Sample questions they’ll ask

The first few minutes of a phone screen are usually formulaic so it helps to think through the questions ahead of time. Preparing by writing your answers down will help you come off as confident and even spontaneous if you rehearsed your story thoroughly.

Your 30 second intro should be punchy, specific, and short. Photo by Icons 8

Generally you’ll be asked about your work background, your design approach, and your current work situation.

1. Your introduction and work history

This is an opportunity for you to set up the context of your story. Remember the pitch you’ve prepared. You want to come off as having a deliberate career path in mind.

Sample questions in this category:

Tell me more about your career journey — how did you end up where you’re currently at?

What would you like to do next?

Why are you interested in working with us?

Where do you envision yourself long-term?

What are you looking for next in your role?

These questions give the interviewer a sense of your past, your present and where you want to be in the future.

2. How you approach work as a designer

The interviewer is interested to see if you have a specific process when approaching problems. What framework do you use? Is your approach rigid or flexible based on the context at hand? Are you able to bend and break the process while focusing on outcomes?

Some questions you might expect:

What does design mean to you?

Walk me through a project in your portfolio?

What is the most exciting project you worked on? Why was it exciting?

What was the most challenging project you worked on? What made it difficult?

Who was the most difficult stakeholder in this project?

These questions are designed to probe your design process, get some initial signals around your collaboration skills, and to get a glimpse of how you solve problems — your mindset so to speak.

3. Your work situation

Not exactly the most fun questions but necessary for the interviewer to ask to make sure everyone’s on the same page:

Why are you searching now?

Would you require visa sponsorship in the future?

What salary are you expecting?

Don’t let the salary question scare you. You can dodge it by saying you expect a salary commensurate with your experience and save the harder negotiations for later. If the recruiter pushes you for a number you can provide them a range based on a (somewhat) objective criteria such as salary estimates like AngelList (if applying to startups) or levels.fyi (if applying to larger companies).

Be sure to listen actively and take down notes during the interview

Questions to ask

Your questions should be tailored to the person who’s interviewing you and the role itself. Focus on a few specific questions to open up the conversation and follow the thread from there. You can think of this as doing user research. What important questions should you ask first? What’s a deal breaker? What are some nice to haves to follow-up with?

General questions

Here are some to get you started:

How is the design team organized?

What challenges are you facing today?

What problems can I help you with?

What excites you about working here?

How big is the design team now?

Peer designer questions

If you’re talking with a peer designer, this is a chance to learn what it’s really like to work there:

Can you walk me through a project that you worked on recently?

What was the most complex or largest project you worked on? What made it complex?

How does the design team work together?

How do you think the design team can improve?

Where do you envision yourself as a designer in the next couple of years?

What inspires you?

Have questions ready

If you ran out of questions and can’t think of a good question on the spot, say they’ve answered your current questions but would it be ok if you could follow-up in an email in case more questions come up later? Ten times out of ten, they’ll say yes.

Roleplaying ahead of time

If you’re feeling nervous about the conversation or you’re not sure, it’s not a bad idea to practice with a friend ahead of time. Start by writing out your answers and practice out loud. Then have a friend call you and have them ask you some tough questions. Let them also throw you off a bit so that you can practice how to react to questions you haven’t prepared for.

Take the phone call in a quiet room, away from the noise and with a strong signal reception

The phone call

Before the call, review what you already have about the company, the role and the person you’ll be talking to. Have your list of answers (based on anticipated questions) and your list of questions printed so you can take notes without getting distracted by typing noise.

It goes without saying that you should be in a quiet with a strong cell phone reception. You might even consider getting a phone number from Google as a backup but in that case make sure you have a strong wifi connection.

During the call

After all the prep work, this is your time to shine. Aside from telling your story with confidence, listen to the responses intently. I usually take notes, make diagrams, and ask follow-up questions based on what I’ve heard.

In my experience, actively making sense of info through note-taking makes me a better, objective listener. It helps you ask smarter questions once you get deeper in the interview process, such as during your onsite.

Ending the conversation on high note

Depending on how much time there’s left I usually end the conversation with a key question that I learned to use many years ago, “is there anything I said or didn’t say that would make me a bad candidate for this role?”.

How they respond is just as important as what they say.

Is there anything I said or didn’t say that would make me a bad candidate for this role?

Finally, end the phone call with a friendly close, “It was great getting to know you and learning more about the opportunity, I can’t wait until we chat again, what would be the next steps?”

Retro after the call

After the phone call, take a few moments to reflect on how it went. How did you feel? Do you imagine yourself working at that company? Are there any lingering questions left unanswered? What could you have done better? Take a breather and write your thoughts down while the information’s fresh.

In my experience with phone screens it’s usually easy to tell if the company is not a good fit at this time. For example, you want to work on the consumer side of the org but they only have opportunities in enterprise this year. Remember, you’re evaluating them as much as they’re evaluating you.

Thank you notes go a long way and make you stand out.

Send a thank you note

In all cases, nothing wins an interviewer over like a good thank you note after the call. Even if this opportunity didn’t seem like the right fit, you never know if a new one might come along. Genuinely follow-up with an e-mail a couple of hours later mentioning specific things you’ve talked about in regards to the role, the team or the company.

What’s next?

If all has gone well, usually you’ll be asked to do a design exercise or you might also get invited onsite immediately. In the next article we’ll dive into design exercises.