Mastering product design interviews
Passing the design phone screen with flying colors
Preparing your pitch, telling your story, and asking questions to land the onsite interview
You’ve put your design portfolio together and started applying. Now you’ve got a phone call scheduled with one of the companies (or several)! Congrats! So what’s next?
You’ll be speaking with…
Design phone screens are usually short, about 15–30 minutes interviews with one person. They give you an opportunity to present yourself, your work, and let the employer know why you’re interested.
There are usually two types of folks who will call you:
Recruiter
If this is your first phone conversation with the company, a recruiter will usually reach out. They’ll talk about the role, ask some questions and will try to gauge your interest. Aside from screening they also want to leave you excited about the opportunity. Take advantage of that by treating the recruiter as an ally in the interview process.
Hiring manager
A call with the hiring manager is usually next. On occasion I also had these calls with peer designers. Either way, since both parties have domain expertise, they’ll dig deeper on your design process and case studies.
Sample questions they’ll ask
The first few minutes of a phone screen are usually formulaic so it helps to think through the questions ahead of time. Preparing by writing your answers down will help you come off as confident and even spontaneous if you rehearsed your story thoroughly.
Generally you’ll be asked about your work background, your design approach, and your current work situation.
1. Your introduction and work history
This is an opportunity for you to set up the context of your story. Remember the pitch you’ve prepared. You want to come off as having a deliberate career path in mind.
Sample questions in this category:
- Tell me more about your career journey — how did you end up where you’re currently at?
- What would you like to do next?
- Why are you interested in working with us?
- Where do you envision yourself long-term?
- What are you looking for next in your role?
These questions give the interviewer a sense of your past, your present and where you want to be in the future.
2. How you approach work as a designer
The interviewer is interested to see if you have a specific process when approaching problems. What framework do you use? Is your approach rigid or flexible based on the context at hand? Are you able to bend and break the process while focusing on outcomes?
Some questions you might expect:
- What does design mean to you?
- Walk me through a project in your portfolio?
- What is the most exciting project you worked on? Why was it exciting?
- What was the most challenging project you worked on? What made it difficult?
- Who was the most difficult stakeholder in this project?
These questions are designed to probe your design process, get some initial signals around your collaboration skills, and to get a glimpse of how you solve problems — your mindset so to speak.
3. Your work situation
Not exactly the most fun questions but necessary for the interviewer to ask to make sure everyone’s on the same page:
- Why are you searching now?
- Would you require visa sponsorship in the future?
- What salary are you expecting?
Don’t let the salary question scare you. You can dodge it by saying you expect a salary commensurate with your experience and save the harder negotiations for later. If the recruiter pushes you for a number you can provide them a range based on a (somewhat) objective criteria such as salary estimates like AngelList (if applying to startups) or levels.fyi (if applying to larger companies).
Questions to ask
Your questions should be tailored to the person who’s interviewing you and the role itself. Focus on a few specific questions to open up the conversation and follow the thread from there. You can think of this as doing user research. What important questions should you ask first? What’s a deal breaker? What are some nice to haves to follow-up with?
General questions
Here are some to get you started:
- How is the design team organized?
- What challenges are you facing today?
- What problems can I help you with?
- What excites you about working here?
Continue reading this article on Holloway and learn how you can prepare for phone interviews.
And if you want to learn more about the design job search process, check out my latest book, Land Your Dream Design Job.
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You’ll learn:
- What skills are expected of designers
- How to demonstrate those skills throughout the job search process
- How to identify your next opportunity
- How to target your job search process to stand out
- How to build a stand-out portfolio and tailor it to your dream opportunity
- The ins and outs out of various design interview types from portfolio presentations, whiteboard challenges, app critiques, to take home design exercises and many others.
You’ll also find in-depth advice on how to apply beyond the job boards, and how to conduct due diligence, negotiate compensation, and accelerate onboarding to your new role.
