I interviewed 10 UX designers. Only 1 is hired. Why?

I interviewed more than 10 UX designers for Zalando and this is what I've learned my name is Ines and you are on my channel about UX design I have 15 years of experience in UX design and the past three years I'm working as a principal product designer at Zalando and interviewing people is actually a part of my job description so I do that a lot despite recent years being not very lucky for UX design industry in general and we did not do a lot of hiring as previously we did during the pandemic I recently counted and figure out it was more than 10 designers already but only one person who I've met during the interview process was hired eventually there are good reasons for that and honestly it's not because I'm picky as an interviewer in fact I almost always approve people to go further into the hiring process but the thing is that we have our own checklist if you wish and only if we have certain evidence that we can link to the points in this checklist we can approve the person and hire them and I get a lot of questions about interview preparation so I decided to sum up my experience about being a hiring manager and I have identified three major reasons why UX designers fail when they are on the interview and the thing is if you have been already invited to the interview that means that your portfolio checks out so we are not going to talk about your portfolio how to prepare assuming that it is already enough that's why let's focus on the things that could go wrong during the interview process only and the first reason the majority of your designers fail to go through the interview process is that because they come unprepared and big companies they hate that small companies actually would also appreciate if you know a bit about the history and if the person comes unprepared that gives the person this unreluctant vibe you know and if before the pandemic companies were reaching out to candidates themselves and asking them basically to participate in interviews this attitude might have been possible but right now it is unacceptable if you come unprepared we will definitely see this and you will be rated lower than other candidates because others will stand out in the comparison with you so please do do a small research about the company you are applying to read their blog and website find out who are working in this company it's not so complex you know and definitely go and explore the product because if recruiters and hiring managers will see that you know the product that you came prepared they will definitely give you some extra points okay this first reason frankly doesn't come that often to me luckily because our recruiters they actually do a lot of pre screening and candidates they allow to come to us they are definitely prepared but this mentioned multiple times by my friends recruiters so I decided to include it as well and definitely that happened with me many times when I was working in startups and agencies so it is a very fair point to look at by the way if you like this video so far give me thumbs up and hit the subscribe button down below that's important for me and for YouTube algorithms and we are moving on now the second reason why UX designers fail on job interviews it's something I encounter very very often and this reason is when UX designers explain poorly what they did in the previous company you see every hiring process for UX designers includes this step called portfolio deep dive and this is where we ask people to walk us through the design process they did for previous companies and projects we try to identify what real impact this person has made and what was the circumstances the person was introduced to and I've noticed that many people are stressed about this interview type because they are afraid that their actual design process was imperfect but as I said in the beginning if you have been invited to interviews already that means that what you have in your portfolio is enough for us and it's fine that your design process was not perfect no one has a perfect design process believe me but what we're looking for is that how proactive you were what do I mean by being proactive here basically I mean that you did not do just what you were told to do but you have identified opportunities or some imperfections some gaps in the design process or in the user experience overall and you pro actively suggested some improvements even if you were not able to change the design process or the outcome eventually that does not matter what matters is that you have tried so conditions you are working in UX design will rarely be perfect there will always be challenging clients or stakeholder is tight deadlines in perfect design libraries but what we do is that we're trying to improve what we can and after some period of time we can have this influence on the design process and things eventually will become a little bit better you need to demonstrate that you have found these opportunities this imperfection these gaps and you have tried to solve them in these ways but also try to stay constructive when you're criticizing your previous company or a client you need to tell a story about you being proactive but not aggressive tell that you have learned something from this experience tell that you have tried this and this is why it did not work and maybe next time you will try something different this is it this is what we want to hear and it's actually easier than it seems if you just know where to pay attention to the third and the last reason why your designers failed during job interviews is that they give rushed answers and this is mostly the problem that shows itself during the so called design challenges because during the design challenges you will be asked third provoking questions and here I believe that many people can do better if they will just take a pause create a space for themselves on the interview and just give a more structured answer but many people they don't do that and that's why their answers is hard to follow but articulating design decisions is one of the most important skills for your ex designers and this is one to we want to assess on the design challenge interview so partially that comes from nervousness I get it but then know it about yourself and learn some technique how you can overcome those nervousness what helps me personally is to think that I'm interviewing the company in the same way they are interviewing me and that helps me to calm down and also place myself on the more active role during the interview process when you receive a thought provoking question where you don't know the answer immediately it's okay to take a pose just tell an interview hmm that's a very interesting question let me think about it for a moment and then in this space you can even take some notes and write down some bullet points that can help you to structure the answer there is also one fantastic book I can recommend you to read it is called Articulate Your Design Decisions and this book can really help you to be better on job interviews and will help you with your storytelling now if nothing helps and you cannot battle with your nervousness or rushed answers then rehearse job interviews a shortcut for that would be to find a mentor I have a video on this channel about how to find a UX mentor there I'm giving some strategies about how you can do this and what is the difference between a mentor, a coach and a teacher even if you cannot find a mentor you can always help your friends to help you out this is what I did with my partner when he was applying for jobs in Berlin he's a software developer I have no idea what to ask software developers about so I just read through the list he gave me but that did not matter at the end because the outcome of this more interview was a video that my partner could watch them and identify some growth areas I know it's very painful to watch yourself on the video believe me I've made like dozens of videos before I've got used to how I look and how I sound on videos but if you will go to this pain that will pay you off I promise because there you will find out few things first you don't look that bad as you thought second there are minor things you can improve that will make you already look good for example my partner after watching this video that we made together added an additional lighting to the table just to look good and try to smiled more and those minor things putting in the position of control over your job interview and if you feel that you are in control you are more confident in the process in general those were three major reasons why UX designers don't make it through their job interviews but there is one thing I also wanted to mention please never come late this is like an ultimate thing that can ruin it all and that was it for today if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more videos like that subscribe to my channel I hope this video was helpful and let me know in the comments what my next video should be about and I see you next time

Channel: Inès Mir — Design in tech — UX & AI

Views: 4,991

Keywords: UX design, UX/UI, UX/UI design

Id: ny5yASML0Ck

Length: 8min 47sec (527 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 28 2024