After taking a years-long sabbatical, I recently found myself back in the design job market, looking for a new position in London. During my interview process, I received some feedback from friends cautioning me to watch out for design practicals — red flag energy.
And to be honest, I used to believe the same thing. I thought practicals were a waste of time, wouldn’t give me enough context to arrive at a true solution, could be unpaid work, and would be all pretend without any interaction with real teams, clients, or budgets.
But now, after having gone through a practical test in one of my recent interviews, I’ve had a change of heart. I want to talk about my experience and argue why practicals shouldn’t be dismissed outright.
To give you some context, my interview process typically consisted of three steps:
- The filter interview — Is she a cool person or not?
- The case study/skills interview — Does she have the experience?
- The deep dive — Let’s dig into a case study.
While not all interview processes were the same, they were similar. And if I’m honest, I really struggled with step 3. I actually never properly made it past this step feeling confident.
Why did I struggle?
I find it challenging to articulate my design decisions and processes from years ago. To remember what I did and why I did it that way, especially after being on sabbatical for a year. During prep I can build up a case study and tell a wonderful story. But when it comes to answering impromptu questions about the project and having to come up with answers to decisions I made years ago — it ain’t easy.
I also found picking a case study very difficult. If I chose a product that most applied to the potential business’ product I found I received feedback like “Although the product space aligns, we found on this project you designed much slower than we typically do here, we don’t think you could handle the speed we work.”
Ugh. It never felt perfect.
So, when a certain company offered me a practical test during my interview process, I was excited to try something new.
The practical consisted of two parts: Ideate with the team and then participate in a critique of a prototype.
And guess what? I bloody nailed it. I had a blast, I thrived in the environment and I really enjoyed the conversations.
What made this so great?
Ideating with the team:
- We could talk about design together, rather than me explaining exactly what I did in a specific scenario in a case study that might not apply to the situation at hand.
- We could discuss hypothetical solutions and ideas while also considering actions I might take in the context of hypothetical business constraints.
- They could ask me about my thinking as it was happening, and we could riff off of each other.
- I was free to ideate how I do best, if I wanted to work as a team and ideate together I could, if I needed to isolate myself first to get my thoughts out, I could too. No judgement
Participate in a design critique:
- I was able to see how designers took my own feedback (just as important).
- I could ask designers questions about their designs and process.
- The interviewers could see the areas of design feedback I gravitated towards.
- It was totally collaborative and not a presentation.
What also made it great was that the practical took the same amount of time as a regular interview and I could come into their offices to meet the teamies in person. The scenario made me feel so much more relaxed than I would have been presenting my work to a board of people for an hour, there was flowing conversation and questions back between us both. It was easier to sense if their was a vibe between us.
While case study deep dives are the norm and practical tests are often frowned upon in the design community, I believe they should be given more consideration as a valid assessment tool. This was a perfect example of a practical done right.
I believe the interview process could be a lot more diverse than Case Study presentations again and again and again.
Not all designers think and act the same way, and just because a case study might work for some, that doesn’t mean it works for everyone.
Of course, there are some terrible take home practical design tests out there, but that’s not the case for all of them. I’m not suggesting that case study interviews should be eliminated altogether, but that practical tests should be taken seriously as a way of evaluating a designer’s skills.
People test differently
It’s important not to throw away a company or business simply because they’re not following the traditional interview approach.
Practical tests should not be dismissed as a red flag. Rather, we need to keep an open mind and consider alternative approaches to interviewing that may work better for certain individuals.
What interview process have you been through that was a little out of the ordinary?
