What to ask during your product design interview
We’re always told interviewing is a two-way street and there are also stories of hiring managers who become suspicious if the candidate doesn’t have anything to ask. As candidates, we need to make sure we will end up in a place we’d be passionate about to dedicate our time, whereas as interviewers we want to be challenged, to see that something is spinning in the candidate’s mind.
Personally, I was in the quest for a role in an industry I’d be interested in, with a collaborative group of people who are working on a bunch of exciting stuff. I was very happy to find it, but it was a great journey and it all started with a lot of groundwork in trying to understand what do I want from it?
Nowadays interviewing processes have at least 2–3 stages so I started by mapping out those stages and understanding what information my interviewers might have at that stage in the process. Here’s my complete set of questions, grouped on topics (the team, the company, personal and the product).
Questions for the recruiters
The team:
- How many people are in the team?
- What levels of seniority? Where are they based?
- What software is the team using?
- How has the team evolved over time?
The company:
- How are they organised?
- What are the main business challenges?
- What do they focus on?
- How is product design seen within the company?
Personal:
- What is the interviewing process?
- What are the benefits?
- What are the development and progression opportunities?
- Who would I report to?
- What are they looking for in an employee?
- Why were you interested in me?
- For the next stage, what skills should I focus on? What type of experiences and projects?
The product:
- How big is their user base? How many people are using the product?
- What is the market like?
Questions for the hiring manager
The team:
- How has the team evolved? What’s the turnover of staff?
- What’s the structure within the team?
- How are different functions collaborating (research, product, design, engineering, etc.)?
- How frequent are the team meetings (and critique sessions)? Cheeky bonus question: Can I attend one?
The company:
- What are the business challenges for design?
- What is the structure within the company?
- What’s it like to work with the people you work with?
Personal:
- Who would I report to?
- What are the development and progression opportunities?
- How would the responsibilities be delegated to me?
- What’s the frequency of the one to one meetings with the manager?
- Is there anything that concerns you about my CV or experience that I can address right now?
The product:
- How do you make decisions for the product?
- What metrics are being used and tracked? How do you know you are improving the experience?
- What are the key points that you want to change about the product?
- What are the accessibility considerations that you’re ensuring for the product?
- Who is responsible for the generative and validating research performed?
- Can you give me a few examples of projects I’d be working on?
Questions for the design team
The team:
- What are the main challenges in design?
- How do you share knowledge?
- How do they work with different functions?
- Can you tell me about the last team event you did together?
The company:
- What do you like the most about the company and working there?
- How do you see the company evolving the products?
- What gets you excited about the company’s future?
- What’s different about working here than anywhere else?
Personal:
- How do they give and receive personal feedback?
- How do you ensure the personal development time?
- How do you identify knowledge gaps?
- Can I answer a final question for you?
The product:
- What is the process of contributing to the Design System?
- What are they looking to improve next in their product?
- What are the most immediate projects/bugs that need to be addressed?
This list is the result of many nights of patiently waiting to hear back from jobs I applied to. Also, a bunch of my friends contributed with ideas and questions they heard along the way.
I marked the “must-ask” questions on this list and then adapted along the way based on where the conversation was going and the time available.
I hope these come in handy for other product design candidates or interviewers!
