6 tips to prepare for a design interview process
Designers often reach out to me with questions about preparing for a hiring process. I’ve decided to write this article and share 6 of the most essential tips that I think everyone should consider. Some of these are general and apply to any hiring process, whereas others are more specific to the Docplanner recruiting process.
- You have 3 minutes to impress;
- It’s not about being the best designer;
- Avoid the bla bla bla and provide examples;
- Don’t exaggerate your skills;
- Prepare for the whiteboard hell;
- Never stop looking for a job.
1. You have 3 minutes to impress
Applying for a job in a medium or large company requires you to consider that you are not the only applicant. You should expect your application review to last no longer than three minutes (resume and portfolio). Although I made up this number 😁, hiring managers are swamped with hundreds of applications, so you can’t expect them to spend more than a couple of minutes reviewing your application. It’s just not possible.
Therefore, you should prepare your resume and portfolio accordingly. Having a resume 3 pages long or a portfolio packed with content, it’s not the most effective way to pass an application review. If your resume or portfolio can’t impress in a couple of minutes, you won’t pass.
Resume
A resume should be one page only, super clean, well structured, and easy to scan (I say scan instead of reading). Don’t write all about yourself there, keep it brief and focus on the most relevant information. The purpose of it is to give the reader a sense of who you are and what you’ve been doing. Check out my current resume template and use it if you like. And yes, it has a profile picture on it. Not all will agree on this but I find it a pleasant touch to make the cold PDF a bit more warm and human.
Portfolio
A portfolio is probably the most important tool for designers to showcase work. I always suggest building a portfolio as a website. Framer, Webflow, and even Notion can be used to build your portfolio without writing any code. It doesn’t matter what tool you use, what’s important is that your portfolio accomplishes its purpose of providing easy access to your work. Here are 3 examples of great portfolio websites:
People often wonder what to do if they are brand new and have no case studies to showcase. Creating case studies doesn’t require work experience. I always recommend finding a digital app, (it doesn’t need to be popular), check the user reviews to see if there are any problems/opportunities and work on a solution. There you have it, your case study.
2. It’s not about being the best designer
There are a lot of junior designers who think the hiring process is a competition where the best one wins. Most of the time, it’s not like that. When there is an open position, we are not looking for the best designer in the world, but rather for someone who can cover a specific need.
You might think that adding a job description to the career page is what counts as opening a position, but that’s not the case. Before opening a position, the hiring managers spend a lot of time determining which design skills the product team needs, what level of experience, what attributes work best with that team, what other soft skills are essential, etc. Keeping a balance between the skills of the design team is also key, and we need to keep that in mind.
Again, it’s not about being the best designer, it’s about being the right designer for the job. It is for this reason that interviews are conducted, to ensure that you possess all the requirements for the position. Ask always the hiring manager what the main skills are to be successful in the position and then make sure that you focus more on those during the interviews.
3. Avoid the bla bla bla and provide examples
You may fall into the trap of thinking that you are proving your knowledge by just talking. Most of the time, it’s just something that hurts you more than it helps. I mentioned above that the hiring manager has a list of requirements for the position, and at the end of the interview he/she needs to know if you can meet them all. If he/she has still some doubts when the time is over, you most likely won’t move on. There usually is no extra time.
Articulate your answers, but be concise and to the point. Using examples from your experience is a very effective strategy to show your expertise in a short amount of time. It’s easy to say, “I work with data”, but what does it mean to you? How can you prove that? What examples can you provide? Don’t wait for the interviewer, providing examples is the strongest way to show that you know what you are talking about.
Also, I recommend always asking the hiring manager at the end of the interview if there are still unclear topics that you could try to clarify. It may seem small, but it could increase your likelihood of passing.
4. Don’t exaggerate your skills
Perhaps the tendency to exaggerate on the resume or portfolio is due to some crazy job descriptions and ridiculous skill requirements that some companies post online. But it’s something that won’t help you.
If you are lucky and pass the application review then you will be easily caught in the technical interview. It’s common to talk about the experiences you listed on your resume or to discuss a case study you have in your portfolio at the beginning of the interview. It’s effortless to find out if you exaggerate on your application and that is not going to look good as no one wants to work with liars.
It’s okay to acknowledge that you don’t have experience with something. It shows that you know your current limits and you are willing to improve. No one is expecting you to meet all the job requirements at 100% and almost always, the right learning attitude can overcome any lack of experience.
5. Prepare for the whiteboard hell
Nowadays, many companies use the whiteboard challenge as part of their hiring process. Also at Docplanner, we do. Preparation and practice are important to be able to perform this step well.
The whiteboard challenge is a design thinking exercise to understand how you approach a problem and work with others as a designer. Your performance during the whiteboard challenge shows what your thinking process looks like and how you’ll work with the team. That’s what the interviewer is looking for.
The number of ideas you come up with or the beauty of your drawings doesn’t matter, it’s about taking the lead in the process, collaborating with the interviewers, and showing them what it’s like to work with you. I always recommend practising with it and having a structured process to follow. You won’t be able to figure it out during the interview because the stress will make your thinking confused.
Also, the interviewer is not trying to pick on you when she/he asks a question. She/he is just trying to understand your thinking process. So listen and iterate based on the feedback, and set yourself in a collaborative mode, not in a defensive mode.
The web is full of good resources you can use to prepare for it. If you are interested to learn more and practice the whiteboard challenge I will suggest you read: Solving Product Design Exercises: Questions & Answers by Artiom Dashinsky.
6. Never stop looking for a job
Performing well in a hiring process is a skill that needs to be cultivated, you cannot just forget about it when you get a job, even if you think that it’s the job of your life. The world changes quickly and want it or not, you will find yourself thinking about new challenges at some point or you will be affected by layoffs during economic depressions.
I always suggest (even to my team) to apply to other job opportunities from time to time, just to keep you in the game. It forces you to update your portfolio, and keep your skill at a good level, but also it helps you reconnect with the market, check the salaries, see how the hiring process is changing and connect with people from other companies.
