totally worth it. I enjoy my work and life in Paris. Thanks to all the talent and company growth, I feel I can grow here as a designer too. And hopefully learn some French along the way.
We’re currently hiring Product Designers and also Head of Product Design at Algolia. Please feel free to reach out to find out more about the positions!
