My process to getting a UX design internship at Google

Published in

UX Collective

7 min readDec 19, 2018

This past summer, I had the incredible opportunity to intern as a UX design intern at Google on the Firebase team. While I’ve seen quite a few people outlining their experiences during their internship at Google as a UX intern, I wasn’t able to find many stories on what their actual application process was like. Since the interview process had a few different steps — and prime intern application season is soon approaching — I wanted to share my personal experience for any students who might be interested in applying to Google next summer.

[Pre-step] Portfolio Review

This first step wasn’t really a part of the official application process, but I felt that it helped me tremendously for the months to come. A few UX Designers from Google were able to visit my school (Savannah College of Art and Design) for a campus visit a few months before I officially applied for the internship. I was able to have the opportunity to go through a portfolio presentation, receive feedback on from two Googlers, and make edits over my winter break based on said feedback. While I understand that not everyone might be able to participate in a portfolio review in this setting, I strongly recommend sharing your portfolio with a few different fresh eyes to gain as many comments as possible.

Here are some general takeaways and advice from my review session:

The narrative and structure of your case study is as important as the project it is documenting.

Quality over quantity — typically, it’s quite rare to present more than two projects during the average 45 minute interview. Be prepared to clearly articulate your research, design decisions, and execution for one to two projects.

Relax! You know your projects better than anyone else. I’m generally a pretty anxious person and definitely came off as nervous while I was presenting at times. My mock interviewer encouraged me to take a step back and treat the review as a design conversation with a good friend.

After this step, I made some refinements to my portfolio until I was ready to officially apply in January.

[Step 1]: Recruiter Phone Screening (30 min)

Google’s Summer UX Internship application window is quite short, so I applied the day it opened in January. Around a week after I submitted my application, I received an email from a recruiter scheduling a quick 30 minute phone screening. The call itself was asking fairly general questions like my background, technical skills/experience (Interaction design v.s Visual Design v.s Content Strategy v.s UX Engineering, etc), areas of interest, and why I wanted to work at Google. Once the call was over, I received a follow-up email about next steps and was soon presented with an email detailing my design challenge.

[Step 2]: Design Challenge (1 week)

Ah yes, the dreaded Design Challenge. Many companies are beginning to include this step in their interview processes — and for good reason! There’s a lot one can glean from a candidate in an accelerated amount of time, whether that be 45 minutes in-person or over a few days remotely. For Google, it’s the latter: you are given one week to complete the challenge upon receiving the email with the brief.

While I won’t disclose the exact brief here (feel free to reach out to me privately if you’d like more details), I’ll share a general overview of my experience. Basically, I was given the description of an imaginary situation where I was the designer in charge of a certain project. With the parameters provided, I could choose one of three ways to tackle the brief.

Here are some general tips on what I personally recommend while undergoing this portion, based on my experience:

1. There is no right answer.

As with most design challenges, the focus of the exercise is less on the “final” execution and more on the thought process and design decisions made throughout it. When in doubt, a condensed version of the general UX design process should be a great framework to approach your solution.

2. Don’t design in a silo.

Even though 7 days can be a short period of time to get a full-on user testing or interview session running, try your best to get as much external feedback throughout your design process! One of the most important core principles of UX lies in user insights, so it’s a huge plus if you’re able to document and showcase in a short design sprint.

3. Manage your time well.

The biggest challenge for me during my Design Challenge wasn’t actually the exercise itself, but more about the timing of when I had to complete it. I happened to receive the brief during a particularly loaded school week, so managing working on the exercise on top of everything else was definitely a test of time management. Keep in mind, you can ask your recruiter for extensions if there are more serious circumstances that you can’t work around!

4. Consider the flow and structure of the presentation.

Similar to how the structure of a case study can make or break a project — the same goes for the flow and structure of your deck/presentation/slideshow/etc. Keep in mind that your Design Challenge might be shared remotely with other internal Googlers, so make sure you provide adequate context in case someone looks through your presentation without you being there to speak through it.

5. Do more than they ask for! (if time allows)

Though the brief does ask for a few hard deliverables, what I found to be helpful during this challenge was to take a step back and think about the holistic picture of what you’re designing. It’s one thing to create a few pixel-perfect hi-fidelity wireframes, but oftentimes what makes a project more compelling is also considering the entire ecosystem of where the product/service resides.

[Step 3]: Technical Interview (1 hour)

After submitting my Design Challenge, my recruiter let me know that it was approved and I got a technical interview scheduled. This interview was remote and can last between 45 minutes to an hour. The types of questions you’ll encounter can wildly vary, because each interviewer is meant to ask questions targeting a certain area of the candidate’s expertise. I scoured the web beforehand in an attempt to find any tips for “Google’s UX Design internship technical interview”, but the questions that I experienced in my interview ended up being pretty different from others. That being said, some general tips that don’t hurt to review in preparation are:

Be prepared to articulate how you can work within a team, especially with teammates of different disciplines.

How do you consolidate conflicting feedback from users v.s your teammates?

What tools/technologies do you use, for what situations, and why?

Also be prepared to talk through your Design Challenge and one or two portfolio pieces! Another thing that was helpful to keep in mind was to understand that all of the knowledge is in your brain, it’s just a matter of clearly communicating your thoughts and decisions.

Following this step, I was given a form to fill out where I stated my team and location preferences to be placed into the team-matching process.

[Step 4]: Team-matching Interviews (45 min)

Around a week after my technical interview, I heard back from my recruiter:

Hi Jenn,
Great news — your technical interview last Friday went well and I have 3 hiring managers who are interested in chatting with you! The chats will be some technical questions (Interaction design/UX engineering) and a team match call. Can you share your availability (5–10 times between Monday — Friday 10am — 4pm PT) for this and next week? Looking forward to getting those set up, I’ll share more relevant details re:location/teams in my follow up email.

I was so excited! …I also didn’t know exactly what to expect. Thankfully, I had a positive experience with all three team-matching interviews and was not surprised by any questions I received. Depending on the hiring manager and the team, these calls can be closer to a mini technical interview or a conversation to learn more about you.

After finishing my team-matching calls, I indicated to my recruiter which team I wanted to follow — thankfully, the team felt the same way and we were a match! I received an official offer around a week afterwards, marking the end of the application process.

My experience with this entire application process lasted around two months from application to offer, though this time period can vary. I strongly recommend anyone interested in working at a large company that highly values the UX process to apply to the Google UX Summer Internship; I had a phenomenal experience and feel as though I learned a lot that isn’t offered in a classroom. I hope this article helped anyone looking for some advice, and best of luck! 🤠