Finding a new design role in the time of COVID
When I made the decision early this year to pursue a job change, I did not expect I would be doing so in the middle of a global pandemic that had sent all of us into lockdown and a state of seemingly endless uncertainty.
We’ve now been living through this pandemic for months, and more and more people, through choice or necessity, are searching for new jobs in an environment that is vastly different from what it was just a short time ago.
If you’re currently looking for a new job, my hope is something here will resonate, or be valuable for you. And if you’re a design leader growing your team, I hope this can shed some light on what the experience for a candidate is like, and how to foster a sense of trust and connection at a time when we’re all physically distant.
1. Fears COVID can spark in job seekers
My first instinct when the pandemic hit was to put my job search on hold. When it became clear we were not heading back to an office anytime soon, starting somewhere new felt like a huge gamble. I had a number of concerns telling me this was not the right time to change jobs:
- Building new relationships: Even the most exciting opportunity would mean leaving behind all the ways of working and trust I’d cultivated, and starting from scratch with a new team. This was now coupled with the knowledge I would have to do this entirely remotely, and without meeting anyone in person before starting a new job.
- Instability: In the midst of COVID every company was figuring out what a pandemic meant for their business and their current employees. Even if the business was stable, how were companies supporting workers as they went remote?
- Wisdom of the crowd: I frequently got reactions from friends along the lines of “It definitely seems like a good time to stay put right now.”
- Guilt: Finally, I had very real feelings of guilt. Guilt that I was fortunate enough to still be employed at this time when many people had lost their jobs during the shutdown.
Quarantine also provided an abundance of time for reflection. Yes, these were unprecedented times, but there would always be fears and unknowns associated with change. Ultimately, in the midst of a lot of sitting still, a career move felt like one of the few things I could act on, even if it was going to be different from what I had originally imagined.
2. Starting a job hunt during COVID times
Finding the right headspace.
Transitioning to working from home in quarantine has been hard because of the sudden lack of boundaries between a professional and living space — physically (often actually working from my bedroom) and mentally (learning how to connect or disconnect from work when there is no physical change).
Add job hunting to that and I was constantly coming in and out of a state of being “on” as I fit interviews into my already busy schedule. I started referring to this as “interview-brain” — helpful in the interview context, less so when I started speaking to a friend or loved one with an excessively solution-oriented energy.
Understanding your own needs.
During this time I paid attention to what new things I was looking for in these initial conversations with companies.
A crisp articulation of a company’s history and culture no longer had the same impact when so much had likely changed with everyone working remotely. Instead, I found myself drawn to conversations that acknowledged the hard truths of the situation we were in, and focuses on how teams were working to overcome barriers and preserve connection.
What I responded to was people meeting me in this place of uncertainty. It was hearing someone say “I started this job after we all went remote, and it was weird, but here’s how it’s going and what we’ve been trying!”
3. Interviewing without onsites
I previously placed a lot of value on the vibe of an office when interviewing. What was the energy like there? What kind of work was up on the walls? How were people engaging with each other? Could I picture myself coming to work there everyday?
I’ve never felt like my whole or best self over the phone (or through video conferencing), and an onsite was my chance to have all of the one-on-one chats, working sessions, and situations where I could bring my full self to the process. In the time of COVID, I felt so much would be lost without that opportunity.
However, I had a shift in perspective when I began remote interviews. I had still imagined a team sitting in an office together, while I would be remote. But of course the reality was that all of us called in from our various living rooms (and bedrooms and closets). I remembered we were all missing that office experience.
I no longer felt like a visitor to an established space, but rather one of many people navigating this new virtual status quo. This realization changed my frame of mind from being: “what do I need to move forward?” To: “if this is my team, what do they need from me right now?”
As is often the case, having someone else’s needs in mind started to make things easier.
4. Universal truths about Zoom
One of the first things I needed to do to adjust to the world of remote interviewing was to admit some universal truths about Zoom (or any conference tool).
- Everything feels longer and is harder to focus on. Presenting the most detailed end-to-end case study was not going to cut it in keeping people engaged.
- There are inevitable silences, no matter how well a presentation or meeting is going. No one can make eye contact with each other and intuit who has a question, or know when to speak (or sometimes not speak). The cadence of this is something we are clearly all still learning.
- It’s impossible to read the room. Presenters are now blind to body language, to the usual signs of engagement or confusion, and that is just something to navigate.
5. How job-seekers are adapting
Take a TL;DR approach to portfolio reviews.
My presentations got a lot more high-level and I got to my main points much faster. I knew from experience that the interview team would be tired by the end of the hour, so rather than building up to a solution over the length of a presentation, I wanted to get there quickly. I wanted to have people immediately understand what I thought was most relevant and then spend time on the journey and process.
Leave breadcrumbs of details to jump into if (and only if) it feels right.
I wanted to try to engage with people on the call through conversation and questions. Rather than pack every detail into my presentation, I built up an appendix I could pull from in the right context (maybe a fascinating user testing insight, a gnarly technical hurdle we worked through, a process improvement that came out of the project).
Prepare for silence.
While I hoped for conversation and questions from my interviews, sometimes the reality (particularly with a large group) was a lot of silence. I have fortunately given my fair share of remote trainings in the past, so this was familiar territory and I channeled that energy to keep things moving. I’d pause for questions often to give people the opportunity to speak up, assuming that 90% of the time there wouldn’t be any, then moved forward by answering a hypothetical question of my own.
6. Surprising realities of virtual meetings
Remote whiteboarding interviews were not terrible!
I was convinced having to conduct a remote design exercise would be the hardest aspect to recreate digitally. In-fact, these were the sessions I enjoyed most. There was no longer a formula for how to collaborate, as both parties were relatively new to the situation. Part of the interview itself ended it being figuring the exercise out together — would we jump into a Figma file? Would we sketch ideas on paper and Slack them back and forth? Were there other easily-accessible tools like slides, Miro, InVision, or Google docs, that we could use in communicating? The ambiguity here was so much more humanizing and representative of the ways we could really work together if we need to accomplish something.
7. Can we really get to know each other?
How would I be able to tell that these were people I wanted to work with and how would they be able to tell they wanted to work with me? I learned this question is where a company’s understanding of their remote culture really shone through (or didn’t).
Opportunities for social interaction.
One of the best examples of a company demonstrating remote culture was simply having a group lunch scheduled as part of my virtual onsite; a chance to connect with people on a purely human level as something that was built into the process of making this big decision.
The new normal.
I again looked for indications of a company’s willingness to lean into the new reality of a remote-first world. Things like: seeing people’s kids and pets on camera and having this be part of the cadence of the work day.
Extra effort.
It started to be more common for people to volunteer their emails or phone numbers for personal follow-ups as a way to help make up for some of the remote barriers.
Team interactions.
Just seeing how people interacted when they potentially saw each other for the first time in one of my interviews that day was telling. It was different from being in person, but it was still possible to read a team’s energy and certainly to get an indication of how everyone was handling remote work.
8. Reflection
Ultimately, through all of this, I was able to find a team at Gem that felt like just the right fit. Being able to finally reflect on the process has helped me organize what I learned, but of course the reality was that everything felt much messier at the time. So much of this is my own personal experience, but here is the advice I want to give:
Embrace the ambiguity.
While it can be unnerving, there is actually a lot of opportunity going into a job hunting situation that is less defined than it’s ever been.
For me, that meant I stopped trying to prepare “the perfect thing” and instead prepared to adapt to any situation. I let go of trying to create the perfect presentation, or demonstration of my design framework, and instead focused on giving myself a lot of options and letting myself adjust to the circumstances of each interview and conversation the best way I saw how. This meant I had no two conversations or presentations that were the same, and that was kind of refreshing.
It’s not you, video conferencing is exhausting.
There are a lot of theories as to why video conferencing can be so draining, but I’m sure most everyone has now experienced this first hand. Be kind to yourself and give yourself the time to process and recover even from short interviews, and understand that it is tiring for everyone. Build extra time into your process to reset.
Keep doing what you’re doing.
It can be frustrating to not get feedback on what did or didn’t go well, and tempting to want to reimagine everything and start from scratch. But it’s important to remember there are so many external factors that go into hiring decisions. It’s great to iterate and improve as you learn more about what remote interviewing entails, but essential to remember that the core of these interviews is just you showing up as your authentic self and presenting work you’re proud of.
You’ve got this!
I feel incredibly fortunate that I found a new role that I’m excited about and a team that’s putting a lot of energy into figuring out how to make this new version of work work.
And ultimately I did find the interviewing process during COVID to be more positive than I would have thought. But I want to end by acknowledging that all of this can be really hard. These are not normal times — and while there are ways we can meet challenges, create new opportunities, and grow — it’s certainly not easy. But I know you’ve got this, keep doing what you’re doing.
