#75 Dealing with UX job rejections w/Tanner Christensen
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Rejection could just mean it's just not a fit and it may be a fit in the future. That doesn't mean you're incapable. It doesn't mean you're bad. It just means that right now you're not what the company needs and that's okay. In a lot of cases, the company should also not be what you need. That's okay too, right? So balance yourself, take care of yourself, ask a lot of questions and just know that even if you keep getting rejections, you can't give up. You have to keep pursuing the company that will be a good place for you.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the next episode of Honest UX Talks. Today is actually a very special episode because, first of all, Ioana is not joining us, but instead we have a guest, which we didn't do for a while, but not just a regular guest, a very, very special guest. His name is Tanner Christensen. Some of you might have seen him. He's a pretty active guest.

online, especially on LinkedIn. You would see him posting a lot, not just about the career and strategy, but also about the job hunting process. And that's the reason why I've decided to invite Tanner today. The topic of today's episode is how to deal with the job hunting rejections. A few words I want to say also about Tanner before we jump into it. Tanner is a very big person in the design industry, I'd say. Currently he's working in Netflix.

He has kicked off and run for a while the Shape community, which I believe was also aiming to help designers finding their job. And in the past, he also worked at Lyft, Atlassian, Facebook, and also I believe you did publish there recently a book called "Designer's Guide to Interviewing." Is that correct?

That's right. Nice. And I've seen that in the table of content, there was one section about dealing with rejection. So I hope that would help us also expanding on that topic today. Let's start simple, I guess. How are you doing, Tanner? How is your Sunday going? Things are going well. I'm very excited to be here. It's been a little while since I've done a podcast, so I'm excited to be joining you. And this is a really...

interesting subject. It's very sensitive for a lot of people. And I'm not sure if we as a collective industry talk about it enough. So I'm really excited to have this conversation with you. Thank you for having me. Oh, absolutely. It's a big, big pleasure for us to have you. I will start our conversation by just reading a few quotes from one of our listeners who actually initiated and suggested this topic. Basically, our listener was asking us if we can talk about job search rejections because it's hard and stressful and it could be really

said, especially if it just happens recently. Our listener is suggesting, can you make maybe a session about how to deal with the rejection? It's still very hard thinking about what could I do better, if I should have studied better, if I did enough and things along those lines. So what could you have been doing better, studying better, preparing better, et cetera, et cetera, all those questions. Was it your mistake and stuff like that?

I think that's a very common thing to start from asking yourself, did I do something wrong? Could I do better than three of you? That would be my first question. What is your perspective on the mindset as soon as you've got the rejection, how to deal with the situation? It's a big question. And I think it's worth noting

that it's very natural to put the blame entirely on ourselves when we're rejected, right? We feel like the failing is always our fault or that it is a failing. My perspective is that that's only part of the story and it's the strongest part because it has to do with ourselves, right?

But as with any kind of relationship or interest, especially with jobs, it's a two way street, right? And it's really critical that we understand that and we consider that when it comes to rejection. Rejection may mean that, yeah, you didn't do your best at communicating your skills. You were a mismatch for the company. Maybe you didn't research the company itself enough. Those are certainly realistic.

But it's also very possible that it just wasn't the right place for you, you know, that your skills, your experience, your interests also don't align with the company. And so you have to keep that in mind whenever it comes to rejection. You may not be the right fit for the company, and that's ultimately what it comes down to. It doesn't mean you're incapable of doing an excellent job. It doesn't mean you're incapable of communicating effectively. It doesn't mean you're incapable of doing the work that you want to do.

all it means is that at that moment in time, you and the company are not aligned. And that's all it means. So it's really important to keep that in mind. And I think that dovetails into everything else we'll probably talk about here. Yeah, absolutely. To me, honestly, it's also about the feedback you can get because you can guess, right? You can guess, was it me? Was it the company? Was there a miscommunication? But I think getting the rejection, the first thing is really helpful when you try to just like ask for the feedback, like what actually went wrong?

especially if it happens in the later stages. It's something that you don't always understand what's happening behind. Not always, of course, you'll get an honest feedback, but it's worth trying because it's really worth understanding where the mismatch is happening and maybe you should maybe even change the strategy or if you should change something in how you're approaching job search.

What would you say would be your lesson, right? If you're facing with a situation, should you be asking for the feedback? Should you just be going and I don't know, asking for help or something? Like what would your reaction be in that case? And I guess you were looking for a job recently. I don't know if you've dealt with the situations. Tell me more about how you would approach it. So I have been rejected throughout my career.

It's not a foreign concept to me, right? I have been rejected, especially from companies that I really admired, that I had high ambitions to join and be part of, and they rejected me. So I do have experience with that. Thankfully, over the years of my now long career, I've learned a lot about what rejection means and how to engage in those situations. So it doesn't actually happen very much anymore.

which I'm really grateful for and certainly privileged in some areas. But when I think about people who are getting rejected, like I said, the inclination is to blame ourselves, to say, what did I do wrong? And I'm not sure that's the best perspective to have. And the reasons for that are because when it goes to you asking for feedback, saying, well, hey, hiring manager, hey, recruiter, what did I do wrong? Like, can you tell me what I could do better?

I don't think that's the right perspective. I think the right perspective is what was the mismatch? Let's get aligned on where that alignment didn't happen. It's not about me failing the job. It's not about the company failing the job, although that is a subject we'll need to talk about. It's just a mismatch.

And so when it comes to asking for feedback, that is the perspective you really need to take. Less so, what did I do wrong? More so, where do we not align? The other thing that's worth noting with rejection in particular is a lot of companies, particularly here in the United States, they will not give you any feedback, right? I think a lot of designers are familiar with this situation. You get a rejection, you email them, or you try to follow up in person on the phone or something, and they just say, well, I can't tell you anything.

And there's a lot of good reasons for that, that I think we as designers need to embrace. The first reason, debatable if this one's good, but by law, companies have to be very careful with how they communicate with potential job candidates. There's a lot of legal processes and

potential, dare I say, hazards that companies need to try to avoid. And they feel like if they give you feedback and it's some type of bias, the person could sue the company and say, hey, they should have hired me and I didn't. So the companies don't want to open themselves up to even that possibility.

The other thing is recruiters, hiring managers, they're busy, right? They're trying to do their job and finding talent. So they don't always have all the time to collect feedback, to synthesize that feedback, or even to sit down and write an email or hop on the phone to explain that feedback.

It's a time thing. But the last part is what would that feedback really do for you as a designer? Because you may have, let's say not demonstrated a specific skill that that team wanted. Maybe it's a skill you have, maybe it's a skill you don't have, but even if they give you that feedback,

What are you going to do? The most you can do is change how you present. You cannot change your past work, right? You can't go fabricate this skill and demonstrations of the skill. You have to like change the way you talk about your work. So instead of really pursuing recruiter feedback or hiring manager feedback, what I always recommend and what I did as well in my own career is take the time to just think about yourself. How did you feel the situation went?

Where did you feel like you struggled? What was easy for you as well? Highlight those things. That's where I would recommend starting because I would say 99% of the time when you have a gut feeling that you maybe didn't do as well as in part of the interview as you thought, that's probably the issue. You're probably correct, right? Our intuition can tell us a lot about that. So that is the first place to start is just take some time to reflect yourself.

The second thing is go talk to more experienced designers, specifically designers who have hired or been in the interview loop. Talk to recruiters if you know any in your network and just say, do you have five minutes to give me some feedback? Here's the situation that happened. What do you think might have happened here? Here's what my gut tells me.

And again, odds are that this person, whoever you're reaching out to will respond and say, yeah, your gut is spot on. It sounds right to me. And that's really the way to start improving and reflecting on rejection because it's more often not just a mismatch again between expectations and how you present yourself. So you need to understand what is the company looking for? Where did I not present that? Or do I even have that? Right. And it's okay if you don't. That's just an area for growth in the future. Okay. I just said a whole bunch of things. Hopefully that answered the question. - No, this is actually really great.

I love the perspective you're taking here with the, where is the mismatch. Regarding the feedback, I'm going to say from my experience, one and a half years ago, I was also looking for a job and I was applying to one of those like sort of startups moving to a scale up direction. And I did have a very, very detailed and very, very good feedback.

First of all, I'm in Europe, so maybe these things are different here. And also I think it's down to the company size. Maybe if you're a bigger corporate, when you have to deal with bigger legal consequences, it's a slightly different story. So I definitely believe that could be another big case. But do remember receiving a very detailed feedback around

how maybe in the interview I didn't give a specific example how I performed or something like this. And to be honest, that moment I felt really great because that company pointed out what I didn't do right. And yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right. It was like you kind of knew it. You kind of knew, just waited for that validation, which actually brings me to my next question, but I will hang on a second.

And back to, again, what you were saying is that they gave me a very specific feedback about how I could have done better in the interview. But you're right. It was only giving me an insight around how I should. How do you say this? It's like all about the interviewing system. How do you fit in into the interviewing system? Doesn't make you a better designer. Doesn't make you a better contributor or whatever, whatever. It's really was all about how can you get this interviewing game better in your interview.

Sort of turning into your side. And yeah, that feedback didn't really help me advancing. So again, that moves me to my next question. It sounds like it's much more about the confidence in yourself and being able to listen and being able to understand who you are as a designer.

course, listening to your gut feeling reflect a lot. But that's really like I think the problem and the key issue that I personally experienced myself as well is really about the confidence, especially in the first years of your career when you feel like, who am I even? Who's gonna listen to me? I don't know nothing. I have only two projects behind my back and stuff like that. So maybe the question is, how can you

help those designers, aspiring designers, junior designers feeling better about themselves, though they know they're not still like super advanced, super professional and all of that? Yeah, I think the answer here applies to anyone at any stage of their career. It's going to be the same answer for me. And what that is, is twofold. There's two parts. The first part is knowing yourself. We talk about this specifically as design leaders and like leadership positions.

Self-awareness is one of the most critical aspects that anyone can have in their career. So whether you're just starting out or you're well on your way, you need to find ways to develop that self-awareness. And there's many ways you can do that. There are books written on this, but

The key is to first and foremost, understand yourself. What are you great at? What are you not so great at? That's okay, right? We all have weaknesses. We all have areas for growth. What are your past experiences? And how do those past experiences tie into the skills or situations that you may find in the job? And I think for less experienced designers, that point is really critical.

Just because you don't have 10 years working at a company as a designer does not mean you're incapable of collaborating or communicating, right? When it comes to interviewing, for example, you can talk about experience you had at school or even in your personal life. Have you started a group on an online forum? Did you manage that group? Did you join like a club after school or something or a debate or something that indicates you have some of the skillset required to do the job, even though it may not be one-to-one.

Once you have that self-awareness piece, that brings me to the second point, which is you have to understand what these companies are looking for. And it's not always just going to be what you read on a job post. In fact, most of the time, it's not going to be a lot of that. It's going to be some of it.

And so what you need to do is invest a little bit of time, a little bit in understanding these companies, meaning Google the latest news around the company that you're about to apply to and see what kind of headlines come up. One thing that I often recommend designers do in particular is Google interview with CEO of company name.

and see what the CEO talks about, see the language that they use. So with those two things, self-awareness and a little bit of understanding what the companies you're looking to apply to are looking for, you can make a quick determination on whether or not you're realistically a fit for that company.

And fit is a, you know, it's an interesting term. I don't want to stick too much to that. We can do a whole episode on that later, but I'm going to use it for the sake of just this conversation. So what you're looking for is really a place where you think you could fit. And when I say fit, I'm saying, look at what that company is talking about. Look at the issues they're trying to tackle. Look at the job post, go to their company website, try to understand their culture. And if it feels like it's a place where you can not only grow and learn, but also contribute a thing or two, that is a good company to start applying to.

And I want to be clear here. We're talking about confidence. And one of the greatest ways to lack confidence in an interview is to blindly apply to 100 companies, get on a phone call with one of them, and not have any understanding of what they're trying to do, who they're hiring, why they're hiring them, what the company cares about.

It's like you can't go into a conversation and feel confident if you don't know what the other person is there for. You know they want to hire a designer, but why? What does this work entail? So when it comes to confidence, those are the two critical things I think that designers need to invest a little bit of time in. Self-awareness and research and understanding the company and roles you're applying to.

it's much better to apply to 10 companies. There's some connection here. There's some opportunity. There's some possibility rather than apply to 100 companies where maybe zero of them have that overlap. I mean, that's great to hear because that's always what we're trying to hear here. Ioana would be like clapping here. She's the

number one person to talk about self-awareness all the time. And we also even talk about how therapy could help learning about yourself, about your weak sides, strong sides. So this is really great to hear from you as well, as well as when we talk about job hunting, we constantly keep saying don't apply to hundreds of jobs blindly because that's the recipe for success, let's say so.

One thing I kind of was like on a note was the word success. What do you think about the mindset? What do you think once you start applying, once you figure yourself out, let's say you have a strategy, you know who you want to target, you know what you're good at and things like that. Basically, you did your homework, right?

Is this worse having this very, maybe even overconfident mindset thinking that I'm going to set myself up for success, no matter what, I'm going to do great, like being super confident? Is it worth it? Should you be more like reserved? And once you know, start applying for a job, be a bit more like humble and not sure and like, what would be the better approach? What would you say? This is such a valuable question. Absolutely. This is this is so key. There are a few things that we have to

think about here. The first is you never want to come across as arrogant in an interview, right? Nobody wants to work with someone who thinks they have it all figured out. In fact, companies are not looking to hire someone to solve all their problems. We may think that's what they want, but that is not what they want. What they want is someone who can solve some of the problems, also push some boundaries, collaborate with others, help them grow, identify opportunities, and grow themselves as individuals. So you never want to come across as overly confident.

if you feel overly confident, that's probably a good sign that that self-awareness is not really there, right? Because we all have room for improvement. We all have space for growth and learning things. So it's really important to keep that in mind. The other side of that coin is when you feel not confident at all. You're questioning your abilities. You don't have the right skills. Maybe you feel like you don't have the experience. You're struggling. Maybe you're intimidated by the call. Those are also not great things.

However, there's a big asterisk on both of these points. I firmly believe from experience in talking with many designers, talking to many recruiters, many hiring managers,

the absolute best way to succeed in an interview, and we'll talk about succeeding a little bit more in a second, is to be yourself. Is to be as honest as you feel comfortable being and as you're willing to be. What I mean by that is if you go into the interview and you feel like you've nailed it, let them know, "Hey, I'm feeling really confident. I would love for you to help ground me. What am I missing? What do I not know about the company? What's going to be really hard about this job do you think?" Ask those questions.

Similarly, if you're nervous or distracted or anything, let the recruiter, let the person on the other side of that conversation know, hey, I'm really nervous today. I had a little too much coffee. I'm a little jittery. You'll have to forgive me. Do me a favor. If you feel like I'm not engaging enough or if you feel I'm off the rails, just interject. I would love it if you did that for me.

What I'm trying to say with both of these points is success in an interview is coming out on the other side, knowing whether or not it's the right job for you. And it's a two-way street. This is something that I think many designers overlook. This is a conversation. Yeah, you know, you need the paycheck. You need the experience. It may be really exciting. But ultimately, you have the option to explore the company too. It may not be right for you.

It may not be a place where you can grow, where you can do your best work. You may be surprised at where that company is, right? So you have to also feel free to reject the company. And what does that feel like? Whatever that feels like for you, the company is also in the same boat. They know that you may not be a great fit for them. They know that you may not have all the right skills. Their hope that you do, that's why they're talking to you because they have a job that needs to get done and they want someone to help them do that.

they know it may not be right. And so that is the approach that we're all taking. Good companies, worthwhile companies do not go into interviews thinking, let's give someone a test. Let's test for the best of the best. That's not really how they think about it. What they think about is, hey, we have a problem and we need someone to help us do it. Here's the details of that problem space. And here are the skills we think that someone could help add to. Let's go find that person. Let's figure out how to gauge whether or not someone will fit that

that mold, that puzzle piece that we have a gap in. Right. And so when you go to these interviews, you have to remember that it's a conversation. It's a two way street. And they're going to hopefully be honest with you. They aren't always for reasons we can talk about later. There are good reasons, but

It's good to just be honest and upfront and truthful. If you're nervous, if you feel like you're missing the mark, just say that they're there to help you. They're there to evaluate whether or not you'll fit with the team, right? And that's really it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's so great when you can be honest. It's also relieving that you can be yourself and you can be honest and explain what's not working, what's working for you and stuff like that. I think it's a recipe for a good match. And I also believe that

job hunting process is like a matchmaking process. It's literally you finding the perfect fit for you and they're looking for a perfect fit for you. So the only way to do this is by being honest. I'll often hear usually from inexperienced designers who say, how do I pass this test? How do I check all the boxes? I really want to get a job at this company. What can I do to make them be

believe that I'm the best person for this. And right away, I have to say that is a really negative, almost toxic perspective to have. It's good that you're ambitious. It's good that you want to fit at a company that you have these ambitions. But the worst possible thing any of us could do is try to manipulate the interview process to come across as someone that we're not, get the job and then fail at it, right?

or show up and now struggle with everything that they're asking you to do because you kind of lied during the interview process. So again, honesty really is the best policy as much as you feel comfortable. It's not going to do you any good to try to show up as someone you're not. It's going to hurt you. It's going to hurt the

company, they're gonna have wasted money. Yeah, you might be able to learn and grow for those things. But why not just say that upfront, right? I don't have skill doing this, but it's an area that I really want to grow. And here's how I think about it. And here's what I'm willing to do. Also, here are the other skills I have.

So, it's just really important to put on that honest kind of lens, I think. Yeah. And I also think like even if you don't have specific, like let's say somebody is asking you, I remember questions through the interviews, like give me an example of how you handle the complex project. If you haven't, you can always think back on your life and think how you dealt with similar situations just outside of the job scope. So, there's always a way to go around it, but it's true that you have to be honest.

Sometimes you absolutely have no experience. That's also fine. And you should be able to say that. But sometimes you can also think of the situations. It's really not the test, right? You're being tested for how quickly you come up with the answers and if you have all the checkboxes checked. So you're right. But I think that brings me to the next type of a question. It sounded to me a lot like we're living in a situation where, and that was my experience when I was going through the job interviews one and a half years ago, when I felt like it was a lot

between trying to be as honest as possible and building the good relationship, especially with your hiring manager, usually design manager, but at the same time trying to fit in the system because there are still those check boxes. Let's say even HRs are looking to check. This whole hiring process, it usually have like five steps. It's very common. It's always like HR design interview, whatever, some type of a test, a whiteboarding challenge, and then probably some meeting with the team. And then

This system, as for me, not always reveals the best in a designer, does not always show if that's the right fit, but we still stick to the system. It works in most of the companies. It's still the system. And somehow as a designer, I found myself being in a limbo between trying to be honest, trying to find my perfect match, as they say, at the same time, trying not to screw it up with the system because there are things that I have to check.

What's your outlook on perspective on our current state of hiring process in the design industry? I think it was like this for the last couple of years, at least like three, four years. Yeah. I think a lot of the current process for hiring designers ultimately came from, I could be wrong.

To be clear, I'm also only talking strictly about digital product designers. So UX, UI, I'm not talking about like graphic designers or marketing designers. I think a lot of the process really came from some of these tech giants, Facebook, Google, Apple, where they started figuring out how to evaluate design candidates, quote unquote, effectively started sharing some of their process. Recruiters started going to other companies and just kind of spread from there. And what I will say is I

I have a lot of confidence in our current process. I really do. I know a lot of designers feel like it's, there's too many steps. It's too hard. It feels like a test. Sometimes there's a lot of pressure. It doesn't accommodate people who need like flexible schedules or things like that. Or what do you do if you have a full-time job you're interviewing, but you're also interviewing for like five different companies. That's a lot of time.

we don't have, right? Additionally, like you said, there are certain criteria that every job has that someone has to be able to align with, right? You'd be surprised at how often that's a little bit flexible, but most companies, when they say, you know, you need, let's see here, what's a good example? You need experience working with like a programming language. That's a good example that designers may or may not encounter.

You really need that, right? They are asking you for that for a very specific reason. So you have to have that. But sometimes that's also flexible. Here's my guidance. The first thing is try to understand why the design process is the way it is. Take a step back and really try to understand why are there seven interviews? Is that really needed? Why are they asking me the same questions repeatedly? I already told them the answer. Why do they need to see more of my work? I sent them a link to my portfolio. This is getting ridiculous.

There are really valid reasons for each of those things.

And once you start to understand that, you start to see that the interview process really is optimized for finding that fit. That's ultimately what it all comes down to. So when it comes to things like feeling you need to check those boxes or putting on your best face, yeah, you need that to some degree. But again, I will say this a million times, it's a two-way street. The company needs someone for a very specific reason. They're not hiring just for the fun of it. I mean, maybe some companies do that, but

They have a need, right? They really need someone to help them out. They want to hire almost in some cases, desperate to find someone. So they're investing time, millions of dollars. I mean, we're talking about headcount. We're talking about tools to get this process. They're spending a lot of time to talk to people.

The opposite is also true. Like I said earlier, you're probably spending a lot of time in these things as well. You're feeling that pressure as well. You need a job. So when it comes to the actual interview process, whether that's a very first time phone call with a recruiter or all the way down to even talking to a CEO, which I've done at a number of interviews, the best approach is to take your time.

be kind of quiet internally, reflect on that self-awareness, reflect on what you know about the company. And I think most critically, remember that it's a two-way street and you don't have all the answers either, and they don't expect you to. So ask questions. That is the key. If you feel like you're not sure what they're looking for, if you feel like there's a certain checkbox in the job that maybe you don't really align with, ask, "Hey, tell me more about this need to learn Python. Why is that listed on this design role? I'm not sure."

I don't have much experience there, but I think I could learn. Tell me more about why that's on there. What does that mean to you? And what you'll find through simple questions like that is the answer is not quite what you thought. Maybe there's some flexibility there. Maybe you have an example of something else you've done in the past that aligns. All those things can apply, but you're not going to know if you don't ask.

That is probably the number one area I see designers get hung up in the interview process. You have to ask, you have to not be afraid to say, I don't quite understand what this means. Explain it to me. Or I have an idea what this criteria means. What do you think it means? One of my favorite examples that I used most recently when I was searching for a job was to ask companies about their culture.

culture is something I personally care a lot about, but culture means many different things to many different people. And often what we find is that the external representation of a company's culture is hardly ever accurate with what's happening internally. Anyone who's worked more than three jobs knows this. The external appearance of a culture is really nice and fluffy, but once you get inside, it's politics. People hate working together. They're working on different goals, things like that.

So during my interview process, I would start to ask very specific questions about their culture. An example that I used was, tell me about a time someone on the team failed. What did the rest of the team do in that situation? How did they react to that stumble, to that failure? So another question I like to ask companies was I would look at their website, see like their overarching mission statement or something like a sentence or a blurb about their company. And I would ask every single interviewer, I read this mission. What does that mean to you? What is your interpretation?

And if the answer to those questions was like never really straightforward or misaligned, I knew right away, okay, there's something here that maybe I don't want to explore. I will say, I'll just share that Netflix checked every box I could ever want in a job. And I found that the answers I got to cultural questions aligned perfectly with everything I've heard about them.

both from friends, from peers, as well as their online presence. They really were just like the most honest and upfront company. I felt like it was the best place I could get in a foot in the door. So I was really excited about it and it worked out for me. But that result of that was asking a lot of questions.

I kind of really love this question about the mission statement. You're right, like there's, it's always so general and sometimes blurry and sometimes you don't often see companies trying to kind of see if people understand what it means. It's kind of like usually just up there on the website. I remember we even did like a workshop. I remember we were looking for like an icebreaker question to ask people in the workshop. And we actually asked, how do they understand our company mission statement? And it was

really interesting to hear the answers. So I really love this approach. I think it's really good to see if at least like the team you're applying to aligns on that, you know, like if you as a product family or team, you know what you're doing, you know where you're heading. Anyways, I think you were talking a lot about the interviewing process and asking questions. And that usually refers interviewing

the manager or interviewing the team whoever is more i guess the person who leads your your as a candidate my next question is really more about how do you actually prepare because i also am a big fan of those interviews for me this is like probably always the biggest part like it's what i'm most excited about the interview is the manager sometimes scared because obviously it's when you kind of have to be very honest both ways even when i'm having talks with my manager who's hiring

I'm always hearing his feedback. Like I fall in love with this person right after the interview. Right. So it's like, you can see that that sometimes if you're the right candidate, I decided on those interviews. So interviews are very important parts of this hiring process. But then the question is how do you prepare yourself? How do you list those questions? Do you again take out some sort of a checkbox or like whatever list of questions and then you randomly pick the questions or how do you prepare for this? Right. Cause people, especially those who never applied for the jobs,

They know they need to be asking the questions, but which ones? So many. And again, the worst obviously is to ask those questions like, oh, how do you invest in your people? Like small things that you can find online, right? So what are those good questions that you can prepare in advance and ask in the right moment? How would you approach it?

It comes back to that self-awareness piece. I want to reiterate what you just said, because I firmly believe this is really important. A lot of people will go and Google, what questions should I ask in an interview? They'll go and ask some of those questions and the answer just doesn't matter. It has no material impact on their perception of the company. It doesn't help them understand the job. It doesn't help

that you as a designer, again, align with what you're capable of and what you want to do with what you need to do. So I usually recommend avoiding those kinds of questions. They can be helpful in terms of inspiration. I think that's good, but it should never be a one-to-one. I found this question online. Sounds good. I'm going to ask it, right? Instead, what you need to do and what I like to do is spend time again, thinking about who you are, what you've done in the past, what you've enjoyed doing, what

your skills are, maybe where your gaps are. Really anything about yourself that you understand will help guide what questions you can ask. So I'll share a personal example. Let me see if I can remember this. When I was looking for my most recent job, I knew that the most important thing for me was the team I work with. And I'll give a small bit of context here. I've worked in a lot of different industries for B2B software, consumer software, millions of users, tens of users.

I've worked in autonomous vehicle software. I've worked in recruiting software. And what I learned is that I don't really care about the industry I work in. It just doesn't matter to me. I find interest in almost any industry I join. So I knew that that didn't matter. I also knew that I had a decent skill set personally. I've kind of reflected on my skills and the things I enjoy. And what I learned is that I want to do design and I want to do it with a great team. So the very first thing I had to do is say, well, what is a great team?

Like when I think about that in my own mind, I want to work with a good team. What does that mean? That can mean many different things. So I spent some time thinking about it and what I came up with was a framework. And the framework that I shared in every single interview was this. I'm looking for a team that has CHIPS. CHIPS stands for customer focused, humility, ingenuity, passion, and superpowers. So CHIPS.

It was easy for me to remember. It was easy for the interviewer to remember, and it really helped guide the conversation. So I knew I cared about those things. And again, it just took some reflection, some journaling. And once I learned those things, I could ask specific questions about the chips, right? Tell me how your team engages with customers. I had a few interviews early on where they said, well, we don't really talk to customers. And I knew right away, it's not going to work. It's not for me. Love the company, love the product. It's not for me.

me. Ingenuity. Tell me about how your team likes to innovate. What does innovation mean for your team? So those kinds of examples are what I was able to do. And that really helped guide my questions. And again, that comes back to first and foremost, self-reflection. What do I care about? What am I looking for? What do I know I can do? And how do I communicate that to the interviewers so I can get signal on whether or not this is a good fit for me? The company's doing the same thing, right? That's why they have a job post.

They've got a bulleted list of things they're looking to evaluate, and they'll ask you questions around those things. You need to do the same thing. Take some time, really think about what you're trying to do, what you're looking for, generate a handful of questions that you think will help get you answers, and then experiment. If you're not getting the answer you kind of were hoping for in an interview, you can, in the interview, adjust it. Okay, well, actually, I'm looking to understand how your team really embraces innovation.

maybe not how they do innovation, but what does it look like when someone on your team has a really radical idea? How does the team react? How does leadership react? That's kind of an example. So again, self-awareness is such a critical part of interviewing. It's going to help you succeed if you can take that time to understand yourself, what you're looking for, skills, etc. I love it. I love that you came up with the framework. It sounds like you did your very good homework.

serious approach. I never heard of anyone doing it, so that's pretty interesting. When it comes to, for example, me reflecting on how I did it last time, for me, what helped a lot is to list down the values I'm looking in the company. And then based on those, I don't know, three, four or five, it's up to you, values just generate some kind of questions that could help me answering these, match these, right? Because I think a lot of those things is also, again, coming back to you. What are you looking for

you were very good and clear in terms of like, you know who you're looking for, right? You know that industry doesn't matter, people matter, team matters. So those are the values that I'm talking about. That's what you just list what's important for you. And then based on this, generate the questions, just like you do for the interviews, right? You're doing with the customers or users. And then you're coming up with the questions that are not leading, but also open enough to understand if that's the right match.

One of the quotes we used to have with Ioana here is like UX your process, I guess. Just do your homework, do your research. One of the last questions I'd still like to ask here is, it's kind of more about the advice. For example, recently I had a talk with one of my friends who had like four job rejections in a span of like a year or two. I asked this friend, you know, if you look back

What would be the advice you give yourself? Because it was very hard on that friend. The friend told me to not fall in love with jobs and to not get into the relationships early.

and not get your hopes high because that really brings this heartbreak at the end. I don't know, what do you think about this advice? Do you think it makes sense? Do you think it makes sense to be kind of distant from the job or it's better to more get involved as much as you can, put yourself into it as much as you can and then deal with the, so to say, heartbreak earlier? What would be your approach into doing it?

This is a hard question. My advice and my personal perspective here is to again, just think about this two-way street, meaning you will not have all the answers going to a company. And you may never, even if you get the job. While you may say, okay, this company, this one that I'm about to interview with, they seem exceptional. I would be so happy here. Maybe they've got a big brand name. Maybe you know some of the people that work there. You would

admire them. Maybe you see their work and you're just like, that is the work I want to do. The reality inside that company might be completely different than what you expect. It might be the worst place to work, right? And you really just will never know unless you get the job. So what I like to think about is when I go to interviewing, my job

It's not just to help the company understand what I'm capable of. Yeah, I want to wow them, impress them, whatever. But my job is to try to understand the company because I don't have all the answers. My perspective of the company could be completely wrong. I don't know. So I think it's okay to get excited. It's okay to set your ambitions high and try to pursue things that you're really excited about. But you also need to be realistic. You don't know if that company is going to be the best place for you.

In fact, I think if I were to give myself advice for many, many, many, many years ago, I would say don't shut yourself off from opportunities that don't seem like they would interest you. Because some of those companies that you're kind of shunning out of the gate could be exactly where you need to go to grow and to have the impact you want to have.

you may like it a lot more than you realize. But the inverse is also true. Like I was saying, you may get a job at a company that you really admire and that you're excited about only to realize that you hate it. You absolutely hate it. So when it comes to like attaching yourself to a job or really getting your hopes up again, you have to kind of balance that. It's okay to have some level of that, but

even if you're rejected or even if you're not rejected you just don't know you don't know what's on the other side try to get those answers as best you can that will help kind of ground you if you get still even more excited from those answers that's okay too rejection could just mean like i said it's just not a fit and it may be a fit in the future but right now this moment in time it's just not a fit that doesn't mean you're incapable it doesn't mean you're bad

It just means that right now you're not what the company needs and that's okay. In a lot of cases, the company should also not be what you need. That's okay too, right? So balance yourself, take care of yourself, ask a lot of questions and just know that even if you keep getting rejections, you can't give up. You have to keep pursuing the company that will be a good place for you. Try to stay humble, stay curious, keep looking. Rejection doesn't mean really anything about you apart from

It wasn't a fit. Maybe you could have communicated better. Maybe you need more experience, et cetera, et cetera. But there's going to be somewhere out there that needs exactly what you have to offer. Go find that. Right.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think like, like you said, it's very important to be sort of in balance with yourself because yeah, when rejection happens, you kind of want to think about it is that not the end. I personally have seen a lot of stories when maybe that was not the right fit for that particular role, but in two, three months they would come back and say, oh, we actually have another role that we feel will be a perfect fit. It's not always like a shut door. You're not

good for us or something like that. It's usually just maybe not the right match in this moment, but it doesn't mean that's it. It's true that it's good to reflect, keep yourself like accounted on like, this is not me being not good enough. Or maybe if you're not good enough, that's all right as well. Like sometimes it's just not a match, but it's really not a shut door. And in fact, it's very often that you could be again, recontacted and yeah, I just seen this very often. And as long as you're honest and know what you're worth,

It's going to be very helpful for you, for your mindset, also for that company because they know who they are hiring. So I guess that's the key takeaway from our conversation today. Alrighty, I guess one more advice I will still give to our listeners is to just go ahead and check out the book that Tanner wrote.

Again, it's called designer's guide to interviewing. You can find it on the Amazon, but we will definitely add the link to the show notes. Other than that, Tanner, where people could find you, where can they follow you and ask you questions, if anything? Yeah, I would love to connect with people.

One of my favorite pastimes is just talking with other designers about their experiences and their careers. So I'm primarily active on LinkedIn. I don't actively connect with everyone who comes my way, but I would love to engage in comments and messages. Feel free to follow me. I try to be very active there.

And then if you want to learn more about my work or where else I'm active and the things I'm doing, you can just of course, Google me or go to tannerc.com or tannerchristensen.com, either of those work and you can see what I'm up to. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today. There was a lot of brilliant thoughts and I'm really happy that they aligned with what we usually hear here.

So yeah, that's just great to hear that we kind of share a lot of similar perspectives. And then for those of you who's new here, make sure to follow us and give us the rating if you have listened up until this moment. And if you have more questions, don't forget to send us these questions over either on our Instagram. You can find us as honest UX docs or just to our personal accounts, Amphisign or UX goodies. Thank you so much everyone again and have a good day. Bye-bye.

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