Design leader Sabrina Majeed on breaking into design, the best questions to during your job interview, and how to effectively ask for feedback
Sabrina most recently led design teams at BuzzFeed and prior to that designed apps at Venmo, Miso, and Intuit. She recently moved back to the U.S. after spending a year abroad in Bangkok, Thailand and traveling around Southeast Asia, documenting her travels on The InnBox. Fun fact: She’s also the designer for Tech Ladies!
In April, Tech Ladies hosted an #AskMeAnything with Sabrina. We discussed getting a design job (and switching into design), working with designers, delivering feedback, interviewing, and more! Below are some of our favorite Q&As. Head over to the community for the full #AskMeAnything (you’ll have to join the group if you’re not currently a member).
Q: How did you break into the design industry?
Sabrina: I was fresh out of design school when I started. I moved to San Francisco without a job lined up because I knew that’s where all the jobs were and I knew it would be easier for me to network and find something there (I was privileged to be able to do this). I got rejected a lot in the beginning but would try to iterate on my portfolio presentation after each one. Another major thing I did was socialize my work and thoughts as much as possible by blogging and sharing work in process online!
If you’re considering switching into design, the best way to do this is to try to transition within your current employer if you can. That way you can learn a new discipline without also having to learn how a new company works. People are also more likely to take you on and help make the move happen if you’ve already proven to be strong in your current field. If it’s not possible to do it internally, then I would focus on building a strong portfolio of freelance work and then looking for a FT role at a company with an established design culture for mentorship and growth.
Q: What do you think the most important questions a candidate should ask during an in-person visit with the hiring manager?
Sabrina: When I’m the candidate, I usually ask a lot of questions around dissent and hard topics to see if the hiring manager is someone who just goes with the flow or if they have a more active and thoughtful approach to management and decision making. I’ll ask things like how they approach performance reviews, if they’ve ever had to fire someone and what were the circumstances, if they could talk about a time they disagreed with their boss/upper management or a time they managed up (super important since this person needs to be able to advocate upwards for you). I’ve also asked them if I were in this role what my first 3–6 months would look like: “What do you expect to see the person in this role accomplishing in that time?”
When I’m the hiring manager, I also appreciate when candidates ask these kinds of questions as the ability to think about the organizational as a whole, not just the work/product, indicates a sense of seniority or someone who could have a big impact on the company.
Q: What sort of portfolio projects look best to employers?
Sabrina: I’m fine with personal projects as long as there are still constraints that the designer can demonstrate that they reckoned with. For example, launching your own product and dealing with user feedback or working around third party software would be interesting to hear about. This would be preferred to a personal project that’s purely conceptual, where the designer isn’t getting feedback from a client/user/stakeholder and also isn’t grappling with the reality of launching of something.
I also don’t really put too much emphasis on if the company’s field is aligned to the projects in a person’s portfolio. I’m mostly looking for experience in tackling similar types of problems, not necessarily institutional knowledge (that’s a just a bonus). For example, if we were hiring for a role that needed to design data dashboards for restaurants, I might be looking for work that illustrates how the designer approaches visualizing and communicating large data sets, and if someone had experience doing that for finance brokers instead of restaurants, that would still be valid!
But generally design hiring managers like to see a deep dive into 1–2 projects that shows your process from project kick-off, exploration, iteration, key decision points, and results.
Q: Do you have advice on how to stay current as a designer, in today’s market?
Sabrina: This is something I’ve had to think about a lot after switching into people management and not doing as much hands-on design work. I think there’s two sides to this, there’s staying current conceptually and in execution.
Conceptually, the easy answer is to work on side projects… but I find I don’t always have time to take on something extra. So instead I try to find opportunities in my daily life to apply design thinking and execution towards. For example: if I have a vacation planned I might go through the full design process (research, exploration, iteration, etc.) to figure out my itinerary AND design a beautiful, mobile-formatted itinerary to go along with it. If a friend is coming over for dinner I’ll be extra and typeset menus. If I’m organizing an event at work, I’ll play with the branding — and if it’s public, design a website for it, as well as think about the general event experience. If I have to give a presentation then I’ll have fun with the deck design and think about the pacing.
For staying current in execution and new tools, usually the easiest way for me to learn a new tool is to try to recreate something I’m familiar with in it. For example, if I previously designed a website in Sketch, I might try to recreate one of the similar pages in Figma. This way, I’m focusing solely on execution and not having to conceptually design something new while also learning a new tool at the same time.
Q: What are some effective strategies for coaching designers and giving them feedback?
Sabrina: I usually focus more on coaching designers on how to ask for effective feedback than on how to give it, because when designers set up the right context and prompts, they are kind of coaching their audience on how to give feedback in that moment.
For example, making sure they share context around the project timeline and where they are in it, and the scope of the feedback they’re looking for. Sometimes when feedback is ill-received it’s because the designer is looking for cross-the-finish-line feedback but they’re getting back-to-the-drawing-board feedback instead, which can be frustrating for both parties.
I also try to coach them to share work early and often so that there are less of these “back to the drawing board” moments to take them by surprise. Also making sure to have your explorations handy so when someone suggests “have you tried this” you can show them the attempt and have a discussion with that visual aid.
When I’m giving feedback, I usually ask those questions if they haven’t so I can tailor my feedback to what’s most helpful for them in that moment. I also try to steer clear of stating opinions (“I don’t like X”, “I prefer X”) and focus instead on sharing my interpretation of their work, “The prominence of this button led me to believe I should click here first, was that your intention?”
Thanks to Sabrina for her time and wisdom! If you have an inspiring woman or non-binary person to nominate for an #AskMeAnything in Tech Ladies, shoot me an email: hannah[at]hiretechladies.com.
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