#44 UX job interviews. What to expect and what questions to ask?
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as a strong candidate. So start from yourself and understand what are the core values, what are the things that you can bring on the table, but also know exactly first what you can contribute, but also what are you looking for from them? It's the match ultimately.

Hi everyone and welcome on a new episode of Honest UX Talks. Today, as always, I will be joined by Amfisa and we're going to try to tackle one very interesting topic that concerns all designers out there regardless of their career stage and that topic is what to expect during a UX interview.

And to be completely transparent about it, this is the second time we're recording this episode because we had some issues with the product we were using for our podcast and we lost the first recording of this episode, which actually was one of the best conversations we've had. So it's pretty frustrating to have to re-record it. But at the same time, it's good that we probably have our ideas even better crystallized and clearer by now.

and as many of you probably know the past few weeks were very very crazy for the entire world because of the war in ukraine and this has definitely affected us all but anfisa was more affected than myself for example because she's ukrainian and

And so this is another disclaimer that we're going to start with. We're going through a pretty rough patch. So, so bear with us if this conversation will not be as full of energy and as optimistic as it typically is.

As our tradition goes, we start this episode by sharing a little about how our past week or weeks went. And in my case, except for being pretty anxious and stressed out about everything that's going out in the world, I do have some positive news that I announced this week on my social networks. I'm very happy and proud and excited to join Blind Design Tool, which is a tool for 3D design.

I'm joining them as an educational partner, as a brand partner. I will help evangelize their mission in the world. The second news of the week regarding Spline is that they launched their beta. It was yesterday on Product Hunt, number one product of the day. It brings a lot of new features.

And my favorite one is real-time collab. I'm really excited to see how I can leverage that in my projects and try to involve other people. So I think that the future is collaboration. And I'm very excited to see that growing and taking shape in the products that we use. Apart from that, many other cool things that I will be talking about in future episodes, 3D gradients or sculpting tools. You can now have teams, projects,

So it's increasingly growing at a very, very fast pace. The last thing about Spline is that they're amazing enough to decide to sponsor our podcast, which is something that we've been trying to achieve for a very long time. And we're very happy that it's happening and that we get to produce our episodes at a better quality and have a consistent stream of

income where we can do more and do better stuff in our podcast, in our conversation. So I'm really happy to have them as our sponsor. These are pretty much the very good news that I have for today's episode. And apart from that, trying to cope with everything that's going on in the world. I want to check in with you to hear how you're, how you're coping with everything, how, how life is for you these days. And I know that you also started a new job. So what's going on in your life on FISA?

Wow, this... I'm sorry guys, this intro will be a lot. This is probably because the world is kind of feels like something new. Basically last time we talked I was about to leave for like sort of two weeks of traveling and obviously life was still butterflies and great and I was going to Italy, then I was going to Barcelona. Definitely helped me to rewind but I'm not gonna lie because I'm Ukrainian and the

rumors about the potential aggression might start did occur. And it was something that we all discussed internally in my family, with my husband, with my friends. It's been a big topic since November. The same day when I lost job, I started hearing rumors about the preparation of this thing that happens right now in Ukraine.

And so we've been all cautious about it. And I didn't mention this here. I just hoped for the best, but I did worry about this for the last few months. So then we, I returned after trip and then yeah, like the day after returned, I was sleeping, but my husband couldn't sleep the whole night. And basically he wakes me up at 5:00 AM and saying that it started and then the rest of the history.

I'm not going to go into details, I don't want to spend the whole episode talking about it. The last two weeks were absolutely crazy. The beginning it was a lot of anxiousness, you couldn't stop scrolling, you couldn't stop checking in with your family. My family is in Kyiv, my husband's family is in the south of Ukraine where there are a lot of battles happening right now and it's still pretty full on. The first days was really hard, we couldn't really eat, we couldn't really sleep, we were constantly scrolling the feed and constantly trying to catch up with everybody.

We're trying to help in whatever way possible. But then

And then I think only like second week happened and we started realizing that it's not very healthy. It's just not productive. You know, if you're crawling the field all the time and worrying, it's not helping anyone. So we started changing the perspective as to what can we do? How can we not just donate, you know, and support the army, but also how can we help the people who are migrating here right now in Czech Republic? The amount of Ukrainians doubled or if not tripled already by this point.

and Poland, I'm not even going to say how much people they have been able to host. I'm just gonna talk from my perspective that it's been a lot for sure and only like the last week I was able to start kind of changing back my perspective as to how can I be more helpful. Also I started a new job recently on March 1st. The first two days I couldn't focus at all but this particular week at the end of the week so when I can talk about it, it was better because I could

go to the office and that helped me a little bit to get distracted from everything. The worst is when you're at home and you're like sitting in this vacuum and this bubble and you allow the whole amount of information to just hit you and it's impossible to not worry and care about everything that's going on. You have to be sane and separate your life into productive hours and then hours when you keep doing what

what is normal to do right now. In the morning, I'm still like checking in sometimes and bringing some humanitarian help to centers. The noon I would go to the office and still try to sort of onboard myself into this new company. And then in the evening again, there will be time for me to see what's going on, checking the news and talk to my parents and all of that. So we will see how it goes. Right now things are better and more calm, but it might be the calm before the storm, which I really hope it's not.

But yeah, I don't want to spend 20 more minutes discussing how it's been. How are you, Joanna? How is it for you right now? Any updates, anything new and interesting that happened in February, March? Except for the Spline partnership, which is the highlight of the past couple of weeks. It also was my birthday. I turned 33. I couldn't

actually celebrated. My journey was pretty similar to yours, probably at different intensities. In the first week, I just couldn't do anything else. I was paralyzed, just scrolling the news, reading everything. I was like the most informed person on a topic. So it was just absolutely insane spirals of anxiety and stress and just being paralyzed.

thing that everybody around me and myself included, we were having very conflicting feelings. On one hand, everybody was scared for themselves, their families, the potential things that could happen like nuclear war, like Putin was threatening and so on. But at the same time, it's just extremely, extremely heartbreaking to watch what's going on in Ukraine. And it's like, you realize that it

it's not about me it's not about my family this this the pain is not i'm not the one who's supposed to be suffering the the real suffering is going on inside ukraine so it's just like also feeling guilty for for feeling scared for myself so it was a very very mixed experience and hopefully like yourself in the past week i started getting better i started to like

limit the consumption of the news and reading everything that's going on and getting into fights with people on social media, which I don't typically do. And so now I'm starting to feel better. I try to do things to stay engaged in the present moment and not worry as much. And hopefully things will...

obviously absolutely impressed by Ukraine and I think that Ukraine just showed the world the strongest lesson in modern history at least in my life I've never seen such an example of bravery and courage and determination and it's just incredible and this is what keeps all of us optimistic probably

that Ukraine will win, that Ukrainians are strong, that they're staying there to defend their country. It's just very inspirational and it gives the entire world hope. So this is where I'm at at the moment. Yeah, I think let's jump into the topic for today. Many people are here to take a break from the war. Sorry, guys. No stress.

We're going to start by going through the types of interviews that you can expect in your hiring process for a UX role and different questions that you might get and that you should be asking when you're going through these different types of UX interviews or stages of the UX interview. I'm going to go ahead and ask Anfisa, what should a UX designer expect during the recruiting process?

Alrighty, now let's talk business. Let's talk design. So yes, today's topic, like Ioanna mentioned, is all about UX interviews. And I would love to start by maybe trying to set up the context and the stage

to really kind of build the mindset of what is actually UX interview, right? Especially for those who've never been on one and feels worried about kind of joining the first UX interview, what to expect. In the past episodes, we've mentioned that if you're going through the hiring stages, if you're trying to find a job, there will be different stages of this process. And in a couple of those stages, there will be UX interviews.

Most likely the first ever interview you will have with HR, which is not UX interview. The next round of interviews will be with your potential target design manager or UX manager, they also call them. And so that's when you are actually going to have this one-on-one interview with somebody who will be directing you, who will be your manager, who will be asking about your background, your interests, your motivation. After that, most likely there will be the stage where you will go through the challenges and stuff like that.

And then after, most likely you will have an interview also with your potential design team or design, maybe not design team, but the PM team and like just a squad with who you will be working. So to rewind, basically there could be different stages when you will be discussing your background and most important one, probably the one we will be mostly tackling in this particular episode is interview with your UX manager, because that's the first time you actually get to

see and understand the company, understand who you will be working with, voice up your expectations, maybe your needs, what are you looking for, your motivation, as well as the same will be for the manager who will be asking you questions that will be more about your background,

basically. And also to set up the context, I would also say that it's an important stage where you do have to prepare. You have to build this mindset that it's not only you who will be interviewed, but it's also the manager that you will need to interview. It's basically, you have to have the mindset of interviewing your manager, not just manager interviewing you. Because ultimately you're looking for the perfect match. Ultimately you're looking for the best company fit. It's also

important that you're happy in this new role, even if it's a new company for you, it doesn't really matter. I know it sounds like privileged when you're senior and you're looking for a best company and you can say no to somebody. Trust me, you don't want to take on the journey that will not be guiding you in the right direction, that will not be helping your portfolio or your skill set or will not give you much experience that you're looking to gain. So you do have to do a homework, prepare, know exactly what you're looking for,

What stage you are at in your design career? Is it a beginner? Is it some sort of middle? Do you know what you want to improve? Do you have like strong fundamentals? Or do you want to build specialties? Or do you have specific values in design that you want to have in your next role? You do have to have this sort of conversation with yourself before starting application processes.

And particularly before talking to your manager, because most of the conversation will be revolving those values in this answers. I guess I'll start by saying that prepare for the interviews, know what you're looking for, have a question that you want to ask your manager, because all these answers will A help you to

answer the question the manager will be asking you. B will show that you're actually a curious person, that you do your research, that you're asking what it will feel like working in this company and that you're not just sitting there passively and sort of taking orders or answering questions. You know, you have to be proactive. So that's how I would love to set up our conversation. And I would also want to ask if there is anything else you would add here, Ioana?

Okay, so you did capture a lot of things. There's not much that I want to add. I just want to quickly review different types of interviews that you might get in the interviewing process. So from my own experience, both as hiring manager, but also as a candidate, I've noticed that the most common stages or the pattern is that you have a phone screening interview, or it

can be a video call interview, but typically I've had just phone conversations with the recruiter or the person who's headhunting or the HR person, simply the HR person from the company. Then there's an interview, like you said, with the manager, most likely, where they try to understand whether it's worth

going into more details into the next stages of the process, which might be a portfolio presentation that you give in front of the team or in front of some people that you might be working on. It can be a diverse team that you show your portfolio to. It might be the design team, but it could also be the design team plus a product manager or a developer that works closely with a design team. So after you have the conversation with the hiring manager, you might expect to give this portfolio walkthrough.

And then depending on the company, there might be some sort of design challenge, which can take the form of a whiteboard challenge on site when you're in the same room with the design team or the people who have a direct say in the hiring process. And you're doing the whiteboard challenge or it can be a take home design challenge, which are

pretty controversial in the design industry and we're not particularly fans of because of many reasons. I'm not going to go into these reasons now. And then if you don't have these formal stages, like the portfolio walkthrough with the team or the whiteboard challenge with the team, if those are missing, then you might expect some sort of other kind of informal event where you get to meet the team, maybe just lunch with the team or just getting to know them. And all of these are

like you said, and I think it's a very important point, all of these are opportunities for you to ask the right questions. And the right question means asking questions that help you figure out whether you'd be happy to work in that team, on that product, in that company and so on. But also it's an opportunity or it's a chance for you to show that you're very thorough in your thinking, that you look at details, that you know what you want, that you know what you're going for, that you're able to articulate things

relevant questions for the hiring process that you really want to find out what you will be doing. And so all these stages are obviously opportunities for you to show yourself. And I think this is why you should take things very seriously and go in prepared.

And now let's see how you can prepare for the different stages of the design interviewing process. So let's look first from the perspective of the getting questions that you need to answer. So I'm the hiring manager. I'm going to ask a couple of questions. The candidate should expect to be asked. Yeah. What questions would a candidate get in a UX interview? Most likely. Yeah. I think maybe, of course, it depends on the

company, but I will kind of base those questions that I will now voice up based on my experience. So because I was looking for a job pretty recently, I can remember the questions that were repeated in pretty much every other interview. And so to sort of let's say start from the most common question, I was always asked, what are you looking for in your next role?

So you're here talking to this company A and there's probably some motivation behind it that you will most likely be asked, what are you looking for? What kind of companies are you excited? What kind of dynamics are you excited to work on? What kind of challenges are you interested in? So like why us basically?

And that means that you should be sort of having an understanding as to what kind of setup you want to work on. For example, do you wanna work in a startup or corporation or established company or a growing startup, et cetera, or agency? And so if you have an answer, let's say I want to work in a startup,

Why? What's in it for you? Maybe how the ground shaped your motivation to apply here. You know, like, for example, in my case, I was seeing that, you know, I was working in corporations. Before that, I was working in early age startups. And so I felt like I still want to work in this growing startup where I could actually help company to become a unicorn or some sort.

have a very strong understanding and most likely you would also have this question somebody asking you and you need to know why this company what are you looking at what are the priorities what are your values in the design so make sure you know the answer to this question second type of questions that have been asked frequently was tell me a little bit more about your experience so like what have you been doing in the past tell me what you've learned in all of those roles you have

had. So in my experience, I would say something like, oh, you know, wasn't I was working in a startup, a setup. I've learned a lot to be entrepreneurial, to pivot quickly, to experiment a lot, to build and break things quickly. So that's what I've learned basically. Then it was a freelancer. I've become more entrepreneurial and I've learned to manage my business and be this sort of one person that encompasses many roles.

and then in corporations i've learned soft skills and stuff like this so this is my background here's what i can where here's what i've learned in my past experience and it's okay if you don't have much experience again you have to own it and say here is where i am at at this journey let's say i'm i have the foundation i've built a couple of projects but i feel not confident enough in this in this in this areas and that's what i'm looking uh to improve so again tell about your experience basically

Another question I've been asked was maybe tell me a bit more about your big side, your strong sides, what can you do well, what things you want to improve. Again, it's a question to your self selection side. So understanding and being honest with yourself and being aware of what you can bring on the table, but also what things you still want to be better or grow at. Maybe your interests, maybe your passions, but you never had a chance to practice something.

whatever it is, maybe the visual design or maybe the workshops or maybe the, I don't know, quantitative studies and working with data, whatever it is. Kind of have to have some ideas around that. And, um,

Then there could be more specific to the company questions, depending on the setup of the company, how big it is. You might be asked something like, so what's the perfect collaboration look like for you, the stakeholders? Yes, again, you could say, oh, you know what, I prefer working in a smaller team, let's say tribe model, where I could have like a strong connection with the team, etc., etc.,

Or you can say, you know what, I'm interested in working in the more mature companies, established companies that are bigger. I want to learn to work with other designers. I want to have a big company. I want to learn from designers, et cetera, et cetera. So what's the perfect collaboration looking like for you and what kind of company set up you have worked? How do you want to work further?

And it could be also something like the manager could ask you about some experiences in the past. For example, do you remember any projects where it was very blurry initiative or the objective was not clear or it was very ambiguous or it was very complex? How did you go about it? So again, it would be more contextual. The manager will ask you specific questions referring to your experience.

or sometimes it would be even like a quick exercise. I remember one of the managers I was talking to asked me to actually jump in the big jam and quickly go through the exercise like,

I can't remember already the exercise, but it was something like, oh, you have this setup, like this challenge and you have this company. So imagine how this company solve this challenge, think aloud and stuff like that. So again, trying to understand your thinking and background and how it brought up

up you as a designer. So yeah, I think I'll stop here. Anything you would like to add here? Maybe something you can remember from the past interviews you had or you have been asking as the manager in the past? I do have some small points that I want to add. One is that I think the interview questions that you will expect to get in an interview are

different based on the seniority of the role you're applying for. So you will get a different set of questions if you're applying for your first design role, if you're a junior designer, very entry level. And obviously you'll get different questions if you're an experienced senior designer with lots of years of experience working in companies. So there will be a level of sophistication that's

definitely different so i just want to quickly give some examples so for junior designers typically questions that you might get might be something very generic or broad like what is ux design to you and how did you end up doing ux design and how did you discover your passion for ux design why did you choose this career and something that's very or where do you find design inspiration where are you learning from or things that are very open more sophisticated questions

might be something along the lines of tell me how you resolve the conflict within the team in a project you worked on or can be what did you discover works best when evangelizing the value of ux in your company how do you convince other teams or other structures in a company to invest more in ux design how do you prove the roi on design and so on so there's definitely a level of sophistication that's different based on where you are in your career and it's absolutely normal that

that happens. So I would say based on where you are in your career and the seniority of the job you're applying to, make sure to kind of do your homework as to what kind of questions you might get based on the role you're applying to. From understanding the definition you want to give UX design as a junior designer to understanding how you can

talk about collaborating and overcoming conflict on your projects and helping align different roles in the company on very complex projects and so on. So this is the other thing that I wanted to add. So this is the only thing that I wanted to add. And now I would

look into what kind of questions you should be asking. And I think that here we might have two perspectives on that. So on one hand, there are some questions that will make you look good in front of your hiring manager that will make you look like you know what you're doing, that will help you like

win points in the hiring process. But there are also some questions that you ask for hygiene purposes for yourself, like understanding the team structure, understanding how you will be working with different functions and so on. So what are the questions that you need to ask when you're in an interview process?

This is a great setup. Thank you for actually mentioning this before we dive into specific questions. Because it's true, you first have to have a clear understanding of what you're trying to learn and then break it down by tactical questions and how do you ask them. Also, I would add that there's no

must ask questions. It's not that you have to go through the checklist of things. This is what you have to ask every time because otherwise you don't look serious or something. So it's actually the questions must be coming from your experience, from your worries, from your needs as a designer, especially referring back to the first question when you need to understand what you're looking for, right? In your job. It's something that you would have to do on your own, but I can definitely say what questions I've been asking and maybe some of those would

align with your needs. So when I was going through the process, I've been asking a lot of things. Actually, I had like a huge list of questions right now. I can see in front of me 15 questions that I would always ask. But so what I was trying to understand is the dynamics of working in this company and the values they would have as a primary, I guess, goal or my first priority.

So I would always ask things like, so tell me how the day of a designer looks like in this company. How does UX informs the roadmap and where do we get data to prioritize initiatives or goals? And how can I as a designer contribute and what will my day look like?

Basically, my worries, like what I'm asking here with this question is, will I just have top-down culture and receive things to do every day? Or will I be able to do my job and like talk to the users and have evidences and I can have a word in the meeting and kind of contribute?

to the overall strategy of the product and the company. So that's why I was asking those questions like, you know, tell me about my responsibilities and day on the life. Second thing I would always ask something about the team. So how big is the team? Which roles I will be working with?

Tell me about the teams, like how they are formed. Sometimes I can also ask more specific questions like, tell me about the ratio of male to female and maybe design to engineering, something like this. Again, trying to understand the dynamics. Actually right now in my company, I just started work and I'm the first girl in the whole squad. Like we have tribe model. Obviously this is affecting me because this is changing the dynamics of work. And now it's like about

Setting up the new context, changing the habits a little bit. And so for me, it's important to understand what journey I'm embarking myself into. And that's why I would definitely ask not just how big is the team, but who's involved in the team, what roles we are working with. Again, how many designers to engineers and stuff like that. Then also processes. Every company, depending on the size of a company would have different processes established. Somebody would be a bit more waterfall-ish. Somebody would be more scrum and agile.

somebody would be very experimental innovation and I don't know, design thinking. So it really depends. And I would try to understand how this company operates, processes they use, when a designer involved in the early stages or like later in the stages. Again, it's kind of to the same bucket of, is it the top down culture? Is it the bottom up culture?

What do I expect? How will I be working there? As well as, you know, how is product being informed and planned? What are their roadmap looking like? What are the initiatives? How much user feedback contributes to it and stuff like that? So this is, I guess, the first bulk of questions. And then I would also try to ask about my personal growth in this company. Again, challenging the manager to understand what are the IC or individual contributor growth opportunities.

How do I receive the feedback? What are the mechanisms in place? How much is the company cares about the educational, I don't know, tools, resources, maybe budgets even. Do you have the growth projectories? Are you looking for like generalist designers? Are you looking for like designers that specialize in something? Tell me about again, your dynamic, like how do you shape your designers, who you're looking for and stuff like that. Again, this would help me as I see as an individual contributor to understand

If that's the right place for me and if it matches my growth opportunities as a designer, because it's my career and I'm the only one who can be in charge of it. And I want to make sure it's companies meeting my needs. Okay. So there are a lot of more things I could ask here. I will just name a couple of them and not go into details. But yeah, basically I would also ask about my relationship with my manager. I would ask about the core values the design team has, what challenges they would have,

Maybe about the fuck-ups, how they're dealing with the fuck-ups. If something goes wrong, how designer is kind of involved in this role. How do you learn from it and stuff like that? Maybe some measurements of the success, et cetera, et cetera. So actually there's so many more questions. You can also just ask tactical questions like what tools do you use? How design system is shaped right now and which stage it is.

What would be your focus in the beginning of your journey in the next few months after you start working? So there are so many other questions, but it also has to be connected with what you care about. I'm not going to kind of list all the questions I've asked, but it's important for you to sort of topic them down.

like by company culture, by team, by collaboration, by UX maturity maybe, and by the questions that are important to you as the creative, as the designer, and as the individual contributor if you're following the IC track. Anything you would love to add here, Ioana? I'm sure you have more.

It's actually very hard to add something because you've been very, very comprehensive in your answer. But I feel that the only thing that maybe I want to highlight from what you said is that the questions you ask should be aligned with your career goals. And I think you should start from that. So what's important for you in the next year?

couple of months or years short term long term midterm uh from from your career what do you want to happen do you want to learn do you want to learn something new like do you want to get better at ui design do you want to transition towards ux writing or anything so what are your career goals and how will those career goals align with that potential role that's really

the way I would go about it. And another aspect to that is that everybody has their own values. So some people value collaboration and having a good vibe and good communication in the team. Other people don't care as much about how the team works, team dynamics, but they do care about having autonomy in the design decisions and getting to have a say. And so put on a very, let's say, self-reflective hat on and do a reflection exercise. But this is

especially applicable if you've had a couple of years in the design career. It's really hard to understand what you like and what you dislike, what you value and what's most important to you when you're in your first design job because you haven't had enough experience and trial and error to figure out what matters to you. But if you're a couple of years down into your UX career, you can definitely say

This is very important to me. This is less important. I can live without a design system, but I can't leave without a good relationship with my manager. So you get to understand what matters to you and then find out if those things will be met in your design role. And I think I've seen a couple of times in my career jobs that kind of went bad very quickly because there wasn't enough communication in this stage.

And people didn't do their homework in the interviewing process and then ended up kind of thinking about contemplating quitting the job or actually quitting the job a couple of months in. Now is the time to figure out whether you see this role as something that you would be happy. As much as you can tell, definitely you can't be sure of anything. You can't have 100% confidence and ask all the right questions. But start at least from the things that are essential to you.

And then you also want to ask the questions that will quote unquote make you look good or that show that you're a good design professional. Like you've been through them, ask about collaboration, ask about the feedback process. How is feedback given? Who gives feedback? Who has the last call in a design decision?

So where does design report to in the organization? Is it under engineering, big red flag, or is it directly under the CEO? It means they value design. So ask questions around how the company, the process works, try to understand the level of design maturity in the company.

And again, align it with your goals because it might be that you want to go in a company where there's no design maturity and you are excited about creating it, about starting processes, about putting things into place. Maybe that's what you want to do in your career next, or maybe you want to just plug and play in a very mature design team where you will be the one who will be learning and not teaching others how to do things around design.

So again and again, I get back to this point of starting from yourself and trying to uncover as much as possible. Like UXify, you're doing discovery work if you want, you're doing your own research, UX research as to what you will be doing in your UX role. I want to add something here, like because you were also mentioning maybe you don't know your values in the beginning of your career. And I think that many of our listeners are actually still early stage in their career. So maybe if you're feeling like, oh, I don't know.

What should I value? What should I look for? I haven't been working for long yet. So I would also maybe say that it don't necessarily needs to be based on your previous years of experience, but also you can look literally in your life and your studies and your friends, it's cool, et cetera, et cetera. And think what was motivating for you. For example, when I was looking for this new job and I had a couple of offers, I had to really understand what drives me most.

Like what are the key values that I feel helped me to grow, to succeed, recharge me every day and stuff like this. So for example, for some people it's totally okay to be, I don't know, driven by even money. You know, sometimes it's more about, I don't know, like having opportunities in place that you're looking for, like wherever it is, like maybe having the workshops and, or maybe like being able to work with engineers and design system and stuff like this. So understanding what kind of culture

and i'd say even maybe energy you want to have because i knew that one of the key values for me was to have like dynamic extroverted people that constantly want to push things and experiment and like a little bit crazy i knew because in the past couple years i had less of this energy but i've been working a lot with startups in the beginning and i was kind of missile this puzzle and i

And I knew from my past that this puzzle was helping me to be motivated and constantly drive and go through the hardships. And when I saw that people in this new company I've joined had this drive, I was like, yes, this is something I'm looking for. This is something I definitely need. And again, it comes not necessarily from just experience I had in the career, but also by understanding how I collaborate best, how even in my school, when I was still young, how I was most effective, most helpful, contributing best, you know, and

And if I don't see this energy, I kind of tend to be in myself, not very proactive and stuff like this. But it's up to like what helps you to be best version of yourself maybe. I don't know if that question makes it easier, but it doesn't necessarily have to come from years of experience, but also

through understanding how you cooperate best, what motivates you, what helps you to be a better contributor and stuff. I think it's especially hard to understand what you should be asking when you're in your first years as a designer. And I think that indeed you don't have to

necessarily reference it to experience you've had or the jobs you've had, but you can definitely link it to your personality and what you enjoy doing in general and even outside design. So there are many ways to go about it. And I think we covered the subject quite beautifully, I would say for the state our minds are in right now. We did a good job.

But now let's go into the top three takeaways for this conversation and what we would like our listeners to take home. I think, again, there were a couple of very strong trends in our conversation. And I think we both could agree that one of the most important things is to come prepared.

and kind of start from yourself rather than expecting to react on what manager is asking you and how, how much experience you have and being worried and being sort of in yourself trying to see, oh, I don't have experience and blah, blah, blah. This will not make you look as

as a strong candidate. So start from yourself and understand what are the core values, what are the things that you can bring on the table, but also know exactly first what you can contribute, but also what are you looking for from them? It's the match ultimately. And it's also okay to say no if you see that there is a sort of

mismatch there, maybe in values, maybe in dynamics of work, maybe in the people culture. People culture will be very important as for me, because people you're working with eventually make all the decisions. You're choosing who will be making the judgmental calls and deciding things. And you sometimes will not be where it will align with those. So you need to make sure that the values are there, the values that you also care about.

And then communication style is there that you will be able to work effectively with those people rather than being frustrated and not be able to sort of progress anywhere. Just having internal conflicts, which is not productive at all. Again, my point is come prepared, know exactly what you are looking for and look out maybe for those red flags, like Ioana said.

It's a great point with like if it's under engineering, it might be another very good company for you to progress, at least as a designer. Another takeaway would be maybe to rehearse a little bit, especially if you're a beginner. One life hack I've discovered when I was a startup and I was looking for investments for our company or for our startup, I've learned that it's

better to go through the interviewing process with the companies that you're less excited about, because it could help you to train yourself and to sort of master the answers to some of the pretty common questions. The more you do it, the more confident you're feeling, the more you see the reaction, the more you can iterate on this. And so maybe as a little life hack, start first applying to the companies you're a bit less excited.

uh just for practice maybe even uh or even to just maybe you'll discover something that you really like about those companies but if it's something like the dream company the dream job and it's your first job and you're very very excited but you're so worried that you maybe don't have enough experience you're putting too much stress on it and it's very easy to get nervous and then maybe even back it up i'm sorry

know for my French, but what helped me is to practice before maybe it was other design managers or even you don't need to go maybe on to interview. You can find a design mentor anywhere. We always mentioned a mentor in here, but you can find design mentor to practice the potential job interview and ask to answer those most common questions and sort of find answers to different tricky questions. So you can come really confident into this job interview.

and know what to answer in different situations. And the last takeaway here would be to also look out for those red flags, know exactly what you're not comfortable tolerating in your job. Like let's say if it's very top-down culture and you want to be independent and you want to make sure your ward is heard, make a list of things you will not be able to tolerate, but also make a list of things that you can compromise that are not top priorities for you.

Okay, I don't want to take all the points. What would you conclude Elsa from our conversation? So it might be a small repetition here, but I want to make sure that I highlight the things that I find important. First of them is that you've probably seen this all over LinkedIn again and again, but remember that in an interviewing process, you're also interviewing the company. So it's not just that they're making sure that you're the right fit for their team. You're also making sure that

they're the right fit for your career at that stage. Even as a junior designer, don't make the mistake, the error of thinking that I should get whatever I'm able to get. So I have a very small, quick story. There was a girl that just finished her bootcamp. She sent me a message on UX goodies and she said that she got a job offer, but there was something she didn't particularly like about that company and asked me,

what should she do? And my, my advice at that moment was, Hey, you know what? Take the job. Cause it's just going to be learning opportunity for you. You're going to learn, you're going to grow. You're going to discover what you like, what you don't like. And she said, you know what? I'm not going to take it. I'm going to wait for a better job. And for me, it was like at that moment in time, it was like, Whoa, that's,

kind of brave especially given that the junior market is not particularly easy to succeed in but eventually even though it took a longer time like a couple of months and probably she ended up having moments of regret for not taking that offer or whatever but she ended up getting a job as a contractor at Google so knowing your worth even as a junior designer standing up

up to your values and going in the recruiting process, knowing that you also have to choose them, not that they choose you only, then that's going to definitely make you feel more confident and also show up more confident. So it's win-win. The next point I want to make is one that I keep circling back to.

the fact that you should start from yourself so there's no recipe for questions that you have to know how to answer or questions that you need to ask like and fisa said earlier there's no checklist ask these 10 questions to succeed in a ux interview but the questions you should be asking and the way you should prepare for answering questions is very much dependent on your career goals the stage you're in your personality and your values so

always as a designer self-reflection is very important is what we preach and teach in my boot camp as well helping people constantly practice self-reflection because it's a very important muscle it's one that it's also very important in the design process itself but even in the way you go about your design career it's really really important to to start from yourself and the last

Last point I want to make is that rehearsing, maybe doing some mock interviews with mentors or design friends that are a bit more senior or even taking up interviews that you're not particularly excited about just to have the opportunity of rehearsing and going through the process and learning how you can improve the way you show up and how you can come in prepared. But the takeaway here is that you should be prepared for the interviewing process.

So I think going in sloppy, not being sure what you wanna say about your case studies, what's the point of your portfolio presentation, where you're getting at with the questions you're asking. If you come up like all over the place, that thing will be transparent to the hiring manager. And as designers, we need to have structure. We need to have clarity. We need to be intentional. So you wanna show that in the interviewing process as well.

So do your homework. This is the last takeaway that I want to stress. And with that being said, I want to thank everyone who listened to this episode. I'm really happy we got to rerecord this conversation and we didn't abandon it out of frustration.

So thank you so much again also for listening it through and especially sorry if we were a little bit rumbling. The last few weeks were just not the best weeks of our lives. So we're trying to keep up with life and trying to stay sane and at least try to be helpful for the design community. So thank you for sticking around for so long throughout our conversation. If you want to submit new questions or new topics you want us to discuss,

the next episodes find the link in the show notes in spotify you can also submit your question right there under the episode there is also a forum where you can anonymously submit your question or you can always just reach out personally to me or iwana or on our instagram so

We're here to help you. It's the podcast where we discuss juicy topics that are tackling your needs, not ours. Keep this in mind. Otherwise, if you enjoyed this episode, please rate us or any podcast platform of your choice. We're on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts and many other podcasts. So we would really appreciate your support because it keeps us motivated even in this pretty intense period of time.

And that will be it. Thank you so much for listening and have a great rest of the day. Bye. Bye, everyone.