How to prepare for a design interview
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail” - Benjamin Franklin
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail” - Benjamin Franklin
Companies get 100’s of applicants. As I write this in 2025 it’s a buyers market in most industries. You must be as prepared as possible to go through a comprehensive interview process when interviewing.
Companies want more for less, which means you must do more to land a job in most cases.
Here’s a typical recruitment process for a designer:
Recruiter screen - this is usually 30 minutes with an external or internal recruiter about you, your motivations, why this company, past experience and an opportunity for you to dig into the role, salary, culture etc.
The recruiter will then pass on your information to the hiring manager to review your work.
First conversation with hiring manager - In this meeting, this is where you can go deeper into the role, design specific details, vision of the design team and a conversation with the hiring manager on what you can bring to the team and talk through your work.
Case study walk through I believe this is where the interview process intensity goes up a little. Usually there will be a few people in a case study review. Here a company will be looking to assess your approach, level of design and product craft (AKA attention to detail), critical thinking, how you work with teams and Q&A.
Or, a design task. not all companies do this, but it’s an opportunity to assess your product sense, critical thinking, attention to detail and working to a deadline.
On-site meetings - depending on level this can include 1-5 meetings with multi-disciplinary peers. These meetings can include product critiques, strategic leadership, influencing through the work and assessing cultural fit. The values part of the process cannot be underestimated, this a proper interview.
Offer process
Today I want to dive deeper into the case study round. This seems to be the key round for companies to understand your level and if they want to carry on the process with you or not.
It’s an opportunity to walk through your work, show how you present your work, your rationale and tell a story as to why what you did mattered in the project.
They don’t want to just see fancy visuals, they want to see how you got to a certain decision.
My advice is come prepared with a recent project you’ve worked on where you can confidently present for 40 minutes that demonstrate what you can bring to a design team and tangible impact you had. Bonus if you can share data on this.
When thinking about creating your presentation, here is what you should be ready to dive into and answers follow-up questions on:
How did you work with peers? Who did you work with? i.e working with engineers to ensure you can actually build it. This shows you understand the steps it takes to ship something.
What did YOU do? Less “we did this” more “I did this” rememeber they are not interviewing your team, they are interviewing you.
What was your design process for solving the problem?
How did you understand the system you were working in?
Did you explore multiple solutions? What worked and what didn’t?
How did you land on the final solution? What did you do to ship it?
What insights emerged from your research that influenced your design decisions?
Was your work successful? How did you measure outcomes?
What did you learn? What would you do differently if you could do this project again?
Can you share an example of when you had to iterate based on feedback, and how that changed your solution?
Tips:
Who are you speaking to? CEO, CTO, CMO? Adapt how you sell the impact of your work. They care about different things.
Be humble. Don’t BS. Know your level. Come prepared understanding the company career ladder and expectations of the role you are interviewing so you can ensure you’re giving the right level of detail.
Sample career ladders you should check out:
Aaron James talking about becoming a Senior Product Designer
Intercom Design levels - MUST read.
Practice your presentation - 40 minutes goes quick!
Be specific, talk about real world projects, ideally work that is live so people can see it.