Job hunting on a two-way street: How to interview your future employer
You’re a young or emerging product designer looking for a job, so here’s an interview question for you. What are you looking for?
You’re a young or emerging product designer looking for a job, so here’s an interview question for you. What are you looking for?
If you don’t have a clear answer, you’re not alone — neither did most of my mentees on ADPList. I hear the occasional “FAANG”, or slightly more robust “mission-driven startup”, but more often than not, I hear “whatever I can get”. I’ve realized that a lot of folks interview with what I call desperation mindset. Sounds severe? Let me explain.
Imagine you’re stranded in the wild. For whatever reason, you go without eating for 3 days and in desperation on the 4th day, you eat the first thing you find: purple mushrooms under a log. Fortunately, you’ve curbed your hunger for the moment. Unfortunately, the mushrooms you’ve eaten are poisonous. Desperation mindset is when you’re operating with day 4 hunger and take what, seems like, is the best and only job opportunity you have. Eventually, you realize this job is a “poisonous mushroom” of dissatisfaction and you’re back on the market. Without the right tools, desperation mindset keeps you in a cycle of running away from your previous position and eating more “poisonous mushrooms”.
We can get around desperation mindset by setting expectations and doing a little preparation. Instead of reaching day 4 hunger, we want to make a list of acceptable “safe” foods on day 1, while we have the energy and sanity to make reasonable decisions. Translating this to looking for a job means knowing what you’re looking for before you start the interview process.
Unlike most job search advice out there, I’m not going to tell you how to impress a potential employer. Instead, I’m going to tell you how to objectively evaluate if an employer impresses you. And coincidentally, employers will find that impressive.
Let’s get you what you want, the way you want it, on your terms.
Get you what you want: Ask the right questions
Look at your LinkedIn profile or resume and imagine what you want it to look like when you’re applying for your next job. What did you learn? Launch? Build? Try? Achieve? Become?
This is the list of opportunities you want to see offered in a future employer. It’s unrealistic to find an exact match, so start conversations by asking non-leading questions, similar to those of a user research study, instead of yes-no questions. For example, say you want to contribute to a design system. A potential employer might answer “no” to having a design system, but express excitement for something similar when asked how they maintain a consistent visual language. Here are some more examples of how to evaluate the opportunities a company can afford you by asking conversation-generating questions:
You want to learn how to run an A/B test → “Tell me how you use data to validate new features.”
You want to ship a high-usage product feature → “What kind of features has your team launched in the past year?”
You want to conduct user research sessions → “How has your team run user research in the past?”
You want to lead a project → “How have individuals on this team expanded their roles here?”
The way you want it: Listen between the lines
When you’re in desperation mindset, it’s easy to think you’ll do anything for your “dream” job. Take this as your ghost of Christmas future that almost nothing is worth 100 hour work weeks (unless that’s what you want) or habitual phone booth crying sessions (ever). Believe it or not, there are startups with balanced 40 hour work weeks and corporations with fast-paced teams. As long as you can set the terms, you have a chance of finding it.
Imagine how you’d spend your perfect work day in as much detail as possible. What do you do first thing in the morning? When and what are your meetings about? Who do you talk to and what’s that like? You should be able to see yourself living this day when you interview with a potential employer. Start by asking conversation-generating questions, and then listen carefully. You can learn a lot from how people say things and what they don’t say. Here are examples of looking for your ideal day by listening between the lines:
You want dedicated design mentorship → How does the hiring manager structure conversations with you? What topics do and don’t they bring up?
You want to be in collaborative and productive design critiques → During your portfolio presentation, observe who is and isn’t talking. What type of questions and feedback are you getting?
You want to have the time and space to execute your design process → Mention your go-to design tools, like journey maps or user research, and see how potential product partners react.
You want to feel comfortable grabbing coffee with a colleague → In 1-on-1 interviews, notice how interviewers start and end the session. In group interviews, notice how the team interacts amongst themselves.
On your terms: Do the research
However you value your career, your job needs to be on the same page as you. For example, designing data surveillance products will be tough if you value user privacy.
At the same time, values are squishy and hard to evaluate. No team will tell you that they don’t care about their users, so verbal assurances won’t get you very far. You need to do the research and dig for concrete evidence of the values you want to see. Here are some ways to find proof of value alignment by doing the research:
You want to work for a mission-driven organization → Find the specific launches and steps they’ve taken to contribute to their mission statement.
You want a place where design contributes to product strategy → Understand where and how design fits in the org chart. Get a list of the recurring strategic meetings and look for design representation on the invite list.
You want teammates who value a design process → Research how much exposure your potential teammates have had to designers. If possible, ask the designers they’ve previously worked with for a quick chat.
You want a team that prioritizes your well-being → Review the resources and benefits offered to employees. Chat with existing employees about their situations.
Employers are evaluating you based on your skillset, ability to do a day’s work, and productivity potential. It only makes sense that you interview them back for your version of the same things. Design isn’t an easy role to interview for, on either side. Not everything we build launches; we field graphic design requests left and right; and taking feedback on our work is literally the job description. There’s variation all around, so we have to know what we want.
Job hunting feels like a one-way street where the the employer chooses you, but it’s really a two-way street where you both choose each other. Desperation mindset is such a hard feeling to shake — I get it. I’ve interviewed many times by now, and I still get the urge to say things to please a potential employer instead of checking my own needs. Let’s set you up for success, starting with the right role for you.
Fantastic advice; I'm often surprised at how little candidates ask me (or other PDs I put them in touch with) about the practical reality of working at a given company! It reminds me a bit of dating: it's very easy to get so into what you refer to as desperation mindset and forget to pay attention to anything other than your deliverance (or rejection); indeed, I feel like I've lived my entire life in that state, with absolutely everything. (My psychiatrist once pointedly observed that I seemed to pay almost no attention to what I wanted in situations, and later when the Enneagram stuff was going around, my type was said to be "asleep to itself" and to have trouble understanding its desires).
I often have candidates talk to the team designers with the most critical views of the company / environment, and I encourage them to be frank, because there's decent incentive alignment here: I know some managers "just want to close," but realistically it's no damned good hiring someone who will be miserable, even if you're ethnically deranged enough to want to. Airing the dirty laundry —which *always* exists!!!— is how you and a candidate figure out whether your specific kind of dirt is problematic for them. (Again, the dating analogy is right there: concealing what sucks about yourself to get a relationship going cannot work!).
These questions / bullets are so good!!! This is one of the more useful design posts I think I've ever read.
Love your writing style Kristin! It’s so clear and enjoyable to read. Great points and advice in here - I wish I read this when I was younger bc I have fallen prey to snacking on a lot of poisonous mushrooms ^^;