Acing the UX interview
Note: This piece is based on years of being a hiring manager…and the occasional candidate. It also reflects experiences shared with me by industry colleagues. At its core, it’s born out of the frustration-driven desire to see promising candidates stop going down in flames during the on-site UX interview because of lack of wisdom, preparation, and—in perhaps a good way—practice.
You slogged through refining your resume. Your portfolio of work looks great… or is what it is. You got the LinkedIn peeks. Then the email. Or the friend who said they’d refer you came through. There was a friendly phone call.
The role sounds exciting! The company, too. Their team is growing. They want to see if you’re a good fit. Can you come in on the 20th?
Reaction 1: “Sure! I’d love to! Yes!”
Reaction 2: This is going to be a cakewalk. (Danger Will Robinson!)
Reaction 3: Oh 5#|+! Now what? Am I ready for this? What’s going to happen? Can’t the company just make a decision based on my resume and portfolio?
No. We need to get to know you. The resume and portfolio are advertising. The interview is a test drive. For both of us. We need to spend some time with each other seeing if this is going to work out.
And there’s something you should know about that.
We want to hire you.
Five simple words from us you can let roll around in your mind the moment you’re invited for an on-site interview. You need to believe them.
We have work that needs to get done. And it either hasn’t been getting done, or some overextended member of our team has been doing it part-time and insufficiently. We want to relieve that stress and design and build more great stuff. We need you. We’re hoping you’re going to be the one who comes in and makes us feel we can really get going. We’re ready to get you busy.
We want to hire you.
I’m for real. Those of us on product teams and who are hiring managers can spend months searching through hundreds of resumes and UX portfolios. When we find someone with a promising background who is interested in the position, we’re ready to close the deal. Even more so factoring in how expensive recruiting and interviewing is for us, and the opportunity cost of waiting for work to get done.
We want to hire you.
You probably didn’t think this article was going to start out this way. But I want you to know it. So here’s where things get tricky. We do want to hire you, but you probably aren’t ready to prove we should. Many of you don’t appreciate what’s at stake, and so you don’t prepare well for the opportunity. Sure, you read the interview tips about body language and eye contact. You dress how you think will look good. You’ve got your List Of Important Questions. You are ready to emphasize and repeat constantly how much you really want to land something meaningful that lets you do good work.
That’s not enough. Not by a long shot. In fact, if that’s your M.O., I’m fairly certain that you’ll be consistently disappointed by rejection or mismatched expectations.
It doesn’t have to be that way. You can change it. You prepare better. You can be ready for us to say yes.
It all starts with another set of five simple words that will help us know that you will be our next good decision.
Show us how you work.
It’s great to see good-looking screens and delightful apps in your portfolio. Results matter. And just as much, so does how you got there. Be ready to tell us the stories. Out loud in front of a small crowd. These are the things we want to know.
Who did you design for? Why? What approaches did you use to find the right design? What research did you do or work from? How was success going to be assessed and measured? What sketching, prototyping, and refining did you do? Why this design and not others? What challenges did you run into during the design phase? How did you address them? What were you wrong and right about? How were the other members of the product team involved in the design? What were your specific contributions? What did you help others create? How were you involved in building and testing the code? What are the tangible and observed benefits people realized when they used what was built?
Getting the idea? We want to hear a clear story with visual artifacts that talks about how you get good work done alone and with others. It’s what we will need from you. Help us see how you will contribute. Show us you won’t disappoint.
Now, the last step. Five more simple words.
Take good care of yourself.
Remember that awesome feeling you had walking into a final exam you had just crammed for all night? You were pumped, brimming with knowledge, and ready to kick a…
WRONG!
Dragging sleeplessly and anxiously into an interview because you put off preparing until the night before does you and us no favors, and it disrespects yourself and the opportunity. Promise yourself you’ll do better. Here are 3 key ways:
- Know your stories now. What are your 2–3 best projects? How do you describe your work to new colleagues? Who have you gotten feedback from about how to improve your work and how you talk about it? What are your most important points or the elements that really matter in the work? How easily can you tell the stories? Especially without props? Practice. Practice. Practice.
- Have your materials organized and easily available. Throwing a long deck together online thinking you’ll be able to spontaneously walk through it wherever the portfolio review or interview takes us is planning to fail by failing to plan. Build a solid collection of information summaries and images that support your story. Make sure they read easy and look good from 10–12 feet away. Also, this might seem petty, but count on bad wi-fi and a crappy projector. It’s not fun this way, but let a good connection and quality AV be a pleasant surprise and be able to do well without them.
- Rest and relax. This times 100. Totally serious. Do 1 and 2 ahead of time, then meditate, do yoga, or go see a funny movie. And then get some good sleep. Do what puts you in the state of being the best you.
Because remember, we want to hire that you. :)
Now, one final note about the day after the big interview. You can totally ace an interview and not get hired. This is the hardest truth.
You can do all of the good prep above and there might still be something that comes clear that shows a mismatch between what we need and what you show us. It happens. Don’t let it get you down, at least not for too long. If you stick with what I’ve laid out here, you will land in a good spot.
Keep going.
