How I got a UX design job at Google

thank you hey see ya that's exactly half of my knowledge of Hungarian see ya did I do it right do we have Hungarian people okay good see Google Translate so this is my Twitter handle I don't actually use Twitter so that's I guess part of the experiment I thought about suggesting Google+ but then I realized that would get everyone laughing so if you have questions I would love for you to just post something using the tag amuse conf and if you add mentioned me if we have some time at the end then I will hopefully be able to answer some of your questions and if I can't I'll answer them later so you're going to change jobs I'm kind of predicting the future here I can't really see but how many people were here because their company paid for them to come to the conference okay so everyone okay and how many of you actually raise your hand if you're sitting next to your boss okay so those people are exempt from the next question how many of you actually raise your hand if you think that you're gonna stay in your current job at the current company that you're working for over the next four years okay Wow loyal okay that was probably I don't know if you saw it was probably bout 12% of you this this talk will hopefully help a little bit with the rest of you in the USA the average length of time spent in a job is four point four years and it's even less than IT I was talking to a recruiter last week and I asked her like how do you how do you measure whether or not somebody has spent the right amount of time and the answer that came back was quite surprising four years is too long and we start to raise an eyebrow and ask what did you did you just like get lazy we're bored three years is good and two years is better there's something about a two-year energy so if you have been working for somewhere for two to four years it's time to move and getting a UX job is easy right all you have to do is show all of your awesome work to some company and get hired but there are a few complications and we all experienced this one non-disclosure agreements the amount of time I see people's resume it comes and it says I can't tell you anything I've ever done but I'm really awesome this one's a problem my favorite one though is when there is this great wireframe or something really beautiful that somebody's created and then it turns into this because we all rely on engineers who always translate our best intentions into the most incredible designs right or you're you're dealing with art students who have got really great education at Yale in this case this is the Yale University School of Art and this is their website I'm not joking it's really fun to go through this site I don't know if it's just a big joke or I don't know anyway I'm Andrew and what I want to do today is just talk to you a bit about the journey of applying for a job at possibly a tech giant or even just a UX job in a start-up or something something that really interests you and it's my goal that hopefully by the end you'll learn a little bit about how the process works at Google and also how I kind of have figured out ways to make it work for all of us tell you a little bit about myself I'm Australian if you couldn't figure out from the accent and I grew up where the pink arrow is pointing a little place called Red Cliff which was actually the first place settled by Captain Cook oh I wanted to mention something this is my first time using Prezi so if this all goes to please talk to Zoltan or yes either one this is called extreme user testing so I have never used Prezi before and if this doesn't work out I'm so sorry also I've brought some presents from Google some little things and I'd love to give them away at the at the end of Anna's talk so just before lunch but in my search for presents for you I forgot that today is actually my mom's birthday and I forgot to get her her present so what I wanted to do is ask you all for a favor I don't need you to sing happy birthday but I want you I'm in a video just for my mom and say look I care about you I'm a video everyone screaming happy birthday Kristina if I do that this talk was a complete success that's all I need to do to be happy today so I've got you all ready to go so on the count of three just scream out happy birthday Kristina as loud as you can and those of you who don't scream don't get a Google present so okay three two one that was awesome thank you okay now let's hope I figured out with iOS how to actually do that so I grew up on a farm in Queensland and where I grew up we had no internet we had nothing we didn't have roads we had tracks and tank rain water and it was kind of cute because this was kind of the highlight of my day growing a watermelon I'd never occurred to me that I'd be standing on a stage one day or talking about you user experience in fact the internet didn't really exist at the time unless you worked at the University in San Francisco and I didn't do very well at school I didn't I didn't pass many subjects I failed heart I failed mathematics and I spent most of my time playing games so not just the fun games on my Atari but fun games like chess and rubik's cubes and solving problems was something that i really like to do and the first big problem i had to solve was how the hell I'm gonna get out of here and and not be stuck in in the country town this was my first real resume I was willing to do anything to get a job in Sydney which is the big capital city of New South Wales and I applied for a bank and I thought you know they're getting so many resumes there's no way I'm gonna stand out I don't have a degree I didn't go to uni I failed maths and I want to work in a bank and so I made this wanted poster like I was a criminal because you know in Australia we're all criminals and I made it look like a criminal dossier I actually wrote dossier surveillance recently places Andrew last seen working at you know if you see him do not approach him just hire him immediately and the weird thing about this was I had no expectations that it would work I just was having a laugh but I got the job and now I work at Google and I want to tell you a little bit about how I got that job - because it's almost as funny but first has anyone applied for Google before here yeah couple I encourage you to apply we're looking for great talent if it doesn't work out with the Prezi role let me know but getting a job at Google is actually really hard I'm sure you've probably seen movies like the intern where you all you have to do is apply but it's quite tricky and I wanted to talk about how hard it actually is so I'm gonna give you some numbers some scary numbers the number of applications we receive each year is somewhere between 2 to 3 million and in those 2 to 3 million that's fifty seven thousand six hundred and ninety two applications each week they're the applications that manage to be received many people try and apply and then don't click Submit at the end or don't get all the way through because they'd become disheartened or don't apply at all because they're afraid that they'll be rejected 144 people are successful at getting a job at Google each week so every week we welcome around nearly 200 people to the company the chances of success if you apply 0.25 cent that's actually three times more difficult than getting into the top universities in Ivy League type of universities in America so your chances are actually one in 400 that's me the purple me yeah so once you're selected to go through this process it doesn't end there it's it's not like a phone call where you're told yeah congratulations it gets more complicated there's an interview panel and a hiring committee there are 10 years worth of background checks and to the day you have to provide where you worked and what you did and at the very end assuming all of that goes to plan Larry Page himself reviews your application and looks at your portfolio and decides whether or not it's going to work Larry's now no longer the the CEO of Google so it's sundar who probably be doing this that's a lot of reviews but they I'm told they actually check it and have a look so what's the secret how does somebody get an impossible job how did I do it with no university education there is no secret in fact you here today are possibly the best place individuals to accomplish something like this because you understand something very important you understand how to methodically and meticulously plan a UX campaign and that's what getting a job actually is we just maybe don't realize it at first so we need to UX ourselves we need to UX our resume our folios our process our interviews everything we need to approach applying for a job in UX as though it was the job something you're already good at so what's my UX process mine is not special it's probably the same as yours yours might be even better but to simplify it today I wanted to just show you a few things that I do and did to get my job at Google in UX research document design and deliver now there are many interim steps these are the best buckets I can think of to try to I guess distill down a UX process so I'm going to start with some research have any of you how am i we before this is a tool that I first learned from a presentation not it's not unlike this one by an amazingly talented designer from Boston Consulting Group and this is the best way to start at the beginning of a UX process to understand why you're actually doing the job is this just a matter of some money needing to be spent by a company who wants to hire a UX designer or are you actually doing some work so how might we is a great template to really find out the why of something why are we doing this and how will we do this so an example of how I how might we'd my application I said how might we create a deliberate and controllable way or sources recruiters and interviewers to see the best and most attractive version of ourselves by pimping the out of our portfolios and preparing the interview and we do all of this so that we get the job that we want anyone's feeling a little uneasy because of all the animations blame the Prezi people I get a bit like when they do the rotation ok so let's do some research on the job itself why are you actually applying for this particular job whatever the next job is is this job a step up in your career is it going to help you in the long run don't just think of the next job think that you're probably going to have that job for two to four years and there'll be another job after that so think three jobs ahead have you done this job before can you actually do the job and will you enjoy doing this job is there room for accidental advancement and this happens all the time you get the job and then suddenly somebody leaves or somebody has a baby or and then you need to take their place is that going to happen here and can you spin that sort of advancement later at the next interview as a promotion what about the company what does the company do well this company help give you some recognition by proxy at the next job when they're saying where did you work last is this company sound impressive does this company do something interesting that a sorcerer or recruiter or interviewer will find interesting later money money is great we need that but it isn't actually everything and what I found is that organizations that are willing to pay a lot of money for UX are doing so because they don't need UX and they're not prepared for it and you're going to walk into a thunderstorm of hell and you're not going to be able to actually do good UX so while you're making a lot of money at the four-year point when you're ready for the next job you'll have possibly nothing to show for it except a lot of stress and maybe your hair's falling out and keep in mind that good projects lead to other good projects when you do something great it's much more easy to get the next great thing by pointing at the last great thing so the company that you're going to work for should do something that interests you and something that you think is great what about cultural fit now we all have our own preferences about the best way we fit inside an organization are you wanting to get a job that's where you would be the big fish in the little pond or a little fish in a big pond or just the right size fish in just the right size pond what do you want to be a fish in a member of a team inside an organization these are your decisions the company that's advertising this job doesn't get to make these for you you get to make these before you apply so after we know a little bit about ourselves and what we're looking for and what the company that we're looking at does and what we're going to do there the next step is to consider some user personas and we do this in UX so who are our users now it's easy when you're applying for a job to think of the user as the person who reads my application but that would be a mistake there are many different kinds of users throughout one of these processes for larger organizations that are hiring in tech they certainly almost have sources our sorcerer is somebody who kind of just checks resumes very quickly a recruiter is somebody who's been given those resumes by a sorcerer and then makes decisions about whether to put that person forward then there are interviewers hiring managers acceptance committees and then CEOs or you know big bosses so there are a lot of different users and I'm going to focus on three today the reason we the reason we need to do this and I'm sure as UX people we all agree that user personas help us understand the needs goals desires traits motivators what these people are going to do without thinking what they should do and maybe don't do what their pain points and fears are and we do all of this so that we we can predict the future like looking into a crystal ball about what this person's going to think feel and do when they receive my application if you don't know how to get this information a lot of its on Google you know search it on Wikipedia it's on the internet but you're probably already working for organizations that have sources and recruiters and interviewers approach them at your current work and interview them and appeal to their vanity and say oh you know I just really want to learn about your job and like what you do and they will give you all of the information that you can then use to get out of there why is this important like the crystal ball scenario if we can understand these user groups we can predict their behavior and if we can predict their behavior we can beat them at the game and it is a game and it's a game we can win if we play a couple of steps ahead it's like noughts and crosses if you get onto the game and make the very first mistake you lose every time if you can be a one step ahead you win so a little bit about sources that I've learned sources don't have feelings they're like human robots and they can't have feelings they won't fight for you they're only attracted to buzz words and quick wins and this is because they're going through so much data in a day that there is no possible way for them to focus in on the personality or the important features and benefits of a real person they're very very bored they don't last long in their jobs and no does not mean know when a saucer tells you no and it's really important to understand that they're afraid of doing the wrong thing or missing a potential lead is an example of what happened when I first applied at Google saucer auto rejected me we've all received this email I think maybe not from Google but from every it's the same email every time quality of candidates has been high unfortunately in this case you are unsuccessful but don't worry we're going to keep your resume on file and get in touch with you at some time in the future now when I first got this I thought yeah damn I missed out and then a few seconds later I remembered my past and I remembered that I I'm on the little farm guy I don't say no I don't accept no sorry as an answer so I wrote back to the saucer and I said you know guys it's really sad that you made this decision about my suitability for the role when you haven't checked my portfolio I knew this because I'd pimped it out with Google Analytics and I could see that nobody from Mountain View had looked at it I'm a user experience designer who can do X Y Zed people in my field respect me because of X Y Zed and I think I would be a really great candidate for you please feel free to get back in touch with me in the future I'm cool I'm not upset I'm not angry that I was rejected but I'd be open to you know a rethink on this within five minutes of sending this email the sorcerer wrote back and said what's your actual situation when can you start and which country do you want to work in so I replied and then the process began I got handed over to a recruiter and a recruiter cares about the company unlike a sorcerer a recruiter actually does have feelings they're very stressed and they're under a lot of pressure I don't know if you know many recruiters in tech but they don't last very long in one place it's a very high attrition job and it's not easy they're also easily embarrassed by candidates letting them down so they want to make sure that you are sure thing that you're exactly what they're looking for they're impressed by recognized companies and salaries if you can tell them that you worked for a company they know that's gonna be a big help and what's important to think about when we're dealing with recruiters is that they actually are on your side they want you to be good they want to fight for you they don't want you to become a deadly for them because you're their bread and butter then you get through over the recruiter stage and they parm you off to the interviewers and depending on the position and the organization it could be one too many interviews I had seven on my first day with Google and then another five the next day separate interviews there's a lot of interviews and it gets crazy but one thing that was consistent about all of the interviews across all of the jobs that I've ever had is that I found that interviewers care very much about the company that they work for and the internal culture of that company they're very busy with their own lives and their real work they're taking time away from their job to interview a person they don't know for an hour a person that will most likely turn out to be a rejected candidate so they welcome this positive distraction and hope that you're going to be a little bit of sunshine in what was a normal day they're also afraid of saying yes yes means do I want to work with this person yes means oh if this person turns out to be really I'm gonna be like cleaning up all of their mess for the next four years until I'm out of here they don't want to be saying yes and then ending up being you know their own mistake for letting you in but they do want you to succeed and they do want to give you good news interviewers don't like rejecting candidates it's really hard especially given that then their UX designers they're not recruiters and sources who have been trained how to say no the most important thing to think about interviews and interviewers is that they make their mind up about you in the first five minutes that's it and I'm going to talk more about that later but just keep that in mind after we've done a little bit of our user personas it's time to start documenting our approach and the documentation of our kind of approach here ultimately ends up being a resume or a LinkedIn profile so document your process that's the first step what do you actually do UX is kind of different no matter what what we say we're all at a UX conference but depending on the position depending on the decline or the job we're all doing really different things so this is an opportunity for you to document your own self put a narrative voice into a case study show a little bit about yourself it provides also tangible proof that you can actually do the job this is an example of my own like case study which you can copy from my website and just take it it's been a templated one that I stole from somebody else and it's worked really great I want to show you an example of how I put a narrative voice into a case study this is the case study I've scrolled down a bit to show you some cool interesting funny bits so I'm like what did I inherit here what was this what was the reason for this this particular job I inherited an impossibly complex form filled with engineering technobabble coded in tables it was horrible and I show a screenshot of the horrible thing and then I say I'm a god I wasn't afraid that my user because I understand my users they're looking for a positive distraction they're looking for a little bit of flavor this wasn't unprofessional this was awesome and they loved that so think of your case study less as being an excuse to be boring in methodical and think of it as a way to actually speak to your users and the client that you made this thing for is no longer important you're really framing this now for the next client so after we've done a little bit about our process we want to also document our history our history is our past job list our clients who we've worked for before make a neat and tidy resume do not use Microsoft Word templates just don't just a text file is better the sources and the recruiters see these and they throw them away straight away without even reading that you went to Harvard and that you did this awesome thing so just try to make something from scratch you are designers it doesn't have to be the next best designed resume in the world it just has to be not Microsoft List every client you've ever touched every single one if you've ever moved a pixel it's a client or a job no matter how big or small that is not an exaggeration don't invent any clients though if you didn't move that one pixel that's not a job and it's not a client you need to be able to look somebody in the eye and say yeah I I did work for that client I can't really show you what we did it's protected under NDA and it's not gone live because the developers destroy but it was Sony and I did some work for them I told you earlier that they do a 10-year background check at Google but a lot of big tech companies do this now so when you go inventing it's really sad when you've been offered a job and then the the company or the organization that's hired to do the background check ends up saying hey they made all this stuff up and then you have to say no to the candidate and then send them home often the background checks are completed after you've already started work so it's really awkward when you find out that they made all everything up even though they're already working for you absolutely do not make any mistakes on your resume no spelling mistakes of any kind this is the one document you should share with as many friends as possible read it backwards I don't know if you've tried this but reading a document backwards helps remove the automated blanks that you fill in with your brain covering over mistakes if you read it backwards it completely changes the way you approach the document and you'll start finding all of the typos and the double spaces and then read it again and again and again and then copy the whole thing on to LinkedIn once you're done make it memorable make it fun is important my first resume apart from the wanted poster was actually at McDonald's that was my first job and I printed it on pink paper and sprayed it with perfume because I knew that they were going to get a pile of resumes from my school that was like this high and all I wanted was for mine to stand out because we were all the same we were all just high school kids making something memorable is not unprofessional you can be a little fun with it and show a little bit of personality once we've done our documentation we're ready to start designing we're able to start thinking about how we're going to put this together and absolutely every time I've ever seen a portfolio hand coded by a designer it has been terrible we are meticulous we design great things for our clients and our employers but when we're designing for ourselves we are the worst clients ever we're like no I think I want it to be I think it needs more pop I think and we keep changing our mind and then it just gets it just falls apart um I've never seen a UX candidate be rejected because they use Squarespace there are other CMS templating engines out there that are pretty good Squarespace is great and it works you can customize it like crazy you can even insert code snippets which I I would suggest you try to do and put some Easter eggs in there like ha ha ha I didn't code this and when they read the code and they see that it's Squarespace and then you're funny snippet it'll make them laugh so make the make the portfolio online iterated iterated iterator again no mistakes read it backwards but design in secret online CMS's index your the site a lot they provide up a robots.txt X file Google will index it pretty much straight away and we have this thing called time machine so what happens is I'm able to use the time machine and there are there are free time machines on the web but I'm able to use the time machine to look at how you build your portfolio over time because it was live the whole time you never shared the link maybe even if it was a temporary link I can still find it and I can see how many times you changed the name of your job title or said that you did something and then deleted it and then put it back again the time machine absolutely gets checked and the way you can avoid this is make sure that whatever templating engine you use the the website is not live and not indexable until you're absolutely ready I talked about this like a campaign like a presidential campaign for I mean I'm living in America now but presidents need to be prepared before they go announcing they want to be the president they don't just say hey I'm gonna be the president and then oh yeah and I'm making my website next week and I'm gonna figure out a plan about what it is I'm how I differentiate myself from Hillary Clinton the week after that it's completely orchestrated in advance so that the day you say I'm ready you don't have any surprises and it's a planned experience the same way you launch products at your current jobs sell a phone bone cell we all have them and there's a reason that own cell they're sexy and if you go to a website for any phone manufacturer Apple Google Samsung HTC they all do the same thing they create a conversion funnel this is the conversion funnel name of the thing feature name a bit of text and a big Buy Now button and that's what you should do with your portfolio you don't have to do something crazy new because the person who's looking at your portfolio is that sorcerer or that recruiter they don't know the difference between a good UX experience and a great UX experience they're just looking for sexy they're looking for buzzwords so do the thing they understand and that is how to buy a phone and if you do that you'll go okay here Steve blanks some of you may have already used these they're pretty cool a screen shot of your work on a portfolio unfortunately just won't cut it it the aspect ratios change you can't always get the same browser width and height you end up with different size chrome browsers or internet explorer if you're one of those people and you you end up with a hodgepodge which is an Australian way of saying it looks pretty so look for some blanks I'm going to show you how easy a blank is to use I started with a wireframe in sketch I found the PSD blank online for free and I double-click the smart layer and I paste it in my sketch file and then I click Save and that's now my a my app I'm gonna show you how easy that is just to make sure that I'm telling the truth I go into here I copy this paste it in there I say yeah okay click Save now I have the amuse conference website on a phone that looks way better than the screenshot and you can do this there are heaps of them and if you make some cool ones please send them to me I love them okay know your audience at all times I talked about this before and I'll say it again you're not designing this website for another UX designer necessary to look at your designing it for sources recruiters and potentially an interviewer but they're more interested in you as a person be selective and be consistent about the assets that you demonstrate here you don't need to show everything from 1995 when you first started doing this job and you don't need to demonstrate ten years of experience on a portfolio Apple doesn't say hey this is what the first iPhone looks like and now this is the iPhone six they just talk about the features and benefits of the current thing the current thing is the current job you're doing plus a little bit in the past this is an example of two different clients that I did some work for one was a creating a document it wasn't even a website and the other was an application they were done at a different time but they look like they're the same asset they look like I'm telling one story I'm being consistent in the presentation of this design across multiple projects if you are protecting work under NDA do not disclose it that's no problem no recruiter worth their salt will ever say to you I want you to tell me the secret because I don't want you to tell their secret when you're going for the next job in four years so what you can do though if the application or website or product has already gone live is obscure it and then say that you made it so this client was a client that I worked for that I can't talk about it's the product that I made has already gone live and I was under an NDA to say that I didn't do it but I've done this and I'm waiting for them to send me an email to say we're going to sue you and you need to take it down it's very hard for them to sue you because they can't prove damages because the product has already gone out and then they would be trying to sue you to say that you breached a contract that costs them a lot of money and it has absolutely no benefit most of the time they'll send you a cease and desist which says hey we noticed that you're sharing something you shouldn't be sharing please remove it and then you just take it down immediately and it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission in this case I have never once received a cease-and-desist for doing this but the key is never do it if the product or application has an or begone life okay now that we've got our design portfolio ready online and we're happy with it we've read it backwards we've got all of our friends to read it backwards and we've made sure that there are no mistakes we've got a consistent voice and we've considered our audience it's time to deliver it and deliver it means apply for the job when you're applying for a job at companies like Google or Twitter or Facebook it's a little bit different to a medium-sized organization but one thing remains consistent which is that being daring never really fails you are okay with rejection if you're daring is it's it's part and parcel with being a being a designer in tech you're going to get rejected but don't take no for an answer because no doesn't always mean no and what's the best way to stand out think about it how can I do something that hasn't been done before that's the best way to stand out here is an example of how I first got well what my first plan was for getting a referral from a Googler I found this guy on LinkedIn he was a UX manager at Google in London and I had a friend who was working in the same building as Google in London and I got my friend to get this delivered to his desk it's a cupcake and there's a it's it's not a very nice photo because he was using an Android phone and he he he took this photo but it shows a cupcake that I drew in a wireframe and it says visit Andrew dougherty comm slash cupcake M if this guy had visited this is what he would see that's it there was nothing more operation cupcake had begun prepare yourself because they're gonna keep coming and my evil knows no end I'm gonna keep sending you cupcakes and they were gluten free that's important he never contacted me but he ate my cupcake and I didn't accept that that was the end of the road I've figured out another way what I ended up doing was I have found apartments in London where people were working in tech like in an area of London and somebody had said that they were Google or looking for a flatmate so I moved with them it wasn't because I wanted to live in that flat and it wasn't because I wanted to make friends with this guy but then I waited a whole year so he didn't feel used and then asked him for a referral and it worked I didn't even need to give him a cupcake it was awesome so I'm gonna give you my address at the end gluten free ok be prepared if you get through this whole process and you get an application into a Google recruiter and it's time for interview this is like your moment to shine and you do not want to destroy it by not being prepared remember your research remember your users and do more if necessary if you end up finding out the names of the people that you're going to be meeting with stalk them on LinkedIn but do it from an incognito window or a fake LinkedIn account don't do it from your real one and certainly don't look at any of these people on LinkedIn when your website and your campaign is not ready because how many of you use the who's viewed my profile thing on LinkedIn I do yeah a lot so we're all vain at the end of the day and recruiters and sources are the same they they check it and if they see that a UX designer has looked at their profile they will click it and they will look at your profile and then they will go looking for a reason to contact you if you're not ready because you haven't prepared yourself then your one chance was taken so don't go clicking until you're ready and at that moment hopefully you know they'll make contact with you and keep the process off when you're thinking about your interview if a design exercise is required and it probably should be if it's not there are some alarm bells don't be afraid to question everything that you've been asked I was once asked how would you design the next ATM where you receive cash a banker man I said I wouldn't I said sorry yeah I wouldn't that's um I don't think we need to redesign the ATM that's the end of that and that was fine that wasn't a problem I thought about it and I realized that they were asking me a bogus question if you think to yourself why or I wonder if note it down and be prepared to share that idea with the people in the room in the interview if you used buzzwords on your resume or on your portfolio that you didn't quite understand my one was Python and C++ then you want to make sure you understand those things prior to interview day and I spent a lot of time on an airplane learning Python and C++ know the company mission statement and know it off by heart they won't and it will impress them that you do recite it by heart and have opinions about the company if they launched a shitty product that you didn't think was very good and say so in the interview I talked about Google+ in a way that I'm not allowed to repeat here but it went okay you're allowed to have opinions and these opinions are important if you don't have them you're just a puppet and somebody else will get more attention than you and beyond time this one seems like yeah but of course of course I would be on time you would not believe how many times people turn up late to interviews even at Google even when we've flown them to Mountain View to meet with them even after all of this they turn up late just be three hours early and read a Kindle or something while you're waiting that's okay and most importantly be yourself if you can pretend to be someone else that's great but then when you get told you didn't get the job you'll be thinking oh man if only I had been myself then maybe they would have liked me but if you are yourself and you don't get the job very rarely will you think oh man I wish I had pretended to be someone I'm not because once you've done a week of work you start becoming yourself and then the person that they thought they were getting in it turns out you're not you're not them then you've got a clash and then you get fired and then you know it's not great this is the five minutes thing that I mentioned earlier there's a study called thin slices done by MIT about how interviews you know run the first five minutes is crucial an interviewer will make their opinion about you in five minutes or less and then they spend the rest of the time confirming their original bias this is terrible but it's true and unfortunately we can't change it so your first five minutes is everything you you cannot afford to warm up you need to be ready in those first five minutes make a joke stand up smile and shake their hand when they come into the room say their name back to them as you shake the hand and you won't forget it the rest of the time is just verification of that first five minutes where they realize that they loved you even though I've told you to be yourself I'm now gonna tell you not to be mirror the energy of the person sitting across from you if they've got a bubbly energy UV bubbly if they're feeling a bit professional you be a bit professional use similar language to them I see what you're saying I think I think I think that I hear I hear where you're coming from use the same verbs but don't let this mirroring encourage you to lower your guard they might say something like yeah man I hate working more than 8 hours and then you say yeah I hate it too and then they're like oh oh ok no that's not very good my favourite one is I love smoking weed in Colorado that's awesome you too just don't be creepy but still be yourself and if you're creepy be yourself it's just a job at the end of the day after the interview it's time for a reality check don't let it get to you that you might be rejected if you were yourself it absolutely does not matter that you were rejected remember that even if you are successful and you get the job it's only gonna be for like two to four years and then you'll be doing it again so when you're rejected which maybe you will be just think to yourself oh well there's gonna be another one and I'll quit that one too and then I'll be here again and this cycle will continue until a computer figures out how to do my job try to obtain multiple offers even if some of them are a bit bogus that's ok have some bargaining power put a bit of pressure on to these people and say hey I've got another offer on the table you know I have my start date is set I really want this but I need to know before I tell these people that I'm not gonna work there I actually got a job at booking calm before I worked at Google and I used that as leverage I'm sorry booking com if you're here but it worked and I got a great trip to Amsterdam out of it always have fun and don't take yourself too seriously even in an interview just be the way you would be when you're around your friends because that's ultimately the kind of workplace that you want to work in and proliferate that that feeling in that motivation and that kind of experience yourself in an interview always say thank you thank the person for their time thank them for listening to you in an interview thank them for taking an hour out of their day thank them for replying to your email thank them for viewing your LinkedIn profile it never hurts to say thank you and after all of this try to remember that at the end of the day on the scale of the universe of the whole universe what we do is just UX though thank you [Applause]

Channel: Andrew Doherty

Views: 124,499

Keywords: ux, interviewing, google, andrew doherty, product design, ux design, ux interview, ux design interview, ux interview questions, ux portfolio

Id: lrcqt4RelJ4

Length: 44min 23sec (2663 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 29 2016