Recruiting Online: 20 Great Interview Questions for Product Designers

If you have been recruiting online lately, you know the job market is hot. For tech companies, especially, the competition to attract and retain talent is the fiercest it has been in decades. 

And with more things going digital, many savvy companies are hiring product and UX designers to help build better digital experiences. 

This means that product designers are in high demand and they have plenty of options. If you want to hire one, you need to ensure that the candidate is up to the task. The only way to do that is by conducting an interview. Our guide will tell you about all of the questions you need to ask to hire the top talent!

Product Designer Interview Questions To Ask While Recruiting Online

The optimal ways to evaluate a designer is quite obvious. You just take a look at the work they have produced. Yes, a thorough review of their portfolio is a good place to start. Giving them an assignment is just as important. Assuming both of these go well, you can start talking about design itself while recruiting online.

• Who are their role models?
• Where do they go for inspiration?
• How do they keep on top of current design trends?
• What’s an example of great design (digital or physical)?
• What books/exhibitions/conferences or communities do they attend or admire?
• As a designer, what do they think is the most important aspect of their job?

You are looking for a designer whose interest stretches beyond the boundaries of their own specialities s. Do they know and are capable of thinking critically about the design decisions that surround all of us in our everyday lives? Well, keep in mind that a great designer is thinking about improvements to these details.

Operational And Situational Questions

Now we come to the assignment when recruiting online. There are two main approaches to choose from. 

One is a specific assignment, such as the creation of a user journey or an approach to address a specific user need.

The other approach is called ideation in which the candidate is presented with a very general problem with little or no detail. They are then asked to produce as many ideas as possible. The next step is to design a possible solution based on this thinking. The indicators you are looking for are:

• Is your candidate fluent enough in ideas to fill up a whiteboard?
• Can they identify their own best ideas?
• Can they respond creatively to constraints and explore ideas that move beyond the obvious.

Operational Questions (Portfolio Review)

• Talk to us about your studies; tell us about an aspect of your course that you found the most engaging.
• What’s your current occupation/What are you currently working on?
• Take us through a couple of your favourite pieces in your portfolio. What was your design process for these pieces? What problems were you trying to solve? How did you make a certain design decision?
• To what extent do you “own” the work in your portfolio, and can you be specific about which aspects?
• Ask them how they prototype their ideas while recruiting online? How do they know when they’ve got it right?
• Tell us how you put yourself in the mind of the user. What kind of research methods do you use when you’re starting a new project.
• Tell us about a project that didn’t go as planned and the reasons that led to it. How did you solve the problems that arose?
• Do you have a side project you’d like to talk to us about?

Role-specific Questions (Technical Questions)

• What is your preferred development environment? (operating system, text editor, version control, preprocessors)
• Let’s say you start a new project right now – which solution will you choose for adding icons to the interface?
• Can you describe the difference between progressive enhancement and graceful degradation?
• Ask them what existing CSS/Sass frameworks have they used locally, or in production when recruiting online?
• Are you familiar with BEM or SMACSS? What do you like/don’t like about these conventions?
• How do you optimize a website’s assets & reduce page load time?

Conclusion

The above questions will help you find the perfect candidate for your product designing needs while recruiting online. Considering the importance of brand image, it is crucial that you find the perfect candidate. Luckily we have just the tool to help you look for top talent among 1000s of others!

EVA-REC  is a full-fledged hiring platform that does the heavy lifting for you and makes sure your hiring is hassle-free. Think of EVA-REC as the indispensable teammate who can easily automate all your hiring processes, streamline your HR functions, and allow you to recruit the right talent today, tomorrow, and every day.

Request a free demo today, and get to see our award-winning hiring platform in action! 

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