How I joined Google as a new grad designer, and what I learned from it
My Personal Journey with Excitement, Patience, and Tech Fails
After 3 months of interviews, I was thrilled to join Google as an Interaction Designer in the Associate Design Program, a 2-year rotational program for new grads to experience a variety of industry problems, and grow to be design leaders at Google.
The interview process I went through is the most rigorous I’ve ever experienced. It was such a long process that there were a couple of times when I didn’t know what to expect, and even wanted to stop and give up. That’s why I decided to document my journey, and share what I learned from the interview process, so that more talented designers can get to know what to expect when joining Google as a new grad.
Disclaimer: The opinions in this article are those of my own. They do not represent the position of Google or the AD Program.
The Application
The new grad positions were posted fairly late. I originally applied for a couple of “Interaction Designer” positions at Google, but was rejected immediately due to a lack of experience. The only position that was open to new grads was posted at the end of February.
A week after I filed my application, I received an email from the recruiter to schedule a call about the interview process. However, the call was soon cancelled, and I was sent a set of design exercises to choose from.
Design Exercise
For the design exercise, I had one week to design a hypothetical product and document it for the hiring committee to review. There were 3 prompts to choose from, and the problems were slightly more complex and interesting compared to what I received for my Google internship application a year ago. For all the prompts, I had to show my process and present a series of high-fidelity mocks in the end.
One thing I wanted myself to avoid in the design exercise was to settle on a solution too quickly. True, it was highly stressful to design a hypothetical product from scratch, to do research, design, evaluation, and documentation within a week, while taking 4 classes during the day at school. When stressed, it is easy to forget about research, forget about ideation, and to make assumptions we’re not aware of. Therefore, I planned out my week in advance, and made sure I allocate a certain amount of time to each part of the process. I also documented the process as I proceeded so that I don’t forget about my thought process afterwards. After all, the thought process matters as much as, or even more than, the final deliverable.
The amount of emphasis I had on research and ideation eventually paid off. Since everyone who applied for the program had to do the design exercise, a lot of people would choose the same prompts, and arrive at similar solutions. After all, the prompts seemed to be about simple, mundane problems, whose solutions were quite obvious at first glance. However, after devoting much time to being creative, I looked beyond the “intuitive” solutions I came up with initially, kept on simplifying my solution with my knowledge of emerging technologies, and eventually arrived on solutions that I would never thought of without the ideation sessions. My goal wasn’t to be creative for the sake of standing out; it was to keep finding ways to simplify the solution so that my users could do less and achieve more. The most streamlined product that just works always stands out in the end.
I also made sure that my solution and my documentation showed my strengths. To demonstrate my prototyping and storytelling skills, I created prototypes with motions to tell stories of how my product would benefit my users. To show my product thinking skills, I thought about the business model of the product, how it would fit into the larger ecosystem, and how its features would benefit different stakeholders. These were all outside of the original requirement, but I included them because I wanted to show my personal style as a designer.
Technical Interview
After submitting the design exercise, I jumped on a phone interview with a Google designer 2 weeks later.
The interview lasted 45 minutes, and was fairly similar to other interviews I had before. I briefly talked about two of my projects, and my interviewer tried to challenge me about a couple of my design decisions to see my rationales behind. Since I knew my projects from inside out, I was able to clearly explain why my decisions were superior to other design alternatives. My interviewer also asked me a couple of standard behavioral questions to understand how I work within a team, and how I deal with conflicts. Again, since I know my own working style very well, I was able to provide concrete examples and articulate how I collaborate with my teammates.
After my phone interview, my interview feedback, my design exercise, and my application package were all sent to a hiring committee. Based on my observations, almost everyone who applied for the position completed the design exercise, and received a technical interview. However, people started receiving rejections once the package was sent to the hiring committee.
After a week of panicking and constantly refreshing my emails, I finally received an update from my recruiter. I’m going to visit Google for an onsite interview!
Onsite Interviews
My recruiter sent me an email detailing what to expect during the interview day, as well as a detailed guideline on my portfolio presentation. A separate team helped me with my travel logistics and reimbursements. It was my third onsite interview this year. Instead of feeling nervous, I felt super excited. I was excited to visit the company that creates products that I love, meet the designers there, and present my best self to them.
But my excitement waned as I learned that I had to wait another two and a half weeks for the onsite interview. Despite my other offer deadlines and my recruiter’s constant push to expedite the process, it was hard to coordinate the time for me to meet with 5 designers on the same day. It was a hard wait, but it also gave me ample time to prepare for the interviews.
The Interview Day
The description of the onsite interview makes it seem super stressful. It starts with a 45-minute portfolio presentation in the morning, immediately followed by two 1-on-1 interviews. Then, it’s lunch with a designer, who will not be evaluating my performance. The lunch is followed by three additional interviews back to back. With each interview session lasting 45 minutes, in total, it’s 5.5 hours of constantly talking under pressure, which seemed extremely daunting to an introvert like me.
In reality, the day went by really fast, and everyone I met tried his/her best to make me feel comfortable. My host greeted me in the lobby, and took me to the cafeteria to grab some breakfast. She talked about how she remembered her onsite interview before joining Google, and how she understood the way I felt. For a moment, I even forgot that she would be one of my interviewers for the day.
Portfolio Presentation (with all the possible technical failures)
Things all went well until I started to set up my presentation in the meeting room. I brought two types of USB-C to HDMI converters to be fully prepared, but there, I wasn’t able to find an HDMI cable! I strongly preferred HDMI to screen share over Wifi because I included videos and animations in my Keynote that help illustrate my ideas. Even though my recruiter advised against using them because they were prone to failures, I wanted to show my storytelling skills in my presentation, and videos/animations constitute an important part of my story. That’s why I had spent a ton of time creating a version of the Keynote that best demonstrates my storytelling skills.
But I couldn’t show anything clearly without HDMI.
After five minutes of trying and failing, I decided to go with Plan B, to use Google Hangout to share my screen. However, the unexpected happened again — the Hangout crashed every time I entered presentation mode in Keynote. My host didn’t know why. I panicked. And I forgot to mention, that apart from my host, all four other interviewers dialed in online. I only expected one or two interviewers to join online, not four of them. Right then, 10-15 minutes past the scheduled interview time, they were all staring at us through the screen, not knowing how to help, and afraid that the interview would go over time.
Finally, I decided that I had to start the presentation one way or another. I gave up the animations, the presenter notes, even the full-screen mode, and started presenting in the editing interface. Thank god I didn’t rely on the animations and transitions to tell my whole story, and was familiar enough with my content that I didn’t need my presenter notes.
With all the unexpected happening, my presentation still worked because of my prior preparation. I brainstormed five major iterations of how I would present the problem & solutions for my design exercise through stories that my audience can empathize with. I gave the presentation to three designers for feedback beforehand, and practiced it for countless times on my own. I allocated the 30-minute I had carefully to show not only depth, but also breadth of my interests. Though I couldn’t show the animations and had to skip the Q&A session, my interviewers still told me that they loved the presentation during our 1-on-1s.
My takeaways? Well first, technology failures happen. Just like any design, it’s great to have an ideal version of the presentation, but it’s also important to make sure that when all the fancy, good-to-have technologies fail, you can still show a minimal version that accomplishes your goal. That means, having screenshots in the slides when your prototype fails, having images to refer to when your video doesn’t play… Or, follow your recruiter’s advice and don’t incorporate things that are prone to error in your presentation. Second, you can never be fully prepared for everything that’s going to happen. However, good preparation can help you remain calm and find alternatives when things do go wrong.
After the presentation, I started five 1-on-1 chats about my technical & interaction design knowledge, my creativity & problem solving skills, as well as my collaboration skills.
Technical & Interaction Design Knowledge
Two of my interviewers talked with me about my understanding of interaction design. This includes basic questions about my design process, the tools I use, the way I collaborate with people around me, the way I design for different platforms, etc.
To make sure that the interview process is objective, Google lets its interviewers pick a couple of questions to ask, and write down detailed feedback, which is then given to a separate hiring committee for review. That’s why during my interviews, my interviewers were all busy taking notes. However, they did try their best to maintain a conversation, and to make sure I feel comfortable when they were taking notes.
Despite the standardized process, I don’t think there is a standard way to prepare for these technical interviews other than to be genuinely interested in design, to read a lot of articles online, and to reflect on your own process/tools. The articles I read about designing for global accessibility on Google Design helped me talk about how to design for the next billion users. My explorations in designing for AR and emerging technologies helped me form my perspective on how to bring those technologies to users. I never intentionally prepared for those questions beforehand, and I never read design articles with the expectation that they would help me with my interviews one day. However, my accumulation of design knowledge through daily readings eventually helped me stand out during those 1-on-1 chats.
Creativity & Problem Solving
Two of my interviewers evaluated my skills through whiteboard exercises. This is something I’m most nervous about. As an introvert, I enjoy having time alone to think deeply about a problem before discussing with others for feedback. Standing on my feet, talking about my thought process on a hypothetical problem is thus not my strength. Therefore, I practiced a lot with my friends to get familiar with this way of working.
However, for a second time, things didn’t go as expected. My first interviewer was remote, but wanted to do an impromptu whiteboard exercise after hearing about my presentation. A remote whiteboard exercise? That was something I’d never expect. There was a Google Jamboard within the conference room though, and she hoped that I would use that to share what I was drawing with her. Guess what? For some reason, we could not connect the Jamboard to the meeting. I eventually had to use the video camera to point at me and the Jamboard, so that my interviewer could see what I was doing.
What I had to do then was to over-communicate. I think that’s a general rule of thumb for any whiteboard exercise, but it was especially relevant when my interviewer was remote. I had to constantly put myself into her shoes and check with her whether she understood where I was going, and whether she could see what I was drawing on the whiteboard at all! (That became a super valid question when she was looking at me through a camera!)
Here’s what I learned after doing a couple of whiteboard exercises. One purpose of having such an exercise is for the interviewers to see how you’d work with your colleagues in the future. It’s not about them throwing at you the hardest question in the world and remain silent to see whether you come up with the smartest solution on your own. Instead, a successful whiteboard exercise feels more like a discussion. It’s easy to forget that your interviewers want you to succeed, and that they are interested in solving design problems as well. It’s important that you could lead the discussion and come up with really creative ideas on your own, but it’s equally important that you stop from time to time to ask for feedback, check on things you’re missing, and even ask for your interviewer’s opinions on things.
A successful whiteboard exercise feels more like a discussion.
Treating interviewers as future colleagues also means that sometimes, you might have to “challenge” their proposals if they conflict with your own principles. For example, my second interviewer asked me to design a tool for kids and families that might involve ethical issues. As a psychology major, I was clear about how strict the rules are in academia when it comes to research about children, and I had been to a couple of lectures where we discussed the implications of technology on children’s development. I brought that up to my interviewer, and made it clear that we should consider this before discussing about the detailed design. That led us to a deeper discussion on why the proposed product exists, and how we could achieve the same business goal without doing harm to the society and future generations.
Social psychology studies found that it is hard for anyone to challenge authorities (see the infamous Milgram experiment), and in a whiteboard exercise, the interviewer definitely seems like the authority. However, it never hurts to ask questions when the prompts involve sensitive issues like consumer data, privacy, and children. After all, doing the right thing is an important part of being Googley — your interviewer might even be expecting you to challenge them on such issues.
Collaboration & Communication
As of now, I’ve only been at Google for 2 months, but I’ve already realized how important it is to be a great team player and communicator here. As designers, we need to collaborate not only with our fellow designers, researchers, PMs, and engineers, but also with stakeholders from different teams. Collaboration and communication skills are essential for getting things done, and making sure that different Google products show a consistent identity to our users.
My interview about collaboration was with a UX researcher at Google, and this is similar to what people usually consider as a “behavioral interview.” However, the questions my interviewer asked were much more in-depth compared to any other behavioral interview I had had in the past. He described really specific challenges and scenarios, and asked me whether I had experienced them in the past, and how I approached/would approach them.
In this kind of interviews, it’s great that you could immediately think of something relevant and start telling the story, because what you have done in the past is the best predictor of what you would do in your future work at Google. However, because the interview is so in-depth, there will be times when an example doesn’t come to mind, especially for a new grad with limited industry experience.
I was stuck on one or two questions when I had to honestly tell the interviewer, “let me take a moment and think.” That was perfectly normal, because my interviewer didn’t expect me to have everything fully prepared on top of my head. I also tried to better understand the intent behind those questions if I don’t have a specific example that matches the exact scenario. I would then try to provide an example that best showcases the ability my interviewer was asking for, even if it might not be a direct answer to that specific question. Also, it never hurts to ask in the end, “does this answer your question?” If your interviewer is not satisfied, he/she would follow up with more to let you know what he/she is looking for.
The Wait
As one of my interviewers mentioned, the hardest part of the interview process is actually the wait. Since my interviewers all had busy schedules, it took some time for all five of them to submit their interview feedback. Then, a separate hiring committee went over my entire package, from my portfolio/resume to my design exercise to feedback from all of my interviewers, to decide whether I’d be a good fit for Google.
But that’s not all. For the Associate Design program, I also had to wait for the AD committee to express interests in me and ask me for further interviews.
It took me nearly a month after my onsite interviews to hear back from Google. My recruiter kept me updated on whether all the feedback had been submitted, and when I’d expect a result, which was nice, but it was still a long wait. Fortunately, I received the funding from Georgia Tech’s HCI program to attend the CHI 2019 Conference in Glasgow, UK. I was able to travel a bit around the UK afterwards. The sheep and the beauty of the Scotland Highland as well as the Game of Thrones exhibition in Belfast definitely helped distract me and calm me down.
AD Fit Calls
It was at the airport after I re-entered the U.S., not knowing where to be after graduation, that I received an email and a call from my recruiter. The AD committee leaders expressed their interests and would like to schedule 2 phone calls with me! My recruiter also sent over a list of potential questions consider, and told me that the interviews would focus more on my creativity and collaboration skills.
In addition to questions about creativity and collaboration, which are similar to those in my onsite interviews, the two calls focused heavily on getting to know my leadership skills and my plans for the future. From my understanding, the leaders of the committee wanted to make sure that I could go beyond the basic requirements I get and seek opportunities for larger impacts. They wanted to make sure I know my own strengths and weaknesses, and would gain from the mentorship resources and the project rotations offered by the program.
In fact, these discussions were what I enjoyed the most from the whole interview process, because I always liked to think deeply about who I am as a designer, and how I could make a larger impact with design. It was great to have the opportunity to share those thoughts with design leaders at Google, and to get to know their vision for cultivating future leaders in design.
I received my offer a few days later, and now I’m at Google!
What I Learned
Looking back at the interview process, I realized that I learned a lot about design and about myself through rounds of interviews.
If You Love Design, Read More about It!
I thought I was lucky at first because my interviewers at Google asked me a lot of questions that I had never prepared before, but somehow I was able to think of something I had just read recently and talk about my takeaways from it. As I look back, I realized that a great deal of my knowledge about design comes from the medium articles I read while waiting for a bus, the podcasts I listened to on the train, the guest lectures I attended in college, the articles on Google Design that captured my eye while I was browsing through LinkedIn, etc. By reading & learning more about design during fragmented time, I was able to accumulate design knowledge across different areas, which shaped the way I approach design problems, and gave me plenty to chat about with other designers.
Be Yourself
I know you were expecting something less cliché than this, but this really worked for me throughout the interview process. Whether it’s the way I approached my design exercise with great details, or the way I made my presentation a compelling story, I made sure that I put in extra effort, going beyond what’s required to emphasize where my strength lies.
During my onsite interviews, I really showed my excitement about working at Google, because that’s exactly how I felt! I still remember that when my last interview was supposed to end, when I was supposed to be dying to leave after a whole day of interviews, my interviewer and I started talking about the difficulties of designing for emerging technologies, something both of us were super passionate about. “You know,” said my interviewer, “the interview has ended, so don’t feel compelled to stay. But I have a little more time, and this is something I really love talking about, so I’d be happy to chat more.” Therefore, I stayed and kept on asking more questions, not feeling the need to go home and recharge at all.
I often think of an onsite interview as a two-way selection process. It’s for the recruiting team to get to know the candidate better, but it’s also for the candidate to experience the working environment, and to get to know his/her potential colleagues. Once you feel like you can truly be yourself during an onsite interview at a company, that’s when you know that you would be happy when you eventually work there.
Be Prepared for the Unexpected
You probably won’t experience so many things that unexpectedly go wrong as I did during my onsite interview, but it’s always a good practice to be prepared for the worst. Be prepared for all your interviewers to be remote for your presentation, for your interviews, and even for your whiteboard exercise. Be prepared for internet failures, equipment failures, and what they mean for your prototype demos and videos. Most likely things will all go smoothly, but if things go wrong, don’t panic. Know that all your interviewers had been through such an interview before, and that they all want you to succeed.
Thanks for reading! Hope this is helpful.
It’s been 2 months since I joined Google, and I’m learning everyday. I’m planning to write more about things I observe and learn at Google, so stay tuned! Meanwhile, check out my other articles if you enjoyed reading this one:
