Making Sense of ‘UX Designer’ Interview Process in the Bay Area

Interviewing for a job is similar to dating: you go on multiple dates with the hopes of finding the right match. This process can be quiet daunting, but you live through this frustration even if your dates don’t always turn out the way you wanted. Even if you don’t get to date, you survive through this phase.

I started to interview a few months back for the position of Principal UX in San Francisco with the thought that San Francisco is a city full of creative designers and seemingly has tons of UX job opportunities. This being the case, getting a job here shouldn’t be hard, given my relevant years of experience.

Dating is fine until you start realizing that it is more of a game that you may never have a chance to win. This interviewing experience has been extremely frustrating, and yet humbling. It has definitely taught me a lot and has kept me fighting for survival. As they say ‘survival of the fittest,’ right?

I thought I would share my experiences with people who are in the same shoes as I found myself in so that you can keep your head held high and keep fighting (aka: learning) till the end. Below are some of the bigger hurdles that I experienced as I marched forward to land my dream job at Arimo.

Working in San Francisco vs. the Rest of Peninsula
I live in San Francisco so, hell yeah, I wanted a job in the city. Who really wants to take a hike all the way to South Bay? Right?

I am categorizing the 2 types of interviews that I experienced: Inside San Francisco and outside San Francisco (Note: I am not even taking into account the number of recruiters or random HR people who reached out to me)
I directly applied to a total of 54 companies in the City of San Francisco, out of which 11 expressed interest and was subsequently interviewed by 9 of those companies.
I applied to 5 companies outside San Francisco. All 5 expressed a lot of interest in my experience and skills and I was interviewed by all 5 (so do the math on that).

Since there are tons of designers in San Francisco, companies have become super impatient and inadequately prepare for the interview process. They judge you by your books, your looks, and they will tell you to your face that there are lots of other cooks. They will tell you this, and reject you, even though you match all their expectations (side note: this is an actual email I received from one of the companies after 3 rounds of interviews). As I was going through this process, it seemed to me like there is a rejection-flu going on in the city. One of my friends told me that even after a great interview, I shouldn’t be surprised that I may be rejected. It could be that they are just ‘playing interview’ to either brainstorm new ideas in a more cost-effective manner or they perhaps already have a person in mind and are just going through the motions in case someone happens to be a little better.

My brain is too small to figure out what it takes to be a designer in San Francisco. Is it Race? Culture? Age? The ability to have impossibly high energy at all times? Salary? School you came from? What you wear? Too much facial hair? Lack of facial hair? What accomplishments you have? Who are your referrals? Or is it perhaps some combination of them all?

At the end of the day, in my opinion I have realized that considerations like the kind of company, the work, the team members, the corporate culture, and the career future you are looking for, are much more important considerations to think about and are what should take priority over distance and/or an elite status in the short term. You have to keep pressing the reset button on your expectations.

Placement Agencies vs. Job Sites
I have received 307 emails from various placement agencies in the last quarter alone and 90% of those have been along the lines of: “We have come across your profile and you seem to have great experience in Java…”. To give an example: I was in a meeting once and my phone kept vibrating continuously. Later on, I checked these messages and discovered that 11 different recruiters had called for the same part-time requirement for a UI developer.

On the other hand, I experienced the recruiters that I reached out to were calling me excitedly, which raised my hopes that they have finally found me and would soon introduce me to my dream job (a job that would obviously match all my exact expectations and would be a great fit for my future career goals). After submitting my resume, they would come back with feedback responses like:

“Oh, I received feedback, you seem to be more of a researcher than a designer. Could you modify your profile so that I can tell them that you are a designer?”
OR
“I don’t think he does visual design (does he?), because here we do everything!”
OR
No response at all.
In some cases, the recruiters went so far as to ask me to travel to their offices before they submit my resume, just so that they can see me in person. This is great, but going in and answering the same questions all over again in person (which I previously had done over the phone), does not make sense. A Skype call would be a more logical use of everybody’s time.

I would suggest reaching out to recruiters who specialize in UX placements and understand better the work that you do professionally. Also, Indeed.com is a big job-searching asset as I had the largest number of responses through them and I successfully found my current job through Indeed.com.

Startups vs. Established Players
It appears that most of the jobs in the city are either startups with fancy offices and free lunch’s and a coffee connoisseur or established companies with big brand names (which also have similar perks), but who also has the added benefit of the brand name itself.

My experience getting an initial phone interview with startups was extremely easy. Their in-person interviews are what became ridiculous. First, they invite you onsite and send you your scheduled agenda for the day which is a ridiculously long list of people you are expected to talk to (in some instances, up to 14 people). You, enter the office and you are wowed by their fancy interiors, organic free lunches, their onsite coffee brew master (who makes you, your double shot, 1 pump, hazelnut hemp milk latte using organic beans). Your first impression is “I can get used to this…”. Then, as you start interviewing you start analyzing if you can “fit-in” to the culture there. You start seeing cultural gaps (how multicultural is the office?), age gaps (Can I carry a Prada overcoat with Warby-Parker eyeglasses over a pair of Pajamas?), office lingo (can I speak like a ‘Cal-girl’ or a ‘bro-dude’?), and you see the need to wear multiple hats (ie: would I be able to answer my engineering counter-part, who may ask if I had developed the UI screen for the dashboard while simultaneously conducting design reviews and also working on the visual designs that would be required as well?).

In my experiences with these start-ups, the kind of people who were interviewing me were often non-UX folks and in several cases, they laid out a checklist of what they can’t currently do and what they expected me to do if I were to join them. In some cases, they needed a magician who could come in and raise the magic wand to make something look beautiful. In some other cases, they wanted me to “brainstorm” with them about how I could improve some of the features they were already working on. When I asked them if they did any kind of user research to back up their current course, they would inquire what that was or would say something like: “We would never have budget for user research.”. They would also often say things like “Can we be the users?” Given questions like these, it’s no wonder that one of the main reason’s startups, who spend lots of money on fancy offices but have absolutely no budget for research tend to run out of money quickly, fail too fast, or have unusable products.

And then we have the big established names, which oftentimes don’t even bother to send a reply back saying “thank you for applying, we will review your application and get back to you”. I have often wondered what their selection criteria is? Who are these people who work there? How are they different than me? How did they end up there in the first place? I didn’t have much experience with them in San Francisco, but did have some experience with a few in South Bay. Those whom I had interviewed with felt they were more of a specialist acting like a generalist (I cover that below). They act as if they are an innovation hub, but we never see any innovation coming from those teams and companies. They live in a delusionary bubble of creative space.

I would recommend, you need to clarify what you are looking for as early in the process as possible. Soon after interviewing, I quickly realized that for many start-ups that I am not a start-up ‘wanna-be.’ I discovered that I would rather be in a place where I can express myself truly as a designer while striving to make a difference, even if they are not as ‘cool’ as the start-ups in San Francisco and even if they don’t provide me with lattes on demand. Also, you want to understand yourself as a designer and evaluate if you want to be a designer caught up in the delusionary bubble and keep playing by their rules as a puppet or really be a part of a company who actually does innovation and would love you to be a part of their teams to drive innovation and design thinking.

Interaction Design vs. Design Thinking
I received feedback from few companies in order to move forward to their initial screening. They requested to see detailed screens on my portfolio as they were not able to judge my interaction design skills from those screenshots alone. My initial reaction was: ‘Really?’ They were judging people by the cover of the book. While it is a fair point, some of the more detailed work can’t be shared because of NDA’s that have been signed with the companies. You wouldn’t want to move forward?

I prefer to design my portfolio from the perspective of what I would like to view from a candidate who would be interviewing for a similar position as I am. I would like to know things like:

· The problems they try to solve
· The process they follow
· Their overall design thinking
· How have they measured success for that project
· Relevant screens relating to the work
· Challenges they faced and how they overcame them
· Who are they?
· How could they be a value add to my team?

I already had all of that covered in my portfolio and sometimes in my initial interviews. This being the case, how would someone judge any designer from those screens? From this perspective, I might have as well stolen those screens.

What I have learned is, if people are stuck on just trying to see your screens and not wanting to know you holistically as a designer, you may not want to work for them anyways. However, before you reach your conclusion about that employer, make sure to ask clarifying questions about what they are trying to understand and then try to position yourself accordingly. Remember you are interviewing them as well!

Generalist vs. Specialist
I was doing a portfolio review session for a well-established brand in the South Bay and that was my 4th and final round of interviews. Interestingly enough, I had 11 people and a mixed bag of designers. Believe it or not, only 1 out of the 11 understood what I was trying to convey. I was trying to communicate how I work from a strategy and vision perspective and the ability I had to do a deeper dive as a designer. However, most of the questions I received from these people were about how I designed a particular page and what was my rationale.

Shouldn’t the interviewers also read the job description before you interview? The question is obvious, but you would be surprised at how few people take a few moments to understand what is required.

The question is: should a principal designer be a generalist or a specialist? In my opinion it’s not black and white, they should always have a birds-eye strategy vision and should be able to dive in deeper as a specialist when required. What I learned is to question the interviewers and to bring them back to the definition of the role in the time allocated. Sometimes it helps to explain this role right in the beginning of your presentation to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Consumer vs. Enterprise
In my career, I have worked for consumer-based and enterprise-based companies. What I really love about my profession is that I could easily mold myself into any of these spaces to solve for them. Nowadays, I find it really hard to understand the mental model of these hiring managers who are designers themselves and are so fixated in hiring designers who ONLY have worked within the consumer OR enterprise spaces. Where has our flexibility to design gone?

In one of the interviews, I went all the way to the last round in a consumer company. After talking to a design director, he asked me if I had any experience related to onboarding. I said I don’t have any direct experience, but I do have similar experiences and gave him examples. Right after the interview, I received a rejection email. What if, as a designer, I would like to work for both spaces? I agree that our user base changes, but that does not mean our processes, creativity, or design thinking changes.

In my experience, nowadays, it is extremely hard to make domain switches from enterprise to consumer or vice-versa. I humbly request that designers open up their minds in order to be true to the profession of problem solving than to choose specific domains. That’s when you achieve flexibility in creativity.

So, there you have it my fellow UX friends! To summarize the lessons from my experiences, you need to constantly reset yourself every day in your interviewing process. Be very selective of who you want to work for. Check them out on Glassdoor.com and see what feedback they have received. Prepare your portfolio in a manner that represents you as a designer and don’t get carried away with every piece of feedback you receive along the way. Prepare cheat sheets before you interview with that company. Check each and every interviewers journey. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and remember that you are interviewing them as well. Ask for feedback relating to why they did not move forward with you and work on that feedback, not that all that feedback may be correct. Don’t get disappointed if the company you want to work for did not select you as this means you were not meant to be working there in the first place (you don’t want to force yourself into a situation where you will be miserable soon after you start!). Prepare, prepare, prepare!!! In the end, you will find yourself matched up with the right match who you are meant to work for, even if you have to work in the South Bay!

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