How to ace your next UX Design interview.

In the last 3 years, I've interviewed for 7 UX and product design roles. I got offers from 5 of these interviews, and I pulled out of the other 2 during the interview stages. So in today's video, I want to share the effective strategies that has helped me achieve a 100% success rate in my interviews. By the end of the video, you'll have a clear understanding of the steps you can take to charm your interviewers and convince them you're the right person for the job. Plus, I'll be sharing a game-changing tip later on what most designers completely overlook. You won't want to miss that. I'm Samuel Fabayo, and I'm a senior product designer at Monzo, a leading digital bank in the UK. Before that, I was a senior product designer at Deliveroo, a food and grocery delivery company that's well known in the UK and some other European countries as well. I've learned so much from interviewing with these industry-leading companies, and I want to share everything with you. In this video, we'll cover the typical structure and stages of a UX design interview, what to do before your interview, during your interview, and after your interview. Whether you're an experienced designer or you're looking for your first design role, these tips will give you the edge you need. So let's get into it. Usually, the typical structure for a UX design interview is in 4 stages. In the first stage, you have a 15 to 30 minute call with a recruiter. In the second stage, you have a portfolio presentation where you present your best case study in a slide format. You can watch this video I made on how to present your case study in a design interview. In the third stage, you have some form of assessment, which could be a design challenge, a whiteboarding session, an app critique session, or just a closer look into your real design files to see how you work. And then in the fourth stage, which is usually the final one, is where you speak with a panel of 2 to 3 interviewers across different teams. The goal of the final interview is to assess soft skills like communication, how you work with others, how you solve problems, and if you are a cultural fit. This final interview is where so many designers fail to impress, and that's what I want to focus on for the next few minutes. There are 4 things you need to do before your interview. First up, we have to start from the basics, and that's doing your homework with some strategic research. This is based on my assumption that you've already gotten an invitation to interview, but honestly, You really don't need to wait for that invitation before you start doing your research. Start with the company's website and social media. What's interesting about them? What are their values? Is there any notable event about them recently? Can you find anything interesting on their design blogs? Has their CEO or any of the company executives been a guest on any interviews or podcasts? This is everything you want to research about. After I got an offer from Deliveroo, I got an email from one of the interviewers that part of the reason they chose me for the role was because I had mentioned I listened to a podcast interview where their CEO was the guest. If I hadn't done a ton of research before the interview, I wouldn't have found that podcast. The reason you're doing this research is to find information for making connections during your interview. And stay with me because later I'll show you how to use this research to absolutely nail your interviews with one game-changing question. Secondly, you have to prepare your story. Interviewers don't just want to know who you are or previous roles you've had. They want to know what you've done, the impact you've had, the problems you solved, and the metrics you've moved. So be super clear on how you want to weave your personal introduction and key achievements into one compelling story. Think about this story as a 3 to 5 minute speech where you have to be confident, coherent, and concise. Keep rehearsing your pitch until you're convinced it has checked the 3 C's of confidence, coherence, and conciseness. If you're new to the field, focus on your personal projects. The key is to show your problem-solving process and the results you achieve, even if they are not from a professional setting. It could be from a past experience or how you've solved problems in any capacity. Thirdly, prepare for the trickiest part of any interview, those dreaded scenario-based questions. Those questions can be quite annoying. Where a lot of people get it wrong with this question is that they beat around the bush with the answers. First, you need to understand why these questions are being asked, and it's simple. They want to assess your communication skills first. Every other thing is secondary. The method that has worked for me every time in answering this question is the popular STAR method. Breaking down your answers into situation, task, action, and result helps you communicate clearly. Now let's do a quick practice. A common question is, tell me about a time you disagreed with a team member about a design direction. And here's how you'd answer. On a recent project, my team was redesigning our app's onboarding process. We needed to decide between a tutorial-based approach and a learn-by-doing method. I advocated for learn-by-doing by sharing some data that showed that our users prefer to learn by doing and proving it can increase the onboarding completion rate. I created quick prototypes of both approaches for A/B testing. The learn-by-doing approach increased our onboarding completion rate by 14%. My team adopted this method and it's now part of our onboarding flow. Practice this method of answering questions for at least 10 common scenarios and you'll nail those questions every time. And number 4, as part of the preparation before your interview, you need to prepare really thoughtful questions for interviewers. Use some of your findings from the research you did to come up with insightful questions that can show you're genuinely interested. The questions should also help you assess if the company is a good fit for you because that is equally important and we'll dive deeper into this later. So stay with me. The first and most important thing you have to do during your interview is to make sure you nail your introduction. Use the narrative you prepared and make sure you check the 3 C's. Remember what they are? Be confident, be coherent, be concise. I'd love to give an example of my own personal pitch, but it's usually about 3 to 5 minutes. But let me try a 30-second version. Let's say I'm interviewing for a role at an insurance startup called Assure, and the interviewer asks me to introduce myself. It could go like this. Hi, I'm Samuel Fabayo. I'm a senior product designer with over 7 years experience. In my current role at Monzo Bank, I'm responsible for designing the experience that ensures that Monzo customers get the best help and support. when they need it. Most recently, my team built an AI copilot that reduced the support call wrap-up time from 30 minutes to less than 3 minutes and increased our customer satisfaction score by 35%. I led the design efforts that helped us to achieve this goal. I'm excited to explore how I can use the combination of skills I've gathered through my career to contribute to Assure's mission of simplifying insurance. Of course, the longer version has more storytelling about my background and my previous experience, but yeah, you get the gist, right? So once you're done with the introduction, the interviewers will start to ask more questions, either from they learned from your introductions or scenario-based questions. Remember, you already practiced how to answer these scenario-based questions when you're preparing for your interview. So this is where you start floating and answering the questions with ease because you already put in the reps. The more reps you put in before the interview, the easier it will be during the interview. Next, we're about to tackle a make-or-break moment during any interview. Get this moment right and you'll have interviewers nodding their heads in approval. I'm talking about the infamous, why do you want to work here? question. There's a 3-step format that I use to knock this question out of the park every time. Firstly, I start by aligning my values with the company's values. So you need to know what your values are and what the company's values are. Then I reference something that I found out from research that I did before the interview. I already gave an example of how I referenced the podcast episode with the CEO of Deliveroo at the beginning of this video. Then I finish with my unique value proposition. Your unique value proposition is something that you believe only you can offer because of your background and the unique combination of skills that you have. It doesn't have to be 100% true, honestly. You just have to believe it enough. For instance, one of my values as a designer is embracing ambiguity. I really enjoy the early stages of product development where the vision is not crystal clear, and I embrace it. So using our insurance startup as an example again, when asked that question, so why do you want to work at Assure? I would say something like, I get really excited when thrown into ambiguous problem spaces. I attended a product conference in London where James Doe, Assure's CPO, spoke about how Assure disrupted the claims process in insurance by making it easier and faster to raise a claim and get paid. I was really impressed by the session. It looked like it must have been a very challenging and interesting problem to solve, and I'm so envious of the team that worked on the project. I'd be thrilled to contribute and learn from a team that takes on such ambitious projects. With my core background as a trained architect, where user-centered design is not negotiable, and my experience designing for millions of customers in fintech and the food logistics industry, I believe I can bring a unique perspective to some of the challenging problems at Assure while also delivering business impact. Notice how I applied the 3-step format in my answer to the question. Of course, it might not be as smooth as this during your interview, but again, the more reps you put in practicing before your interview, the smoother it will be during your interview. Now to the 3rd and final thing you need to do during your interview. This is the game changer I promised at the start. Most candidates treat it as an afterthought, but play it right and it can be your hack to leaving a lasting impression. When it's your turn to ask questions, this is not the time to ask all those generic questions about culture, salaries, or vacation days. Instead, ask questions that demonstrate your interest in the role and the company business goals? If I'm speaking with 2 or more people, I usually single one person out by calling their name and directing the question to them. This question is usually tailored to their role, so I must have taken note of everyone's role when they introduced themselves at the beginning, or sometimes I already researched them because I have their names before the interview. You see how everything you do before your interview really sets you up for success? I have a whole other video on great questions you can ask in a design interview. You can watch that video to steal some of my questions. I also stole some of them too, so it's totally fine. Once the interview is over, Take 15 minutes to reflect. What went well? What would you improve? Write down any questions you struggled with so you can use them to practice for future interviews. Also, you have to trust your gut. Did you feel a good connection with the interviewers? Could you see yourself working with them? Remember that you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. Depending on how you feel about the interview, you can send a follow-up email about how much you enjoyed speaking to them. You don't have to send an email if you don't feel it's necessary. It's just an extra icing on the cake. Once you've gotten the offer, you need to understand the 3 skills you need to stay ahead of 90% of designers, because I can guarantee you that following these tips and the tips in my other case study videos, you will get an offer. Watch this video next to know the skills you need and where you stand, and I'll see you there. Bye.