Building a more inclusive and equitable design community
Breaking into the product design industry can be difficult for those without connections in tech. As part of VMware Design’s initiative to make the product design industry more inclusive and equitable, we hosted a webinar, Cracking the Product Design Interview, to provide resources for underrepresented groups and students to break into the industry.
While there are many resources out there, Medium articles & YouTube videos often pose contradicting expectations from different companies. In addition, it’s hard to find a resource that clearly communicates what a successful product design interview looks like. Our goal is to make tech more inclusive by making critical information about breaking into product design more accessible. Here is the resource packet that we sent out following the webinar which provides a summary of the webinar and additional resources to help candidates on their job search.
Breaking into the product design industry
Minding the diversity gap
Underrepresented groups do not always have the same access to design schools or design networks to learn from. Gaining access to design opportunities as a student is also challenging when you’re juggling schoolwork with finding an internship, working a part-time student job, or various other factors.
It’s a known issue that tech companies in the U.S. need to increase diversity in the workplace. Underrepresented groups have historically had fewer chances of breaking into more well-established social networks in major tech hubs. Changing the way we approach recruiting can change that.
As more companies move to remote work due to the pandemic, companies have more opportunity to source candidates from outside of traditional technology hubs. There’s a window of opportunity here for tech companies like VMware to narrow the diversity gap and employ talented professionals from underrepresented groups.
Learning about the product design opportunities in tech
There are varying distinctions between designing for consumer products vs. enterprise products. However, our webinar focused primarily on demystifying what product design looks like for enterprise products, specifically at VMware.
Designing for enterprise products can seem mind-boggling at first. It may seem like there is a complex technical barrier to break past for those who aren’t familiar with engineering concepts. Part of the webinar’s purpose was to shed light on what product design is like at a highly technical enterprise company like VMware. There are multiple aspects involved with cultivating a design-centric approach at an enterprise organization, such as designing and solving problems collaboratively with various stakeholders (e.g. Product Managers, Engineers, Architects, Customer Success Engineers to name a few). A major prerequisite of that is finding and recruiting diverse talent who will become the de facto design leaders for these products.
Our webinar’s target audience
The Cracking the Product Design Interview webinar is a resource mainly for underrepresented groups and students who have little to no industry experience or design-related backgrounds. However, professionals of varying experience may find this resource helpful to pass along or refresh their knowledge. We also hope to inspire other companies and organizations to adopt a similar approach in their talent acquisition process.
Extending our reach
We wanted to ensure that this webinar would be accessible to everyone, especially those who don’t normally have access to these types of resources. We started off with reaching out to our internal employee-driven groups called Power of Difference communities (PODs), which are social groups aimed at strengthening networks for women and underrepresented groups at site specific locations, for our VMware employees. We also reached out to University Talent, our internal New College Graduate focused recruiting team, and external diversity groups from historically Black colleges, Hispanic communities, Latino communities, Disability groups, and the LGBTQ+ community.
Learnings from the webinar
In our webinar, we simulated a sketching session, portfolio review, and roundtable debrief. We also covered interviewing tips / do’s and don’ts / and ways of how to connect with other designers. Here’s an overview of the learnings that we shared in our webinar.
About VMware Design
VMware pioneered virtualization software and changed the way data centers are managed. VMware Design is a team of 270+ Designers, Researchers, Managers, Engineers, and an Accessibility team who work on designing the software that powers infrastructure for any app, on any device, and on any cloud.
An overview of the full interview process
- Mindset & prep: We invite candidates to research the team that they want to join, learn how people use their products, and learn how they design, build, and release. We ask for candidates to prepare a portfolio, portfolio presentation, and resume (and to double check your work). It’s important to note that there is no bullet-proof formula– success comes down to preparing yourself properly and critically determining areas you excel in and areas you need to improve.
- Phone screen: 15 minutes with a recruiter is not only for the recruiter to introduce the company and position and gauge if the candidate is a good fit, but it’s equally as important of an opportunity for candidates to think about what they want out of the role or company and how to ask about it effectively.
- Portfolio Screen: a 45 min — 1 hour call with a designer will be for the candidate to share a case study in detail. It’s important to choose a relevant case study in which candidates share evidence of how they thoughtfully execute their skillset.
- Final round: 4–6 hour call with the hiring team where candidates will have a portfolio review to present 1–2 case studies, a sketching session, followed by 1:1 interviews with design leads and other stakeholders.
- Post Interview: At VMware, we have a formal process to remove as much bias as possible, including a roundtable interview panel using standardized scorecards. If there’s a successful fit, our recruiting team or hiring manager will extend an offer usually by phone and email.
What’s next
As we move forward, we want to level the playing field in design so that our field can be more diverse and inclusive. Cracking the Product Design Interview was a webinar to provide underrepresented groups with the resources to help them successfully break into product design. In this educational event, we shared VMware Design’s principles and provided potential candidates with concrete examples of what to expect when interviewing with us. We had over 450 registrations and over 200 attendees from the different student groups and underrepresented groups we reached out to. VMware Design actively works to make the design recruitment process transparent, unbiased, and equitable. As we continue to host future Cracking the Product Design webinars and workshops, we invite other teams to collaborate with us on crafting resources to extend to underrepresented groups and students, or to inspire other teams to do the same.
We’re hiring!
The VMware Design team is looking for talented designers to help us continue transforming enterprise design. Check out our open positions!
At VMware Design, we have dedicated a lot of time and resources to demystify our hiring process. To that end, our lead recruiter and recruiting team will provide comprehensive preparation information as it is our charter to ensure fair and equal opportunity, with no surprises on the day. We want you to succeed and look forward to meeting some of you soon!
Resources and Links
Here is the resource packet that provides a summary of the content from our webinar and additional resources.
Follow our Medium, Twitter, Dribbble for more information.
Special thanks to all speakers from the VMware Design team — Abbey Wang, Brian Mireles, Jose Benavides, Mark Potterf, Yu Xin, and the entire planning crew — Abbey Wang, Afifa Tawil, Grace Han, Molly Yee, Sanaea Kakalia, Shawna Cheng, Tigger Hu, Yu Xin.
