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How to prepare for a UX Interview, tips from a hiring manager

Over the past few years, I’ve run more than 100 interviews, met great designers from all over the globe working for different types of companies, taken hundreds of notes and gathered valuable insights on how to do interviews. All in all, I’ve learnt a lot.

I often share my experiences with other managers and designers, but I’ve always thought there’s so much to cover I should also write about it and share my ideas. So, here it goes in a single post. For the purposes of making it easier to follow, I’ll assume that you’re a skilled UX Designer with experience, looking for some guidelines and information for your next interview.

If I had to give you just one tip it would be:
Prepare for the interview

Okay, I know it’s the most obvious one, but you’d be amazed if I told you how many candidates I’ve recently interviewed that were unprepared. As a matter of fact, you need to be prepared for more than one interview — in most cases there are many steps in the recruitment process and each of them focus on different things.

There’s no standard UX hiring process, but it can look something like this:

1 — First touchpoint with HR

2 — One or more interviews with a Hiring Manager

3 — A final panel interview with more than one person in the room

1 — First touchpoint with HR

Regardless of how you applied for the role (whether referred by someone, contacted directly through Linkedin or sent in an application to a hiring manager) it’s usually someone from Human Resources who does a first validation of your profile — your motivations, background and skills — in order to assess if you would fit the role and team.

Chances are you won’t cover the specifics of UX in the first touchpoint. This first screening is intended to filter those candidates that don’t fit the team for any reason. These reasons vary from one team to another and only some of these will be within your control.

You might be left out because your soft skills, such as communication, are not strong enough or because you don’t have the desired hard skills. These two things are, however, within your control. Additionally, you might not be selected because your seniority (for example your salary expectations) makes you unsuitable and, in my opinion, this is a reason you can’t control. If you’re a senior designer you don’t want to earn the same amount as a junior unless you really need the money!

What to expect from this first interview:

It will probably begin with an explanation of what the team or company is looking for and then jump to focus on you, your work experience, your personal profile and the motivations for you to apply. As I mentioned before, don’t expect to cover UX topics in depth during this first touchpoint; it’s usually about the basics of the role, salary expectations and how long it would take you to join in case of being offered the position.

Once HR validates your profile, you’ll have a UX Design interview. This person will most likely be your future manager or a senior designer.

I do most of the interviews after HR’s first screening. I expect them to check whether a candidate has experience in creating designs with Data, doing ABs, working in Agile, collaborating with developer teams and assessing whether they’re good at communicating and structuring their ideas, etc.

2 — Interview with a Hiring Manager

This interview is, in my opinion, the most interesting step in the process. It’s the opportunity to discover if both Interviewer and Candidate have what the other is looking for.

In this step the questions will be more or less specific depending on the size and seniority of the team. For instance, you might need to be prepared for deeper questions about user validation and qualitative insights if the company has a big budget and a User Lab. Don’t expect questions about collaboration with a large group of designers if the team is small; the same applies to everything from design thinking to Agile methodologies which depends on whether the company works with Scrum or Kanban. This is a generalisation, however, as the type of interview depends heavily on interviewer style and experience.

I like to think of interviews not as “the company” looking for a candidate, but as a time for me to explore whether you can help us in crafting great things and be comfortable working in a highly collaborative environment — not only delivering fancy products but also pushing the envelope to move the needle in the right direction.

What to expect from this first interview:

I don’t have a super rigid and standard way of running interviews. I usually start with who I am, what I do, the profile of my team, and a short explanation of what we’re looking for.

The next question I ask is:

“Tell me whatever you want about yourself in 5 minutes”.

This is pretty standard, and you’ll hear it in most interviews, but for me it really sets the stage for the rest of the conversation.

Although I keep a checklist to ensure I don’t forget to validate certain things, I prefer to let the chat itself connect topics naturally, as different projects lead to different conversations: wireframes, KPIs, research, development, agile methodologies, users, biases, cognitive load, companies, design processes, etc. I might ask something about your motivations for joining my team, or jump directly to your portfolio if I feel you’ll be more comfortable with that.

I try to cover UX 360º, but rather than a never-ending list of Q&A, it’s more a conversation with the chance to spend more time exploring certain topics where this makes sense. It’s a chat to share points of view on the different disciplines and subdisciplines of User Experience: design systems, prototypes, working with stakeholders, interviewing users and critiquing design for example

Prototyping is a basic skill for most companies, so expect and prepare answers on this. Do you prototype? Which tools have you used? High-fi, Low-fi? Do you prefer to start with a pencil and paper? Why (or why not)? If you are a UI Designer and your portfolio is visually great, I’ll try to cover it as quickly as possible and drive the conversation to other disciplines.

I also want to learn what sort of challenges you’ve had: how you approached a solution, the steps you followed building a complex prototype, the mistakes you made presenting results of a test, learnings, unexpected outcomes, etc. Have you ever had to park an idea because it was impossible to build/code? Pixel perfect designs look awesome in Sketch, and animations are mind blowing in FramerJS, but UX is also about translating brilliant ideas into executable design.

Listen and be in the conversation. UX is an eclectic profession with great potential for interesting conversations. Don’t be a robot — don’t act as a dispatcher of keywords. I’ve interviewed too many designers waiting only for the opportunity to deliver the next buzzword to amaze me:

Q: “Why did you chose radio-buttons instead of a dropdown in this filter”?

A: “We had some data that informed my decision. We followed a lean agile process creating as little specifications as possible to push an MVP into production. To validate that the radio-button was the right choice, we launched an AB against a dropdown and validated our hypothesis against the KPIs”.

This answer is correct, but it’s over-complicating the conversation. If you’re looking for an opportunity to talk about MVPs or KPIs but the timing isn’t right, I suggest you write down a reminder and try to come back to the point later in the conversation.

A common, multifaceted question I ask — one of my favourites — is:

How did you become a UX Designer? Did you study UX, or grow into UX Design from another discipline? Why did you pick UX Design and give up on what you were doing before (coding, designing, advertising, etc).

In general, we managers are proud of the work we do. We love to talk about our teams and how we craft shiny products, so I encourage you to ask questions. It’s not only the simplest way to find out things about the company you are applying to, but also a priceless opportunity to connect with the person you’ll probably be working with 8 hours a day!

I don’t know if there’s a standard number of touch-points before moving to a group interview but if everything goes well, you’ll probably have one and the people in that room will probably be the UX Director and UX Manager as well as a Product Owner, Researcher, or anyone you may collaborate with within the scope of your future role.

3 — UX Panel Interview

The goal of this interview is to bring objectivity to the process. It’s an important step where to start to decide if we’ll make you an offer or no longer include you in the process.

Although most of your hard and soft skills have already been validated, you’ll have to introduce yourself again, say hi to new people and share certain things you may have already shared in earlier interviews. I take and share notes with the other managers about my impressions during first interviews. It provides a valuable resource for follow-ups and digging deeper where we need more information, and is useful in helping me spot inconsistencies in your story.

Most managers often send a small assessment prior to this interview. It could be a heuristic evaluation of a given website, a fake hypothetical problem to solve, an analysis of a random feature on a website or something else. Sometimes I won’t send anything at all and instead do a live exercise and critique during the third interview using either Sketch or a whiteboard.

Although the output of the exercise itself is important, the intention of this panel interview is to:

• Validate your ability to breakdown a problem and explain design.
• Assess how you interact with other people and the process you follow.
• Check your points of view on disagreements over how your ideas solve business problems.
• Your attention to detail, your analytical skills, your power to diverge and to assess how you think and if you think of the context when suggesting a solution, etc.

When I was working at eDreams ODIGEO we used to call this the “final interview”, because once finished, we would try to make a decision right after sharing our points of view.

How to prepare for an interview

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, each interview will focus on different things, but I suggest you prepare for them from the very beginning.

Here are some tips:

• Always have a pen and paper at hand — I promise you, it’s way easier if you can take notes.
• Before you start the process make sure you have a clear definition of what you do, what kind of designer you are and what kind of designer you want to be: Are you a Researcher + Designer, a Visual Designer, Interaction Designer? A Developer with a crush on UX? A Unicorn? (we love unicorns, if you are one just drop me a DM now ;). Maybe you are all about strategy, or love to conceptualise. There’s no right or unique answer. The UX Designer role is not standardised and varies from one company to another, so it’s important that you know what the company has to offer and what you can offer the company.
• Do your research. Take some time learning about the company, the product they craft, how they build it, etc.
• Bring your own computer to the interview and save a copy of your files on your hard drive. Maybe WiFi is temporarily unavailable in the meeting room, or the interviewer doesn’t have the password for the guest account.
• Bring an updated portfolio. Although the interview will mostly be talking, make sure you have samples that illustrate what you do, how you do it and why you do it. Prepare a balanced mix of examples (one user flow is enough) a couple of prototypes (maybe one low-fi and one high-fi) some mockups, a case-study, an AB test that went well, etc.
• Be ready to show your portfolio. Clean your desktop — chances are high you will have to share your screen.
• Know your portfolio from A to Z and have easy access to examples that combine and enrich your answers. I love when we talk about prototyping and suddenly a candidate says: “Yes, as a matter of fact, I have here a good example of…”. Priceless.
• If you’re having the interview remotely, select a quiet place, where you can concentrate and focus on the interview.
• If you’re in a coffee shop next to your office use some headphones, otherwise I’ll hear everyone else through your Macbook’s internal mic, making it difficult to pay attention to you.
• A silly tip perhaps, but I’ve seen this a couple of times: Don’t lay your computer on your legs during a remote call. It may be comfortable and natural but if you’re nervous your legs will shake, the screen will be moving the entire time and it will be impossible for the interviewer to concentrate on anything else.

Prepare answers for as many questions as possible. Google the standard questions for UX interviews — there are hundreds of good resources out there. You can’t cover everything but the more prepared you are, the better:

• Why do you want to join this team?
• What are your 3 favourite Apps and why?
• What can you offer? What can you bring to this team?
• What’s your biggest defect?
• Tell me how you came across this company?
• What are the 3 most important skills in a UX Designer?
• Are you a team player or do you prefer to work alone?
• What is your design process?
• What has been your biggest success?
• And so on…

During the interviews:

• Be yourself and let yourself have a conversation with the person interviewing you.
• An interview is a perfect opportunity to learn about the company you’re applying to, so ask questions. Enquire about the culture, the methodology, the processes they follow, the people and the profile of the leadership. If you succeed during the interview you’ll probably spend most of your day working with the people in that particular organisation and working the way they do. You need to be sure you like where you’re heading.
• Give yourself time to think when answering (unless of course you’re really sure you have the perfect answer). It’ll show analytical behaviour, and demonstrate that you don’t jump directly to the first answer that comes to mind — a very good trait in a UX Designer.
• Don’t be afraid to backtrack on your thoughts and correct previous answers. Maybe you realise that the example you gave 15 minutes ago wasn’t the perfect one — feel free to adjust on the go.
• If you’re sharing a project, be specific about what your exact role was. Was the initial idea yours? Did you do the visuals? Were you the one running the user interviews? Did you build the prototype? Did you create the Personas? Did you code the App? Did you read the AB data? Did you set the KPIs? Did you write the copies.
• Don’t be ashamed to say: I don’t know, or I don’t have experience with that. It’s OK if you don’t have answers for everything and, in fact, most of the time you won’t have all the answers because the interviewer will keep asking to identify where your limit is and how much you know about everything.
• Don’t focus on the hard skills only. At least half of the work of a UX designer is soft skills.
• When talking about your experience, focus on what’s important. It’s impossible to explain everything for each piece of work you’ve done. Pick one big headline for each experience and highlight 3 key things that pushed you to the next level. There’s always learnings, even in the worst work.

What someone like me is usually looking for

First of all, and above everything else, someone with whom I can spend 8 hours a day with.

Then, someone with great analytical, visual and communication skills, with experience working in teams — preferably UX teams — in collaboration with Development and Products. Someone who is comfortable showing their work, happy to delve into unexplored areas, willing to embrace feedback constantly and expose themself to critique and interesting challenges.

I’m a strong believer of the value of Full-Stack UX Designers (what we are beginning to call “Product Designers”). People with broad experience and mixed skills, teams without clear titles and differentiation between Interaction Designers, Visual Designer, Information Architects, etc.

For the past 5 years I’ve worked in large companies, inside Product Teams split into smaller teams, sort of mini-startups in charge of one part of our products. Each of these teams usually combine PM, Developers, Agile Coaches, QA Specialists, BAs, UX Designers, etc. This way of organising teams requires Designers who can control several aspects of the product life-cycle. Someone who feels comfortable during ideation sessions and knows about different research methodologies. Someone who can take an idea from a post-it on a Kanban Board all the way through the different steps of the design process and into the hands of the user and beyond. Someone who can understand what’s going-on during AB testing, who is constantly analysing and validating hypotheses, negotiating, creating specs, working with developers, running further research, drawing mockups, prototyping, etc…

Perhaps most of the ideas in this article will sound kind of obvious to you, but in my experience they’re not! I hope you can use this to clear a path and help you land your next job. Good luck!

Turo