You’ve landed your dream design job—now what?

Doing your due diligence and making an informed decision on your offer

You’ve landed that dream design job after all those interviews! This may even be your second or third offer. In either case, good on you for coming this far. The hard work paid off and the tables have turned.

The hard work paid off! Photo source

Before you accept the offer, do some homework to set yourself up for a strong head start in your next job. Now you’ll get to play the role of an interviewer to see if hiring this job will be best for your career.

In this article we’ll cover how to:

Do due diligence to form the right expectations for the role, team and company Ask precise questions to get to the heart of the matter quickly Make a decision based on what you know so far

1. Doing your due diligence

When companies hire executives they usually go through an intensive interview process of getting the dirt behind the candidates. You should follow a similar process. With an offer in hand—take the time to get your questions answered about the company, opportunity and team so that you can make a well informed decision.

Interviewing your direct team

To start you should talk with people who you’ll be working with daily — a fellow designer, engineer, or a product manager. Pro tip–skip the email Q&A–set up a coffee chat or a phone call instead. The body language and voice can be more telling than the answers.

Body language is key, so when you can—schedule an in-person meeting. Photo by Brooke Larke

Interviewing your design manager

If you haven’t had a chance to talk with your design manager during the interview process — definitely make the time to do so now. And even if you did — it still helps to gather additional info about them, their management philosophy and how they think about the design team and where you fit in.

You should feel confident that this manager is someone who’s going to help you grow. If something feels off, now’s a good time to clarify. A good manager is like a coach, they’re here to set you and the team up to play your best. They’ll navigate tough decisions with poise. No manager is perfect but finding someone you can get along well will make a big difference over time.

Sometimes interviewing the people who just left will give you a more honest view of the workplace you’re about to join

Interviewing people who left

Now of course current company employees will be biased in favor of the company. It’s rare that someone will tell you that the org isn’t in good shape or that the work environment is stressful. So it helps to get a second opinion. Talk to a former designer if there was one there before. Sometimes interviewing the people who just left will give you a more honest view of the workplace you’re about to join.

When I was getting background info on one of my managers I looked at his connections on LinkedIn. One of those connections—let’s call him Joe—worked with my manager a few jobs ago. Coincidentally, Joe also worked closely with a CEO of another company that I interviewed with. Small world! By talking with Joe I was able to understand my future managers better and weigh the two offers differently.

So take the time to search out for those former employees, usually a few searches on LinkedIn is all it takes.

2. Questions you should consider

As you’re reaching out to folks and setting up coffee chats, it helps to have a strong question list ready that gets to the heart of the matter. Just like interviewing users, you don’t want to ask leading questions but instead get at the truth by asking about existing behaviors.

Some key areas you should get a clear signal on:

The work itself —what are the expectations?

—what are the expectations? Work life balance —am I going to spend nights and weekends here?

—am I going to spend nights and weekends here? The design team —is the team well positioned?

—is the team well positioned? Design maturity —key to the type of work you’ll be doing

—key to the type of work you’ll be doing Startup specific—how much money is left in the bank

Let’s take a look at these in detail.

The work

There are some good questions to ask your design manager.

What are your expectations for me in the first month on the job?

How quickly do we ship new features?

How involved is user research in the design process?

Have you had a designer before who made a mistake or was underperforming? How did you handle their performance issues?

Work life balance

Working in a company that’s a good fit can make a difference between coming to work miserable vs happy. Some organizations pride themselves in going above and beyond pushing employees to work nights and weekend to achieve a greater mission. Other companies do the bare minimum and everyone leaves the office by 6pm. In the end, it’s a personal preference.

What is it like to work here?

How many projects does a designer usually work on in parallel?

What does a usual day look like for a designer working here?

What was the last intense project that you worked on? What made it intense?

Design team

To understand your growth opportunity it helps to understand the types of folks you’ll be working with and how the design team is situated in the company.

How is the design team organized within the company?

How big is the design team? Are there plans to grow it out? What roles are next to hire?

What do you think is a current strength of the design team?

What is a growth opportunity for the design team as a whole?

When does the design team come together (e.g. critiques, team outings, etc.)?

Some of the questions that you’ll ask will inevitably overlap with design maturity. Usually in a company’s early days everyone is a generalist and designers scramble to meet the changing needs of the company. As the org matures, processes become more established and the quality bar rises.

Design maturity

As we near 2020, the reality is that design is still a nascent discipline in many orgs. There are many different design maturity models out there but suffice it to say companies with low maturity offer a different challenge compared to high design maturity companies. In the former you shape the process, in the latter you optimize and get better at your craft.

Both options may be a good fit for your career and it helps to learn more about how mature the design is at this company.

How are roadmaps or quarterly goals set at the company?

When it comes to building features, who determines what to build?

How much budget does the UX / Design team get?

What was the last project driven by UX research?

What’s the design to engineering ratio?

Is there a design system in place?

Is there a design ops team?

One thing to note—small companies usually have little to no design resources thus making you the only designer there. However you can mature the design practice there quickly if their appetite for it is high. For larger companies, design maturity will be slower—given the layers and various stakeholders, it will take longer even if the impact might be more significant.

Startup specific

If you have an offer from a startup, you should also ask about the company’s burn rate and growth ambitions. Every startup carries risk but that risk can be mitigated with a strong team, strong execution, and decent funding.

How does the company make money or how do we plan on making money?

Is the company currently profitable?

What is our current burn rate — given the current size and funding, how long do we have before we have to raise another round?

Most startups fail. Yes it may be glamorous to work at one to make a dent in the universe but remember not every company will succeed. And that’s ok. It’s nice to see one’s equity amount to something but see it as a nice to have. The most important factor that will contribute to your well being are the people you’ll interact and work with daily.

When decisions seem less clear…

3. Making the decision

When you get an offer take the time to zoom out before you zoom in. If you were to take this role — how will it help you achieve you current and future goals? Ultimately we’re all captains of our own ships. A good job is one that pays well, grows your skills and advances your career.

Of course choosing a job isn’t all about career aspirations either. Work life balance is also key. In the end you should weigh factors based on how important they are to you.

Compare your offer against characteristics that are important to you see template

Remember this chart from when you were considering which job to hire to advance your career? If not — take another look. Now’s a good time to reflect since you’ve been through the process and a few weeks have passed by since then. Are your fundamental goals still the same? Have they changed with new information?

Lastly, there will never be a sure thing or an ideal workplace. Companies reorg, teams change, projects shift. The best you can do is to look at core factors (such as culture) and the key people who influence the process.

Deciding among multiple offers

If you’re in a lucky position of deciding among multiple offers, it helps to step back and think about the factors that are most important to you. It can be easy to get caught up and compare the roles based on superficial factors — office space, location, salary. With the exception of salary, some of these might not be important. And even with salary — minor differences may seem trivial compared to other factors such as a great team and a short commute.

List out the things that are important to you and see how companies stack up, logically is there a clear winner? Emotionally, do you feel more at home or a better fit at a certain place?

Sleep on your decision imagining you’re already working there. Photo by Erik-Jan Leusink

Lastly, an exercise you can do is imagine yourself fully accepting a specific offer. Live out your next day as if you’ve already committed to it. Sleep on it. When you wake up — do you still feel strong about your choice?

If you’ve done your prior research, this step will be hard. If you’re deciding between two great options, flip a coin and make a decision based on that. If you feel immediate regret based on the toss—then you know which option is truly important to you.

Rejecting offers

Inevitably, for one reason or another, you’ll have to reject a company or two This one will be tough. If you absolutely know for sure that you don’t want to continue or have a better offer that you’ve already accepted — reach out to the company that you’re rejecting and let them know quickly. As bittersweet as this is, it’s not the end of the world and the design industry is surprisingly small so you’ll never know when you’ll run into these folks next.