Mastering product design interviews
You’ve landed your dream design job—now what?
Doing your due diligence and making an informed decision on your offer
You’ve landed that dream design job after all those interviews! This may even be your second or third offer. In either case, good on you for coming this far. The hard work paid off and the tables have turned.
Before you accept the offer, do some homework to set yourself up for a strong head start in your next job. Now you’ll get to play the role of an interviewer to see if hiring this job will be best for your career.
In this article we’ll cover how to:
- Do due diligence to form the right expectations for the role, team and company
- Ask precise questions to get to the heart of the matter quickly
- Make a decision based on what you know so far
1. Doing your due diligence
When companies hire executives they usually go through an intensive interview process of getting the dirt behind the candidates. You should follow a similar process. With an offer in hand—take the time to get your questions answered about the company, opportunity and team so that you can make a well informed decision.
Interviewing your direct team
To start you should talk with people who you’ll be working with daily — a fellow designer, engineer, or a product manager. Pro tip–skip the email Q&A–set up a coffee chat or a phone call instead. The body language and voice can be more telling than the answers.
Interviewing your design manager
If you haven’t had a chance to talk with your design manager during the interview process — definitely make the time to do so now. And even if you did — it still helps to gather additional info about them, their management philosophy and how they think about the design team and where you fit in.
You should feel confident that this manager is someone who’s going to help you grow. If something feels off, now’s a good time to clarify. A good manager is like a coach, they’re here to set you and the team up to play your best. They’ll navigate tough decisions with poise. No manager is perfect but finding someone you can get along well will make a big difference over time.
Sometimes interviewing the people who just left will give you a more honest view of the workplace you’re about to join
Interviewing people who left
Now of course current company employees will be biased in favor of the company. It’s rare that someone will tell you that the org isn’t in good shape or that the work environment is stressful. So it helps to get a second opinion. Talk to a former designer if there was one there before. Sometimes interviewing the people who just left will give you a more honest view of the workplace you’re about to join.
When I was getting background info on one of my managers I looked at his connections on LinkedIn. One of those connections—let’s call him Joe—worked with my manager a few jobs ago. Coincidentally, Joe also worked closely with a CEO of another company that I interviewed with. Small world! By talking with Joe I was able to understand my future managers better and weigh the two offers differently.
So take the time to search out for those former employees, usually a few searches on LinkedIn is all it takes.
2. Questions you should consider
As you’re reaching out to folks and setting up coffee chats, it helps to have a strong question list ready that gets to the heart of the matter. Just like interviewing users, you don’t want to ask leading questions but instead get at the truth by asking about existing behaviors.
Some key areas you should get a clear signal on:
- The work itself—what are the expectations?
- Work life balance—am I going to spend nights and weekends here?
- The design team—is the team well positioned?
- Design maturity—key to the type of work you’ll be doing
- Startup specific—how much money is left in the bank
Let’s take a look at these in detail.
The work
There are some good questions to ask your design manager.
- What are your expectations for me in the first month on the job?
- How quickly do we ship new features?
- How involved is user research in the design process?
- Have you had a designer before who made a mistake or was underperforming? How did you handle their performance issues?
Work life balance
Working in a company that’s a good fit can make a difference between coming to work miserable vs happy. Some organizations pride themselves in going above and beyond pushing employees to work nights and weekend to achieve a greater mission. Other companies do the bare minimum and everyone leaves the office by 6pm. In the end, it’s a personal preference.
- What is it like to work here?
- How many projects does a designer usually work on in parallel?
- What does a usual day look like for a designer working here?
- What was the last intense project that you worked on? What made it intense?
Design team
To understand your growth opportunity it helps to understand the types of folks you’ll be working with and how the design team is situated in the company.
- How is the design team organized within the company?
- How big is the design team? Are there plans to grow it out? What roles are next to hire?
- What do you think is a current strength of the design team?
- What is a growth…
Continue reading an updated version of this article to learn all about the ins and outs of assessing a product design job offer.
Land Your Dream Design Job is a comprehensive book about landing a product design role in a startup, agency, or tech company. It covers the entire design interview process from beginning to end, and will arm you with techniques and strategies to navigate the (at times) turbulent waters of job searching with confidence. This book will help guide you to a role that plays to your strengths while providing enough support for professional growth.
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.
