Designing an interview process for product designers

How we used a service design framework to improve our interview process at Faire

The job title of “designer” has come a long way over the past few decades. What once referred to having a job in graphic design or fashion can now point to a varied and expansive career in digital design, UX and UI, content design, design research, and more. Product design is particularly new, exciting, and ambiguous — it’s only recently that schools started offering degrees in it, and most product designers today learned their craft on the job.

Similarly, the interviewing process to apply for a product design role has evolved too, but unfortunately not in the right direction. In fact, as product design has developed alongside engineering, many design interview processes seem to mirror the hiring process for engineering roles — with an emphasis on using tests to measure candidate skills. While this might work for a craft like coding where there’s clearly a right or wrong answer, we found it didn’t make sense in design where there are often many avenues to the right solution.

Over time, the Faire design team recognized an opportunity: What if we approached designing our interview process at Faire like a service design project?

Identifying the design challenge

Although the interview process is similar to any user experience and includes some of the same touchpoints — onboarding, the exchange of information between candidate and company, brand expression — it so rarely feels like an experience designed with candidates front of mind.

“At some point, it dawned on me that interviewing was an experience that needed to be treated like a service design project, because the most important thing we could do for the quality of our work at Faire was to hire great people,” explains Robin Bigio, Faire’s Head of Design.

Robin saw an opportunity to use design tools to create a better, more efficient, and more accurate process for hiring product designers. He quickly built out a service blueprint centering the candidate, and got to work building, testing, and iterating different parts of the process.

Over the past two years the process has changed a lot — and will continue to change — but we’ve learned three key insights in that time:

• Portfolios > tests

• Preparing candidates properly

• Calibrating and training interviewers to reduce bias

Creative Lab at 100 Potrero, Faire’s San Francisco HQ

Portfolios > tests

One of the biggest changes we made was to remove design tests and double down on the portfolio. We had a hunch that tests didn’t help identify good designers.

“Ultimately, how candidates performed in a whiteboard test was a reflection of how confident they were, or how quickly they thought on their feet, which is not what we’re hiring for.” Robin explains. “Some designers need more time to sit down and think about a problem, and most of the problems we work on at Faire require deep thought and time to solve.”

In fact, when Robin tested this assumption by asking current Faire designers to run through the same whiteboard exercise given to candidates, many of them found it quite challenging, despite success in their day-to-day roles at Faire. Clearly, these tests weren’t helping us predict a design candidate’s future performance — an insight informed by advisor Peter Merholz, who wrote a great piece on the topic.

Instead, we refocused on the portfolio as a way to measure a candidate’s skill set. A designer’s portfolio isn’t just a way to share work samples, it’s also an opportunity to tell a story about that work and bring audiences along for the journey — a crucial skill in product design.

Today, Faire’s interview process includes two portfolio reviews. First, we invite candidates to an hour-long portfolio preview, where they informally present their portfolio and get feedback from our team, which helps guide their presentations in the next round. Next, we invite candidates on site where they present their portfolio in depth to a handful of cross-functional interviewers.

Preparing candidates properly

One of the most unexpected insights on redesigning the interview process came from Robert Murdock, Head of Product Design at Stripe, who encouraged Robin and the team to really focus on preparing candidates for their interviews.

We developed a crystal-clear, prescriptive interview guide for candidates. Setting up every candidate for success is an impactful way to judge how the designer responds to a brief. It also makes for a better experience on both sides of the table.

“I had this misconception that a candidate should be confronted with the unexpected,” Robin reflects. “Now, we get to see candidates in their best light. We’re not wondering if they didn’t actually have a good answer to something, or just weren’t prepared.

Calibrating and training interviewers to reduce bias

Similarly, developing a standardized system for rating candidates has been influential in improving the overall interview process. Amy Mako, Design Operations Manager at Faire, is leading the charge.

“We’ve developed standardized rubrics for judging each part of the interview. There’s a specific guide and calibration system for every interview objective,” Amy explains.

For example, a standard rubric for a Craft interview might review how a candidate approaches a design critique, and note whether they focus on small, insignificant details or take a broader perspective. There are even rubrics for more abstract interviews, like Design Citizenship, which examines a candidate’s growth mindset and their impact on the design team culture.

“We start to understand the full person, instead of just looking at traditional characteristics for a top designer,” says Amy. “We’re not necessarily looking for a certain degree or education — in fact, when a candidate has an unusual background, we see that as an asset.”

“Another goal of the program was to get more people involved in our interviewing process,” Amy adds. “Not only does it help us scale our hiring practice to meet company growth targets, it welcomes input from a wider range of our team and contributes to our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion efforts.”

Our design interview process in a nutshell

At every stage of this new design interviewing process, our team ensures candidates are prepared through one-on-one calls with a design recruiter and a written interview guide.

1. Create a MOC (Missions, Outcomes, and Competencies) doc

Similar to a brief, this internal document defines what a candidate needs to accomplish in the first year.

2. Internal portfolio review

Once candidates have been sourced by a design recruiter, their portfolios are reviewed by Faire design managers to ensure their work is seen by peer experts in their craft.

3. Portfolio preview

Candidates present a preview of their portfolio and get feedback from Faire’s design team, setting them up for success in the next round. This “preview launch” helps candidates get a sense of what Faire is looking for from their formal, on site portfolio presentation.

4. On site interviews

Top candidates are invited on site for a series of one-on-one interviews that go in-depth on four topics: Craft, Execution, Product Sense, and Design Citizenship. For each interview, interviewers are prepped with a clear rubric and interview guide.

5. Reverse interviews

Candidates have the opportunity to interview employees about working at Faire, including 3–4 cross functional interviews focused on: Design, Culture, and Work-Life Balance, which offers candidates an honest look at the day-to-day; Product Pod Introduction, which introduces candidates to the teammates they’ll be working with; a Design Manager Introduction, which introduces candidates to their potential manager; and Company Trajectory, Financials, and Value of Equity, which connects candidates with the Head of Product, CFO, or CEO to help them full understand the opportunity of joining Faire at this stage before they accept an offer.

An iterative process

At the end of the day, although we’ve implemented a number of key changes to the design interview process at Faire, the work isn’t done. It’s an ever-evolving process that will need to grow and scale as the company does — while continuing to center the candidate experience.

“I don’t think we’ll ever be finished designing the process,” Amy shares, “but we’ve been able to improve process efficiency and quality resulting in really wonderful, talented hires, so we know it’s working.”

Tips for designing your design interview process

• Treat the hiring process like a design project: continually do research, create prototypes, and test assumptions to learn what really works.

• Never lose sight of the candidate experience. Candidates are evaluating your company as much as you’re evaluating them.

• Continually calibrate your interviewing team and reduce individual bias by developing clear rubrics that measure a candidate’s skill set and ability, not their pedigrees.

* A big credit goes to Who: The A Method for Hiring, a book by Geoff Smart and Randy Street that has influenced a lot of our thinking about how to hire good people.