Be a BuzzFeed Product Design Intern in 2021
Woah, it’s already that time of year to decide where you’ll intern! This is a hard decision, and especially after an exhausting and unpredictable year. How can you make sure you get the experience you need, learn a lot, and have an impact? Should you intern at an established company or a startup?
Product Design at BuzzFeed offers opportunities to learn and grow, with the benefits of working in an industry-leading company and a startup, at the same time! You’ll work on a fast-moving product team that values your ideas, and collaborate with them on projects that have a positive impact on millions of people.
As part of the product design team, you’ll also be:
- Regularly presenting work and receiving feedback
- Working with a design mentor
- Brainstorming solutions with other designers
- Collaborating with people from Product, Engineering, Data Science, and other teams
Apply to BuzzFeed’s Product Design Internship
Although this year’s internship will be remote, you won’t be alone! You’ll get to meet and work with interns across BuzzFeed. We’ve learned a lot about working remotely this year, so you’ll still experience the excitement and collaborative spirit we have in-office.
We’re hoping 2021 is a big comeback year, and we want you to have an internship to remember. We’re planning some exciting remote events and surprises to make your internship even better.
The Hiring Process
1. Application Review
We will be reviewing applications as we receive them. We’ll be evaluating you based on similar criteria we look for in Associate Product Designers. Once we’ve shortlisted potential candidates, we’ll reach out with interview requests. For this internship, we’re only considering Product Designers because the role requires having demonstrated User Interface and User Experience work for digital products.
2. Teamwork & Collaboration Interview
Our initial conversation will last about 45 minutes and will focus on getting to know you, seeing how you collaborate and work with others, and understanding your skillset. We’ll ask you about your experience collaborating with other disciplines, like engineers, data scientists, and product managers. If you haven’t worked with these disciplines before, tell us about how you’ve worked in a team.
We’ll also tell you about the product design team, and what it’s like to be on a team at BuzzFeed. This conversation will happen with a BuzzFeed product designer over video chat.
3. Portfolio Review
For those who are successful in their first interview, you’ll have another 45-minute conversation with a member of the product design team over video chat. We’ll ask you to walk us through 2–3 projects that you’ve worked on in the past.
We want to see not only the final product but also the messy parts of the process. What did you try that didn’t work? What variations did you come up with before narrowing it down to the final design? What parts of the work generated friction or disagreement with your team or other stakeholders? Did you run experiments? If so, what did you learn?
These projects can be from school, past internships, or self-initiated. Don’t worry if you didn’t have teammates or stakeholders on your projects, that’s ok, we’re most interested in understanding your design and communication skills.
4. Finalizing candidates
Following these interviews, we will regroup to compare notes and finalize the most well-suited candidates. Once we find a good fit, we’ll send out offers!
Whether you get an offer or not, you’ll hear back from us to let you know we’ve reached the end of our process.
Currently, we’re accepting Product Design Intern applications for Summer 2021. If you can see the link below, you can still apply! Applying early is recommended as we will close the process when we find the best fit.
Thanks to Suleiman Ali Shakir for co-writing this article with me!
