The other thing to say is that the style of interview is going to be completely dependent on the organization, the organization’s personality, management style and the personalities of the people that work there. You might go to an interview, a start-up and just basically have what amounts to a relaxed conversation with some of the founders or some of the heads of product. We might go to an interview of a bank, and you might have to go through a really rigid, formal interview process that has lots of different stages.

You are surely going to be asked “introduce yourself and talk a little bit about yourself and what you’ve been up to,” and this is really your opportunity to go to interviews with a case study prepared, so you want to go to the interview with stuff that’s ready to talk about. Maybe it’s a couple of projects that you’ve been working on.

So let’s say you’re interviewing for a UX role where there’s quite a lot of research going to be involved. Not necessarily like a pure user research role, but you’re going to be expected to do some user testing, some usability testing.

If you’ve done that in a project, spend a bit of time talking about that, spend a bit of time talking about that process, spend a bit of time talking, like giving them some insight and some detail into how you went about those things rather than necessarily focusing on the user interface design of that project.

The interviewer can ask “Have you experienced using XD? Have you experienced using Figma? Have you experienced using Jira? Have you experienced working in an agile team? Have you experienced working with design sprints?” 

You’re going to get asked questions where you just really have to talk about your experience working in a particular way that’s relevant to that business. So if that business uses Jira for its sprint management and they ask you, “Do you have experience using Jira?” You just need to say “yes or no.”

“What type of designer are you?” And that sounds like quite a simple question, but actually, when you with the kind of the spotlight is put on you and you’re there and you have to think, what kind of a designer am I? Is quite hard to answer, and it’s quite challenging, and I can’t remember what I said!

Get prepared for those questions where they shine a bit of a spotlight on you and they put you on the spot towards the end of the interview.

Towards the end of the interview, you’ll get the opportunity to ask questions and this is an opportunity to show that you’re interested in the company or the business, and it gives you an opportunity to figure out whether it’s the kind of place you would like to work for or work at. Like I said earlier, it’s a two-way street. They’re evaluating you, but you should also be evaluating them because you’re going to be giving them your time and energy pretty much every day.