Finding a UX Design Job: Chapter 3
So I did the prep work and the leg work and finally the phone was ringing. Each company is different in its process of hiring as are recruiters. I will try and cover all here:
The email: This can come from anyone of the online places you published yourself as well as a direct response to your application. These emails tend to be short and aim to filter you from the other applicants. Questions will be direct and ask for your salary expectations, type of work and starting date. If you don’t know the answer or want to see what they might offer try and research the company a bit to get a sense of the role etc before responding. If the person contacting you is the HR or a manager try and set a face to face interview at this point to skip the phone call stage.
The phone call: This can be the HR of a company, a recruiter or even the head of UX himself. They know a little about you, saw your CV and perhaps some of your work and they want to get a feel of who you are and how you would fit before brining you in. Most will start with ‘tell me more about yourself, how did you end up in UX?’, this is your moment to shine and tell your story. Detail your stages in short and explain where you are now (hoping to grow and learn more etc). The caller will mainly focus on you so try and ask a bit about the company and the role to give yourself a head start with research should you be invited in for an interview. Key: if you are in a noisy place, bad reception or occupied with something else, as tempting as it is to carry on the conversation, try and reschedule to a time that suites you.
The first interview: This will change dramatically from company to company and recruiting agencies so I will split these accordingly.
Recruiters: Usually a more casual and relaxed meeting that won’t take more than 20 minutes of your time. They just want to get a sense of who you are, your personality and how you carry yourself. They will be interested in seeing your work, but rather that focus on how you work they will focus on how you present it (remember by that stage they probably saw your portfolio already). Be open and friendly, chat a bit and maintain eye contact. They are more likely to try and find you a job if they find you likable and well presented.
Company HR: This is somewhere between a recruiter and a designer. Most HR managers don’t know much about UX and so you have to explain a bit more about the process and why you did what you did and avoid using UX terminology. Similar to the recruiter they’ve seen your work and by now will want to get a sense of who you are as a person. They are focusing on how you would fit within the company but also if you fit the job description so try and answer all their questions as honestly as you can. Once again, try and learn more about the role and the team leader to give yourself a chance to research more in case you get called for an interview with the lead.
The team leader: Congratulations, you skipped the HR and landed straight on your future boss’s table. Sometimes you would have reached this point via a recruiter, meaning someone spoke highly of you and recommended you and sometimes the lead simply picked you of the CV pile and liked you. This interview is perhaps the hardest of them all. The lead will usually want to learn a lot more about how you work so be prepared to explain your portfolio in much more detail. He will ask you very specific questions and challenge you. This is usually a very busy man with limited time who has a clear vision of what he wants and needs for the role. Remember, even if you might under-qualified for the role, this is your chance to impress and get a mentor who will guide you in your first role.
If you passed this stage you might be given a task. This is a normal part of the process which comes to test your skills as well as your thinking process. Some companies will give you a time frame, others will let you manage your time but in all cases, never take more than 4 days to complete the task and attend the second interview. Ask who you will be presenting to and how long should your presentation by, generally they will aim for a 10 minute presentation.
The second interview: This is when you either meet the Team leader for the first time (in which case read the previous paragraph) or you’ve already passed staged one and are called back to present your task. You will probably meet team members you haven’t met before; this can be anyone from the HR manager, to the project manager or other ux designers. It will be a mixed group so you must remember some of them might not have no clue what UX is about. When presenting, start by explaining why you are here today and what you will be talking about (again, some of the audience might not know what your task was). When going through your process try and make eye contact with all members: when using UX terms, look at the lead and explain why you decided to use this process, then look at the HR and explain briefly what the process is and what you hoped to learn achieve by it. After your presentation you will again be asked questions. The lead will ask you more UX focused questions about your process and decisions, other team members will focus on the why and how you implement these ideas (i.e conduct user research, AB testing) and the HR will focus on how you worked and presented.
By this stage you should have a sense if you got the job or not and few companies will ask you to come in again. By any means ask them for a time frame on their decisions and if you have time to ask questions yourself, try and ask about their current process and how they work. It will give you a sense if you ‘got it right’.
The third Interview: as I mentioned this didn’t happen to me often but I know big companies may do so. By now you should have done extensive research on the company and its team members. LinkedIn is a good place as is Glassdoor for inside information on how companies work. You will be expected to ask far more in depth questions this time around such as: the company future direction, the lead management style and what he expects from you in this role. They will also ask you more about things that may need clarifying but also on topics covered before. This is simply a reassurance that you being true and not just saying what they want to hear.
If you reached this point you should be happy with whatever decision they made. Even if you didn’t get the job it was a hard decision for them to make and you were close. Consider it as evidence that you are good at your job.
As I mentioned in the beginning of chapter 1, this is my own personal journey and my take on things as they happened to me. It may be very different to yours. I wrote these posts in hope it will give better understanding to others as taking a step into an unknown field can be confusing and it always helps to know what might happen next. The process described here is the process I went through in London and I can only imagine how different it is in other cities and countries. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
