How to Get a UX Design Job: Create a compelling portfolio, submit a stand-out application, and ace the interview to land your user experience dream job

by Lisa Murnan

  The Charm Factor

  It really does help to be charming. I’m not sure how you can achieve this if you’re not a naturally charming person but do your best. If you’re likable, the person interviewing you is going to be able to picture how you’ll be in a room with clients or stakeholders and how you’ll come across during design critiques, workshops, executive presentations, and user interviews. People hire people they like.

  When you first meet somebody, greet them by their name (“Hi Michael, it’s great to meet you”) and a smile and make small talk for a minute while you’re getting settled. If you can make them laugh, even better.

  But follow their lead! If they’re being professional, you be professional. If they’re being outgoing, you be outgoing. If you’re sitting across from a dry serious senior UX designer who is asking you about your UX experience, don’t launch into a bubbly “I just love UX, I am soooo passionate about it!” spiel or you’re going to annoy the hell out of them.

  Test and Iterate

  If you don’t make it all the way through the interview process, don’t despair. Learn whatever you can from the experience and iterate from there. Treat each interview like a usability test of sorts.

  You may not be able to get direct feedback from your interviewers (although if you’re feeling brave you can ask them), but through observation you should be able to tell what you struggled with or what didn’t sync up between what they were looking for and what you had to offer. Sometimes this isn’t your fault and there’s nothing you could have done about it. Maybe they hired internally. Maybe they wanted someone with SaaS experience and you’ve never worked on a SaaS project. It doesn’t mean you’re not a good designer.

  Let this quote about interviewing from senior product designer Weston Karnes’s Medium article “Learnings from Product Design Interviews” cheer you up:

  “Don’t take it personal. Let’s face it, interviews are dumb. People are asked to make assumptions and conclusions off entirely incomplete information. The sooner you realize this, the better.”

  13

  Interview Questions and Design Exercises

  Preparation is Key

  Below are a lot of potential questions you may be asked during an interview. As you read through them you may think, “I have no idea how I’d answer this!” That’s why you need to do the work up front. You don’t want to be fumbling for an answer during the interview. Hoping that they won’t ask a certain question isn’t a good strategy.

  Take time now to go back through past jobs and projects and find examples you can use to answer these questions. Read through your portfolio and resume and try to jog your memory. I did this recently and seriously couldn’t remember anything past two jobs ago. I had to go through old emails and deliverables to find examples (and there were some doozies…no wonder I blocked it all out!).

  Create cheat sheets to have nearby during an interview (if it’s a phone or video interview, you can keep them in front of you. If it’s an in-person interview you can read through them in the car right beforehand).

  When you have it all thought through and written down ahead of time and you get a question like, “Tell me about a time when you struggled on a project and how you handled it,” it’s almost like you’re taking a test at school and you have the answer written right there on your arm. It feels like cheating. But it’s not!

  Types of Interview Questions

  Interview questions are going to vary depending on the UX maturity of the company. (Jakob Nielsen has a great set of articles about the eight stages of UX maturity, just google “Corporate UX Maturity” to find them.)

  If UX is new to the company, expect to get asked questions about how you’ll fit into the existing process/methodology (like Agile), how you’ll evangelize UX across the company, and how you’ll work with engineers/product owners. I was the second UX hire at the company I work for now, so there was only one UX person on staff to ask me the skill-based questions. The rest of the people I interviewed with were engineers, business analysts, data architects, and technology managers.

  They didn’t ask me to walk through my portfolio and they didn’t care what tools I used, as long as I could easily share my design ideas with them. I was asked by several different interviewers how I would deal with developers who had strong opinions of their own about designs and how I would convince them to go with my design recommendations. (It was pretty clear what I’d be doing if I got hired!) The interviews were all one-on-one and for the most part conversational.

  In contrast, when UX is firmly established inside an organization expect to get asked very detailed questions about the user-centered design process, tools, and deliverables. Expect to walk through your portfolio in great detail, and be questioned about why you made some of the design decisions that you did. You’ll probably be asked to participate in a design exercise. Interviews will be more formal and contain pre-determined skills-related or behavioral questions.

  Sample Interview Questions

  Some of the sample questions below were copied directly from Glassdoor’s “Interviews” section, while others were what I had written down from previous interviews or interview prep.

  The “right” answer will often vary depending on what company you’re interviewing with (keeping in mind their mission/culture and the type of work they do), the person you’re interviewing with, and the specific role you’re interviewing for.

  For UX roles, remember that they’re trying to understand your process and whether or not you understand the user-centered design process and the value of user research and usability testing. They also want to know if you’re going to be able to take design feedback well and if you’re going to be able to interact professionally with stakeholders. When in doubt, build your answers around your (user-centered design inspired) process and collaboration skills.

  Write down your answers to the top questions and practice saying them out loud over and over until it feels smooth. (If you’re not a memorizer, or are afraid you’ll sound too scripted, riff off bullet points instead.)

  TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF

  You are going to hear this question so many times that you might as well write your elevator speech ahead of time and practice it in the mirror until it feels natural. It is usually the first question an interviewer will ask. This is an awkward open-ended question and if you don’t have a good answer prepared you can end up rambling for a few minutes and then feeling like you got off on the wrong foot for the interview.

  Instead of “Tell me about yourself,” think of it as “Give me a brief professional overview of yourself.” Craft a one-to-two-minute answer that sums up your career (especially your current job/projects) and your UX skills and design process. You could include a story about how you got interested/involved in UX to begin with.

  Do not take the interviewer through a chronological list of all your jobs since high school, or offer up a lot of personal details. Focus on what’s most relevant for this particular job.

  Go back through the job posting and look at it from the hiring manager’s perspective – what kind of person do they really want to hire? What skills do they call out specifically? Weave these attributes into your answer.

  WALK ME THROUGH SOMETHING FROM YOUR PORTFOLIO

  If you’ve structured your case studies well (using STAR or a similar method), you’ll make it easy on yourself when this question pops up.

  Choose a case study that either best matches the job description (if the hiring manager is looking for someone to design a mobile app, walk them through a mobile app you worked on) or that showcases your design process from end-to-end. (Either way, they are going to be very interested in your process.)

  Use the case study in your portfolio as a guide, but improvise a bit while you’re talking about it – don’t just read it verbatim off the page. Add a little color by throwing in details about how you worked with business stakeholders, or insights you gained from user research that weren’t included in the original
case study. Tell the story behind the photos and screenshots in the case study – those can be hard for reviewers to make sense of on their own, since they’re often cropped or reduced in size to fit inside the portfolio.

  Some places, like Google, will question you on your design choices (maybe even tiny things, like why your drop-down menu looks the way it does) so familiarize yourself with every screenshot in your portfolio and be prepared to explain your design rationale.

  WHAT IS YOUR DESIGN PROCESS?

  Remember, there is no one perfect process – it’s going to vary based on the type of project, technical constraints, goals, timeline, budget, etc. So don’t stress about your process not being “right.” Weave user-centered design principles into your explanation – no matter what the process is, it’s always important for UX designers to ask the right questions and to do everything they can to understand and involve their users.

  Related questions:

  What’s your process for working with other designers, developers, or product managers?

  Let’s say I have a new project for you to work on – what’s the first thing you’d ask me about it?

  EVALUATE A WEBSITE OR APP

  The interviewer may ask you to critique their existing product and offer suggestions for how you’d improve it (this was the type of design exercise I was given in San Diego). You may feel like you’re giving them hours of free consulting advice, but it’s a great way for them to assess whether you understand their business model or product, and how you will fit into the team. And get free consulting advice at the same time.

  Facebook asks interviewees to evaluate their favorite website or app and to analyze why they think the designer made the decisions they made, then asks if they agree with those decisions.

  Related questions:

  What’s one of your favorite apps/websites and one of your least favorite, and why?

  How would you improve our UX experience? (Wayfair)

  What app/tool/thing do you use often that you would redesign if you could? (Google)

  Describe a company that has great UX and why.

  What company/app/website do you admire when it comes to UX?

  Looking at this product, what UX issues do you notice?

  BEHAVIORAL QUESTIONS

  Questions like these are meant to reveal how you deal with failure or challenges. Everybody has them in their career. Interviewers want to see that you are humble and that you learn from your mistakes and grow professionally as a result.

  Examples:

  Tell me about a time when you went against the whole team because you believed your solution was correct. (Amazon)

  Describe for me a project that went badly wrong. Why did it go wrong, and what did you personally learn from it?

  Describe a situation where you used your influence and persuasion to successfully convince someone to see things your way. (Amazon)

  Give me an example of a project you were proud of. Why were you proud of it and what obstacles did you have to overcome? (Amazon)

  Tell me about a time when you had to advocate for a controversial design decision. What did you do? How was that received? What did you do when people disagreed with you? Would you approach it the same way if you had to do it again?

  Tell me about one of your projects where you felt you made an impact.

  Explain a time that you had to persuade a stakeholder or engineer to approve a particular design idea.

  How do you deal with people who have a strong opinion about how a certain feature should be designed, but you disagree that it’s a good user experience?

  There are times when a team member will not agree with your decision or plan. Tell me about a time when you encountered this on a project, and how you dealt with it. What was the outcome?

  How would you handle someone that is difficult to work with? (Amazon)

  Tell me about a time where you had to become a product expert. (Amazon)

  How do you resolve different opinions or solutions within your team or with the client? (Amazon)

  Tell us about a time you made a mistake in a professional setting. How did you fix the mistake and what did you learn from it? (Home Depot)

  YOUR CAREER GOALS AND WORK STYLE

  Examples:

  Why do you want to work here?

  Why do you want to leave your current company? (PayPal)

  Describe the work environment you are most successful in and why. (Home Depot)

  What do you need to improve upon? (Home Depot)

  What can you bring to the table that will affect the team positively?

  UX-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

  Examples:

  What is User Experience?

  How do you know your design is good?

  How do you know when a design is done? (Costco)

  How do you define UX design (or UX designer)?

  What was a challenging design problem you had to solve and how did you solve it?

  How do you feel about native mobile versus mobile web in terms of the user experience?

  Think of a long-term project in your portfolio. If you had two more months to work on it, what would you have done differently? What would have you added or continued to refine?

  Where do you get inspiration from? Who in the industry do you follow and read?

  What research methods do you use? (Facebook)

  How would you give feedback on a design that you thought was bad?

  How would you communicate your findings to different stakeholders?

  Describe a project where you’ve dealt with a very complex design problem. (Lucid Software)

  How have you thought about designing for accessibility? (Google)

  How did you get into User Experience? (Home Depot)

  In a form, what do you prefer for the field titles, aligned to the right or to the left? and why? (RSA Security)

  What has been your experience with agile/iterative software development?

  Can you tell me more about your previous experience at ___ and what methodologies you used? (Google)

  Will you please give me an example of how you used metrics to inform your design process? (Wells Fargo)

  How do you handle a situation where you were expected to design an interface with very little, or ambiguous software requirements? (Navitaire)

  WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST WEAKNESS?

  Please don’t answer this question with “I’m a perfectionist” or “I’m a workaholic” (or even worse, “I can’t think of any”). Everybody knows this is bullshit. Your interviewer isn’t going to be thinking to themselves, “Oh wow, really? It will be awesome to get a workaholic on the team!”

  This question is about seeing how self-aware you are and how willing you are to improve/learn/grow. Talk about a self-identified gap in your skills and how you’re working to improve it.

  This is a little tricky, because you don’t want to say something that would make you sound unqualified for the job (“Well, I’m really not a very good designer yet, but I’m working on it!”) or like an intolerant asshole (“I can’t stand it when I have to sit near somebody who chews loudly”).

  Try to come up with something that is related to the job but not a critical job skill. You could talk about how you’re working on your presentation skills by volunteering to present in your local Meetup group, or how you have a tendency to be disorganized so you’ve created a system (calendar, Evernote to-do list, etc.) that is working great. It’s all about presenting the weakness and the solution.

  CURVEBALL/WEIRD QUESTIONS

  Google used to be notorious for its curveball interview questions but stopped when its data showed that they were ineffective.

  Laszlo Bock told the New York Times, “We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.”

  In 1999, during the dot-com bo
om, I interviewed with an “e-business consultancy” in NYC and got my first taste of the intentionally stressful interview. The interviewer, a distracted VP, walked into the room where I had been sitting for a while, sat behind the desk facing me and asked, “So. Why should we hire you?” Then he put his feet up on the desk and drank his Dr. Pepper. I can’t even remember how I answered the question, I can only remember that hot flush of embarrassment and anxiety and pissed-off-ness as he sat there all cool and smug, waiting for me to respond. I got the job, but I’m not sure if it’s because I passed this particular test.

  There’s no way of telling what somebody will ask you. Just be prepared for anything in advance and don’t take it personally. It’s all just a big game.

  Design exercises

  Here are some real design exercises that were recently given to user experience job candidates during interviews (pulled directly from Glassdoor’s “Interviews” section).

  Design an elevator panel for a building with 1,000 floors. (Cornerstone OnDemand, Nov 2017)

  Design a dashboard for analytic data. (MemberSuite, Nov 2017)

  Design a mobile checkout process. (Virtusa, Sep 2017)

  Redesign a Nike shoe page. (Red Ventures, Aug 2017)

  Design an automated subway ticket dispenser. The machine has only three buttons (with programmable LCD screens next to each so you can change its label) and a changeable, scrolling display at the top. (Lifion, July 2017)

  There is a new residential skyscraper that also has a restaurant on top. Access to all apartments and the restaurant are secured behind a locked door. Design an interface that will be on the first floor and take the place of a door person. (Google, April 2017)