#97 Being an intern and pursuing a full-time role
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The thing that is very important is this mentorship role of the company. It's not only on us to stand out, but it's also on the companies. Because back then I realized I didn't have any structured way to approach my internship. I was thrown into it and asked to figure it out. I was asked to find the projects for myself. I was looking for somebody to tell me what should I do, and that didn't happen. And so if I were to do it all over again today, while I would be interviewing with them, I would ask them, what are the mentorship or

opportunities you're having and how exactly do you organize it. By discussing those conditions early on, you both are having kind of like a partnership agreement in a way. They know what to expect from you, you know what to expect from them.

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the next episode of On This UX Talks. My name is Anfisa. I'm joined by Ioana. And today we are going to talk about being an intern and trying to pursue the full-time role in the company you're interning at. But before jumping into the topic and discussing interesting strategies, ideas, and ways to stand out as an intern, I also want to say that we have a great news. We also have a podcast sponsor for this episode.

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Before jumping into the episode, one quick question. How are you doing, Ioana? You're talking from Austin, where you just gave the talk of your dreams. I just want to hear a little bit more about it. Hi, everyone. I hope the sound quality is not bad.

garbage completely. I'm recording with my AirPods, which funnily enough, one year ago that I was using my headphone to record this podcast, I didn't have a proper microphone. So I think it should be at least as good as that. But yeah, I'm in Austin right now. And

And I was impressed to see that I had a full room, which means close to 500 people, which was incredible. And when I entered the room to do the tech test 30 minutes earlier, like half of the room was already full. And I was like starting to feel the anxiety because up to that point, I felt pretty eerily

chill. But I think that my body was kind of experiencing the stress because I had like back pain and headaches and so on. Yeah, once on stage, everything went not very smooth because I had a small parenchymal problem, which is my fault. But then the content and the reception and how everybody responded with feedback and nodding and taking pictures of the slide, kind of metrics that you're looking for when you're giving a talk, they were all theirs.

I'm very grateful for yesterday. It was an important moment. And then the best part was when at the end of the talk, I had a large, small crowd waiting to talk to me, ask me a question, get my perspective on stuff. So that's also an indicator that they want to continue this conversation, which for me is sort of the definition of success when I'm giving talks. And now I can simply enjoy South by Southwest, my second year here. I've been last year as an attendee. It

Even though I came as a speaker, I'm done with that. I'm just going to enjoy the content. I've also attended a fantastic talk yesterday about the consciousness of AI and how we have trouble understanding if AI will become conscious because we have trouble defining consciousness. Like we still don't agree on a universal definition for what consciousness is. And yeah, just a lot of interesting stuff. A lot of interesting people. I'm very excited for this week. I'm very tired. And that's it from my side. How about you? How was your week?

Damn. I'm sorry to hear there was a little technical bump, but I'm sure it was great because I know how good and confident you are at the stage when you're speaking. It feels like it's natural to you. For example, I'm about to give two first of the talks this year, also on the stage and the conferences. And I'm freaking out because I know I'm getting super nervous by speaking about that. So I'm sure it will be also very nerve wracking, but we'll see.

Anyways, my actual three weeks, because we didn't talk for a while. We had a guest episode, but together we didn't talk. My couple of weeks were great because I was on vacation all my day around, which was amazing. We first time ever traveled with eight months old baby. It was great. We had five hour flights, which was manageable, actually. I was surprised our baby was really well behaved, cooperated, didn't scream too much. It was really nice, actually. And I think we'll have to do more of these trips because I realized it's not that bad.

as you maybe worry about. The rest of the news is that I have finally signed the contract to come back to my full-time job starting in two weeks, which is already pretty crazy. I have no idea what to expect from it. Very excited, but also very nervous. I'm all over the place trying to feed everything, trying to manage and finish all the projects. I have a lot of community efforts and initiatives right now. We're introducing the monthly challenges for portfolios, which is a lot of support for the members. And so I'm very nervous, but

at the same time, again, I feel very excited to come back and meet with the folks I worked with before. I was really intentional trying not to pick into what they're working on, not to read anything that's happening on the Slack. It was hard sometimes. I was very interested in seeing what's happening. And I was doing my best to kind of hold off and take advantage of this opportunity of being on maternity leave and really enjoy it and stay focused and present on the baby. There's a lot of things happening in my off-site time.

Speaking about coming back to work or starting working, our today's topic is how do we showcase a value as UX designers when we're just starting out, right? When you are either an intern, when you're given usually two, three months of some sort of intern period where you can practice, but there is no strings attached. It doesn't mean that if you practice there for a couple of months, you will be staying in that same company and you will secure the full-time role.

So being an intern is a little bit nerve-wracking because you don't know if you'll be staying there. You don't know if you will have to job hunt after this internship. And there is a big pressure for you to stand out and try to do your best and show that you have a strong potential, that though you're a beginner, you'll grow quickly, you'll understand what's happening and basically show that you can provide value for the business.

I know this feeling very well because I have been an intern for three months in the award-winning service and UX design agency in Estonia when I was finishing my master's degree. It was very new-rocking. And I do remember how it was even tough to apply there because I had like five rounds of interviews with very different people. And then I got accepted. And then after that, they said, oh, we need two more interviews. It was very challenging even to apply for the free internship.

I know how stressful it is. And then once you start working on, again, there's a lot of pressure to prove that you're worth it, right? There are only a couple of people that usually stay full time after the internship. So I feel like there's a lot of things to unpack. And luckily, this question was submitted by our listener, Rancy. Thank you so much for dropping this question. I feel like there's a lot of potential in this topic. I'd love to tackle this topic. Let's start from something very general. Imagine...

You are starting over today, Ioana. I don't know if you're having any interns right now. Probably not. If you ever worked with interns,

Let's kind of wear this empathy hat and imagine we're interns today. What would you do in order to try to prove yourself in this new fresh place and kind of try to stand out? Yeah, so I haven't been in the position applying to an internship or being an intern, but I have been in the position of being a junior designer on the team. You experience, of course, a completely different level of stress because then there's a reward at the end or not.

And it's very, let's say, overt and very official. It's like the system. You go for an internship and if you prefer, well, typically it surfaces what the process is in a very explicit way. But your junior role will be similar to that in a less explicit way. So even when you get a job as a junior, you're still vulnerable. You can still lose that job after the trial period of three months or six months. So they're similar in a way, but this explicit quality

Quality makes it much more stressful when you're in an internship, especially since internships are very rare. So that means that you probably feel that, oh, my God, this is my only chance, the only chance I'll ever get. If I don't get this role, then it's over for me. When you're in a junior position, you've already kind of secured your first junior position, at least even if you're like four, three, six months in the worst case scenario. And then, you know, you can repeat that experience.

you're also in a controlled environment, right? So when it's called internship, people don't expect you to really have complete ownership or have top executional quality, which sometimes is expected even from a junior designer, right? So execution should be something that junior designers would be able to do.

I think it goes both ways. It's very stressful. You're very vulnerable, but you're also more supported than a typical role because the system should be designed in a way that you are encouraged to learn from others, paired with people, exposed to the right conversations, processes, ways of working, systems, tools, and so on. So there should be a good support system around you. That, of course, I mean, it should be implicit to junior roles, but in internships, I think it's more official or designed.

Good parts, bad parts. I wish internships were more frequent. I see opportunities for that very rarely, but I don't remember what your question was. I think the question was like, what if you would start over? Like if you would do it today, how would you try to send out? What would be your strategies for nailing it? If I were to start today, I remember when I finally landed at UX Law, I've been targeting for two, three years. At that point, I was so high on adrenaline.

Every day was extremely stressful. I was so keen on demonstrating that I deserved that. I was also experienced with feeling the guilt that they gave me the role. I don't know. I felt unworthy. I felt like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing here. And what if people expect me to know what I'm doing? But then I continuously kind of acted like,

I have agency. And then I ended up building that agency by doing things like I theoretically thought I should be doing them, which is the best thing you have as a junior designer. So I think this is my number one piece of advice. Rely on whatever you have available.

Maybe it's like the articles you've read. Maybe it's the mentor you have, if you have one. Maybe it's just your gut feeling, your intuition. Maybe it's your personality that's ambitious and decisive and rely on the tools you have available, even if they're rudimentary at this point in your career, and then build on that, lead with that, right? So you want to show agency. You want to show critical thinking, like,

thinking about problems in the right way is something that you can surface very early on in your career. You don't have to have 30 years of experience. Of course, you're going to get much better at critical thinking and much better at systems thinking, making connections and so on. When you have 30 years of experience, undoubtedly. But you can still surface some of those, let's say, more immature versions of that

in your early days and show value even by asking a lot of questions. And this is the second or third very important piece of advice. Ask questions continuously, even if you think you're going to annoy everyone, even if you might annoy everyone as a junior designer, as an intern, it

It's your job to ask questions. It's your job to understand what the hell is going on. And not just that, but by continually asking questions, and especially if they're naive, they tend to have this quality of challenging the status quo. You force everyone to think, to take a mental break from automatic processes, and then think about

I mean, you're right. What are we doing here? Why are we doing things like this? And so you're challenging the process by asking questions. And everybody needs that. Everybody needs a fresh perspective. Everybody needs to think about something with this child eyes and beginners mentality, right? So you have the opportunity to learn for yourself by asking a lot of questions, but you're also helping others articulate, frame, reconsider the things they're doing and how they're doing that.

So I think three things lead with the qualities you feel you can already somewhat trust and then critical thinking, employ it even if it's in an immature shape. And then the last one and the most important one, continuously ask questions because that's how you will learn and get better. And also ask for feedback. Feedback is a part of that question set, but also you help others figure out better answers and maybe new angles to their work life.

And what was your experience like? I know it was stressful, but what would you do differently or what would you do the same? Oh, my God. This question overwhelms me because I've been looking to unpack this topic for a very long time because that was probably the most sensitive experience I've ever had in the whole career.

I understand very well the pressure, the emotion, the fear, the lack of confidence. When you said unworthy, it's exactly the word that would also wrap it, trying to explain what I went through. Because first of all, there was like five or six rounds of interviews and I've been asked to do a practical task, obviously not paid and everything.

I thought I have very good chemistry with the managers and I think we kick it off very, very well. And everything started off very strongly. I remember the project was very exciting. The space was amazing because unlike many other design agencies, design agencies typically have this problem of just jumping onto the project in later stages and just delivering the prototype.

and never really following up on doing the discovery or anything. That company I was applying to was really strong. They had, again, like I said, award-winning status. And so they are really strong with strategy. They did a lot of research. They work in a service design area, not just the UX design, but that means they worked with different layers, the front stage, the backstage, different edge points, a lot of customer interviews. I felt very lucky to even apply there. When we started working, the project I was embarking on was amazing, amazing.

full of learnings. They gave me a task to analyze a bunch of photos, draw some insights, draw some hipoteties. I was super excited because I love analysis and in general, everything was fantastic in the beginning. And I felt like I was so excited that I've generated a bunch of interesting findings. The people who hired me said, oh my God, I was doing amazing. You know, they gave me this high bar in the beginning and I was overly excited.

And then something started going wrong. Again, I'm trying to be short here because it was a very stressful period. But 7-7 going off, maybe because they brought this bar very high in the beginning and I was overly excited. I put all my effort into it. And then something started going off. Like in the middle of the internship, I started realizing we're lacking the communication. We're lacking the connection. It's not the same anymore. It was a summer internship. So maybe first one and a half months, it was amazing. And suddenly, suddenly, suddenly, I realized that

sometimes working out. We cannot talk anymore. They don't give me any feedback. We are not talking at all. They are maybe stressed out with all the new projects and new clients coming in, whatever. But I did realize that it's not working out. And they even gave me feedback over the email, which was very, I would say, condescending.

I'm not even afraid anymore to say that. But back then it felt very condescending. It basically established that you started high. Now we expect you to do more if you want to stay here. I can't remember exactly framing, but I just remember it made me feel that you're not doing enough. Try more. You started well, but now you're not good enough. If, of course, you want to stay here. So it was like provoking me to try harder if you want to stay here. And in a way, it was bending me to try to fit in.

I don't know if I've worded it in a nice way, but in a way, I just realized it made me so anxious when I received that feedback. And it was given over the email while we were sitting in the same very small room. There was 10 people on the

Instead of telling me in a meeting room, work through the, I guess, miscommunications we might have had, it was delivered over email that felt very directive. And long story short, I didn't get the full-time role there, even though it was kind of in a way implied that you're doing well, starting off strong, maybe you'll get the role, try harder.

And no, they didn't do anything. Looking back from the perspective of being in the industry for 10 more years, I feel like the biggest problem that always occurs, even in this podcast, we talked about it for a while. It was a miscommunication. We really never had a strong opportunity to talk about delivering things, unpacking things, discussing what is going wrong and crushing whatever worries or concerns we might be having. We never really gave it a chance.

from both sides, in my opinion. Also my problem that I felt so overwhelmed, so not confident in myself, that I couldn't just lock the time in their calendar and say, please sit down with me. Let's talk about it. Give me an opportunity to hear you out. And I want to hear and maybe I want to speak out as well. So that's what happened. And I feel like at the end, the team that was hiring me, they distanced themselves from me. It was in a very intentional way.

Like first it was jokes and making fun and blah, blah, being trying to be nice to each other. And then essentially just never talk anymore. The last months in August, we never ever talked. We had lunches together, but we stayed silent. It was like this very weird, awkward moments when nobody speaks to each other.

And then they never gave me any feedback. And though in the beginning of the relationship, they started talking to me that, yeah, you might be staying here. Look, there have been two people who stayed here before, even though we have been doing internships for like many years. You can stay here. Look, there are people who stay here. They told me that. So I was really hoping maybe I'll be another one who stays here. I was also visa dependent. For me, that was like a survival thing. It was a lot of pressure. And obviously, I was a student, so I didn't have any income. And so I was really hoping to do that.

And then at the end, they just didn't give me any feedback. There was literally nothing. Even the weird thing that happened is that over the email, one of the HR told me that maybe you'll get some monetary reward for your time. And then eventually fizzled out. Nobody gave me any monetary reward. So there was a lot of like hooking and then nothing, no following up. And now looking back, I'm laughing, but it was so freaking stressful in a moment. Maybe somebody will feel related to this problem, have been going through the same right now. I can imagine how

crazy it is. I was so stressed that finishing that internship, I said like, F it, at least

I'm leaving it. I don't want to live in this country anymore. I just put my backpack on and I was traveling for two months hitchhiking without no money, without any plans. I just wanted to forget about this and never get back to it and do my startups again because I was feeling pretty happy freelancing, doing startups. And maybe that also impacted my confidence in a way that I was freelancing for six more years after that and never worked full time in the company environment, right? I felt more confident there.

doing it on my own, being the only designer until I grew enough to actually join the company and be a part of the team. And so that's a long story short. So the word that you said, unworthy, is a very good umbrella that I felt unworthy, then I thought I'm doing well, then I again felt unworthy. And there's a lot of those rollercoaster feelings about the

confidence. And I will get back to the tips, I guess, in the next couple of questions. I feel like I was just giving the intro of my experience to make it a little bit more relatable for some people. But I actually want to maybe speak about one specific topic, the confidence part of it. I feel like every time we are starting out, we are all experiencing a very strong imposter syndrome. We all feel we are not worthy enough. Who are we even to work here, right? This company is about winning. Why should they even listen to me? Whatever I'm doing, it's not good enough.

How would you approach dealing with that feeling if you were a designer today? And maybe there's a lot of similar advices that you've already started giving, but maybe we can expand on this topic of confidence, infusing the self-worth in ourselves. Maybe it will help someone. Do you have any things to add?

I want to add that your experience has been so traumatic. I mean, it's like one of the worst internship stories I've heard. For me, I'm very socially driven. My main motivator is to be accepted by the world and fit in or have friends and relationships. And I'm a very social person. I'm very extroverted. So...

This scenario in which people start not talking to me or changing behaviors with my hyper vigilant attitude towards relationships would have driven me crazy. I mean, I would have kept asking everyone, dude, what's wrong? What's going on? Can you please tell me kind of the perfect segue into the second point I wanted to make based on your story? I think as a junior designer, it's especially hard to ask for feedback.

So you're less on the line. I should have addressed this earlier. Maybe I should have just grabbed them by the hand, take them to a room and ask them, look, what's not working? What can I improve? What do I need to do differently? And so on. I think this is a very tough and sophisticated field to have, even as a senior designer. I think there's so much avoidance around having these uncomfortable conversations for multiple reasons, right? For once, it's really tough to ask people to say something that can potentially hurt you. I mean...

Our evolutionary mechanisms prevent us from asking uncomfortable stuff because it can hurt us. So one of the main drivers of existence is avoiding pain. So we go against our instincts when we are asking people to say tough things about us. So this is a skill that many senior designers don't master. So I think it's a very high ask for a junior designer to ask for feedback properly and constantly. But...

it's life-saving, the fastest way to growth. It's the most painful way, but you grow through pain, right? You go through confronting the things. That's the accelerated path as opposed to continuously avoiding them. And then they come back with a higher course and mess up more important parts of your later career, right? So address them early. I agree. I'm

takes a lot of courage, but you can do it. Your question about imposter syndrome. I don't know. I still have imposter syndrome 10 years into my design career, but to be completely honest, it's much less these days. So I'm reflecting on why I'm experiencing less of the imposter syndrome so I can understand why I was experiencing more in my early days. So what changed now and why I'm not feeling it so much is that I sort of achieved something. I've managed to

prove myself. I have some milestones. I have some achievements. I've built products that people enjoy using. And I made design decisions that really moved the needle for the world. So I have evidence that I am worthy of being a designer, that I deserve a design job. Now there's evidence for that.

In the early days, there is no evidence. Like people just trust you blindly in a way. It's really hard to quantify the value that we're bringing as designers. And I think that this contributes a lot because if you're doing something that's very easy to measure, like you have to finish a filling up an Excel file with 100 lines per day, you

end the day work and you have 100 lines and so you've succeeded on your task so why would you experience imposter syndrome if the success of your task is measurable as designers we work in the space of uncertainty experiences are measurable but it's pretty difficult right to measure experiences we have a lot of xus nps all sorts of mechanisms for measuring the user's happiness

and direct feedback and resource studies and so on. But we don't have those accessible at any given moment in our career, right? So it's probably for bigger pictures, bigger projects, bigger things that we're working on. And as junior designers, I don't think we even get that so much, like responses to our design decisions. It might very well be that the responses we get to our design decisions

complain because probably we're not making the best decisions in our early days. So it's a combination of not knowing if you're doing a good job because there is no way of measuring and you rely on like your internal metrics, your internal compass and

And that compass is not mature yet. It's not robust yet. It's just a random feeling. And it also ties into your personality type. Some people have the tendency to be very hard on themselves and be very competitive and demand a lot. They expect to...

be at senior level when they're just starting out. That's impossible. So I think the cure to imposter syndrome is accepting it, but also kind of not in a toxic way. I'm saying it in a very positive way. Lower your expectations in the sense that just accept that you don't know how to do stuff. And it's okay to ask. It's okay to discover. It's okay to say, I don't know. Let me find out.

right? But you have to find out. So that's the important rule here. It's not okay to just shrug and say, you know what? I don't know how to do this. Sorry. I'm just going to go home now. Learn how to do it. Put the effort into learning, but accept that you don't know a lot of things and that's fine because that's how early days in any career are supposed to be like. So the cure to imposter syndrome is, I think, embracing it. How did you overcome or what was your experience?

I really like that you started from the courage point of view, right? I think the courage is the hardest one to get, especially when you're not given any feedback in the first place. When the feedback does not provide the top down from the leadership or from your mentors, if you have one. The thing is, how do we even build that courage?

courage. And looking back right now, I feel like the best way for me personally would be to ease it down into maybe not just going for the high stakes leadership conversation, but starting a bit lower stakes by asking people who you work with. Maybe those are the peers that are also juniors or people who are recently being hired there. Somebody who's like early stage with you on this journey, maybe. And just asking for their perspective, their opinion. What do they see that you might not be able to see? Because when you're scared, I

I was scared. You might not be very objective in how you evaluate the situation. Your fear might overstress or dramatize the real situation. So asking for people who you work with, who you might be trusting, who you might be having casual conversations or people who are at the same level as you, what do they think? Do they see any pressure or any tension or is it just you made it up?

And that will help you out to kind of maybe double check if anything is going fine. And then once you have at least some ground and somebody validated that you're not crazy, you can then try to book that meeting with higher level mentors or leaders. In my opinion, it just is out the way for you to ask for that feedback.

Now, imposter syndrome, right? Like you said, Ioana, I think speaking out is literally the only cure to it. I have a very long story of building the continent itself as well. Like the imposter syndrome, it's also still present depending on the environment. If the environment is very challenging, the imposter syndrome grows very high again. If I'm very comfortable, imposter syndrome drops, right? Very natural. But I

I think the way for me to build this confidence or try to squash the imposter syndrome back then when I was starting out, it was literally to start speaking out what I know. Because I've left that experience feeling so bad. I felt like I know nothing. I'm not worthy. I'm not even worth talking to. Nobody will ever hire me and stuff like that. And then suddenly, half a year later, I was hired to be a trainer. And I felt like, oh my God.

Why would people listen to me? I was not even able to be hired as a junior designer. Yeah, I had a lot of those freelance experiences or working with the startups, but who am I even? Like the company I was looking for didn't hire me. But as soon as I started speaking out as the mentor or as a trainer, I was giving lectures and giving the program about user experience design in Georgia. That's where I realized, oh my God, I know so much. I just wasn't aware of that.

I felt so bad, but as soon as I started speaking out, I squashed all those worries that I'm not worthy. So that's one of the recipe pieces that was missing for me, but it's always different. I know that you want to always promote the idea of getting a mentor elsewhere, finding somebody who

can help you reflecting and navigating this journey. I think there are multiple ways how you can solve it. But for me, the speaking out part, trying to share what I know, articulate what I know, the decisions, that's what helped me immensely. If you are right now in a moment of being an intern and trying to kind of make your way in the company, I think as hard as it sounds, asking for the feedback is probably the only way for you to navigate it, to be honest. And I know it sounds very contradictory because obviously, if you're not confident, how would you ask for the feedback? It's

perpetuating, right? You cannot ask for the feedback if you are not confident, you are lacking the courage and it just goes in circles. But it just was the user feedback, right? The earlier you are able to embrace the negative feedback, the earlier you learn and earlier you minimize the risks. And that applies not only in the UX design and the work you're doing, but also in your teamwork, in your skills and your ways of standing out at the company inside of the team.

And so, yes, asking for the feedback and how people feel working with you. If anybody has any problems or somebody is not feeling confident about something, that's what you need to be asking. And the more you embrace it and the earlier you sort of feel vulnerable for asking for that, the easier it will be for you to minimize the risk. And that's something I didn't do, right? I didn't book that meeting with my mentors. I didn't ask them what's not working.

And I did minimize the risk. Eventually, it all sort of went off the rails and it really ruined my confidence for the next couple of years. So, yeah, asking for the feedback is very important. But also, I think that is very important and something we didn't talk yet about is this mentorship role of the company. It's not only on us to stand out, but it's also on the companies. Because back then, I realized I didn't have any structured way to approach my internship.

I was thrown into it and asked to figure it out. I was asked to find the projects for myself. And as somebody who doesn't have any confidence, it was very weird thing because I had no idea how do I not block anyone from doing their work and find an opportunity. But there's like five projects. Who should I follow? Which project should I join? Where should I fit in? I was looking for somebody to tell me what should I do. And that didn't happen. And I think like

It could be a normal ask for the junior designer, but not for the intern. Because if you're an intern, you have no idea. You are still very early on. You have no idea about the strong sides and the things where you could potentially shine. By being asked to figure out the project for yourself, that was very, very weird. Again, that's my perspective right now. Maybe my mentors had different point of view. I don't want to squash it, but I think that back then it just didn't help at all. And so if I were to do it all over again today, I would...

While I would be interviewing with them, I would ask them, what are the mentorship opportunities you're having and how exactly do you organize it? So you would set yourself up for a success and something that you can expect and they could expect. By discussing those conditions early on, you both are having kind of like a partnership agreement in a way, right? They know what to expect from you. You know what to expect from them. You're establishing that you need...

project, you need help navigating it and you need a specific mentor who maybe you will be meeting with every week. And I didn't have it. I didn't have any mentor. I was asked to follow designers and figure out the project for myself. I was not invited to any project. So all over, it just became so weird. And I felt myself out of place, not knowing what to do. Who am I even? Why should I follow those people, disrupt them from working and stuff like that? I think at some point I found myself organizing their folders in the Dropbox.

It's like, what should I do? I'll just organize their projects. Fine. That's the only work I can do right now. And so, yeah, I think if you would just communicate, ask for a specific mentorship, check-ins, checkpoints, program, ask for a specific project to join, give me the project. Not that I should be following you to ask for the project, but give me the project. These are the questions that I would definitely ask if I were to interview today for the

And I guess from this story that I just shared, maybe again for you, Johanna, questions would be that if you were in this position and you would be asked to identify opportunities for yourself, what are the strategies or ways for you would be to do it today? Like what would you do if you would be asked to find your own place here in this company?

I would do stakeholder interviews, which is what I currently do when I'm supposed to solve a design problem. It's the first step. So I think the first step is talking to the people in your circle, the prime managers, developers, the marketing team, talk to anyone who has some involvement or is a stakeholder in the product development process, leadership included. And you

You can start by drafting an interview script where you want to start with what do you want to find out? What do you want to learn from them? And some things that you might want to learn are what are they happy with in terms of how things are working? But more importantly, what are they unhappy with?

because that's where you can find opportunities for proposing improvement. Ask them questions. What's their focus? What's their goal? What do they care most about? What are their values? And so on. So prepare an interview script and run it by the key stakeholders in the process. This will give you an encompassing perspective of what's going on in that company.

And if there are any repeatable pain points that you might want to consider addressing through improvement proposals and so on. So this is more on the process side.

And then in terms of figuring out how you can make an impact from a user standpoint, I would map out all the information that's available about our product. And maybe that's something that your team already has and they should have it. I mean, all teams should have it, but few teams actually do. So most of the times, information, feedback, knowledge about what the users feel about the product is very scattered around.

You have call center complaints and then email complaints, and then you have social media comments, and then you have people posting on the internet, and then you have in-product feedback. Maybe you have resource studies that you've been doing, internal usability studies. So knowledge is scattered in multiple places. So I would map out what are the available knowledge sources.

and then try to spend time really understanding the problem space and really understanding the pain points and opportunities and if there are any pain points that the

the team is currently not prioritizing, then maybe they should give more attention to because they seem more prevalent or they come from across channels and stuff like that. So one is the internal process, map a journey of how things are done and see if you're going to improve that with any ideas, suggestions, action, and then map out the problem space. Like what do people like about this product or especially what do they do not like?

about the product. You don't have to have the solution, but you can simply surface this problem if it's been buried somewhere in, I don't know what, bucket of knowledge or email folder. So surface meaningful things as much as you experience them as meaningful and then bring them to have conversations about them. Of course, being respectful of everyone's time. So people have priorities. They're working on achieving something probably at that point. So it's coming up with distraction.

what might be perceived as distractions. So make it respectable in terms of how much time you take up and maybe just book a session with everyone and say, look, these are the problems I've been looking into. I've learned that users tend to complain about this and this and this. Are we doing something about it? Do you want to consider it maybe? And stuff like that. So share your insights in a controlled way that doesn't take up too much time for people's work.

And those are my two things. Nice. No, I love this. I would definitely piggyback on the thing that you said that do the research. It's something that you don't think about if you're just starting out today, right? You're thinking, okay, let me quickly build something. It's right to be, you know, proactive, but at the same time, you really need to be able to try to research the area first. And I think that's

like you suggested, Joanna, trying to interview people, ask them about their work, about their pain points, about anything that you potentially can be helping with is a great way to start. Imagine, for example, I was working in the agency area, right? So every designer had their own project and it was not that we had one product that we all work for. So if you work, for example, in the design agency today, I would just ask every designer if they need any help, not just like, hey, I'm here if you need me, but really asking them in the research mindset

manner when you don't say like what do you need from me but you just literally ask them open-ended questions about their work trying to hear something in between right trying to see if they have any like tense feelings about moments of their work and ask them what they're doing about them if they have no time maybe I can help you out with that that's where you can drop your suggestion to be helpful I think there is also no harm to be honest if you ask more direct questions like

Do you feel like I can help you out at somewhere? People might still come up with the answers. The true help would come probably from them speaking out about their current experiences, discussing their current work. And that's when you start hearing in between those rings that, oh, something isn't great here. Maybe I can ask if I can be helpful there. So yeah, people not always are good at reflecting immediately where they need help. And I think like the company I worked at specifically, it was like more of the on a hamster wheel trying to have so many projects

So they didn't have an opportunity to reflect on what pain points they have. At least that's my perspective today, that they couldn't give me the strong directions, strong reflections, like here are the areas we need help with. They just ask, like, go and figure it out, right? So I would probably just try to interview every employee or every designer and see where people feel struggling most and then try to occupy that spaces, right? Try to come up with some ideas and help. So the more you can help out someone, the more likely you will stand out and

improve your chances to stay there. That also contributes to my second point, which is building relationships early on. And that's something I didn't realize until I was like five, six years in the career already when I started joining companies full-time. Yeah, building the relationships actually proved to be the most important thing in any full-time roles.

When you're a freelancer, it's given that you're jumping in projects and projects have that termination date. But when you're full-time, it's so important because you work with people every day. You interact with them every day. There is a lot of things. There's a lot of jokes. There's a lot of moods happening. But also there is a lot of productivity that needs to be happening. And so part of being effective

is to be able to feel comfortable with each other, being able to have those hard conversations, being able to have fun times and build memories together. That's a part of the things that I didn't realize when I was starting out. And even though we had lunches with that team, I don't think we were open with each other. I think it's a part of the culture because northern cultures are usually a bit more reserved. So it's just like Ioana said, it's so hard when you don't hear any emotional people speaking to you. That's exactly how I felt as well there. I was just like trying to...

get anything from anyone and there was no emotion. It was just like a poker face most of the time. So it's just a cultural thing. If you're more extroverted and you're being embedded into the introverted reserved culture, that's probably not the place for you. Right now, I'm happy I'm not there because it's definitely not my culture, but it could be painful to figure it out. And so building relationships with the people you click with is a part of the interviewing process, but it's also a very important part of

you start and build a confidence being the best version of yourself within that product company or product environment. And being in a relationship means, yes, having coffees, having fun times, sharing resources with each other. I remember in one of the latest companies I worked at later,

There was so much joke, so many games. We had Friday events. We were playing board games all the time online. We were playing UX Trivias and stuff like that. It was so fun because it was creating an opportunity to connect with people. We constantly had those ice-breaking events, talking about childhood, talking about the cultural differences. And that's something that really helps to connect.

And it really helps to be able to speak openly. It's important that you build these relationships early on. And if you don't see those opportunities, ask if you can suggest them. If it's not a part of their culture, that's okay. But that maybe also gives you an answer if it's a culture for you or not. And then I think the last tip here I'll give is actually to read the book called

The First 90 Days. It's an interesting book. I was recommended when I was starting a job last time. So at my current role at Newfs, a lot of people recommended me this book, The First 90 Days. It's a lot about trying to do your best and building and establishing your reputation and showing what you are all about so people can rely on you, know you, who you are, and consider you an important team member.

And so maybe that could help you out as well, especially if you're just getting started and you need something to build that confidence. All right. Thank you so much, everyone, for tuning in, for listening to this episode. Make sure to check out our sponsor. You will find the link in the show notes right in the beginning. But also make sure to enter that you heard about Mobin from Honest UX Talks. It's very important for us. It helps us to continue new episodes, staying on top.

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