Job Interviews can be intimidating, it can also give a lot of stress, doubts and uncertainties especially when there’s a design or technical challenge involved.
Everyone deserves a second chance, but we want to know if we’re hiring the right person. We want to identify their strength and weaknesses and validate the real deal because sometimes, face-to-face interview is not enough. And the only way to see it is by giving them a design challenge.
Research & Findings
I joined few discussions from Facebook groups and Design community in Slack. I also asked some of my colleagues and get their feedbacks. Please refer to my trello board: https://trello.com/b/MyTmsFJz
Implementation
After trying out other methods in job interviews, I came up with a more fun and unique way of facilitating a design challenge. We use — UNO Emoji Cards.
Why is UNO Emoji Cards?
Because we want to break the typical boring and so formal interview process. That’s why I came up with the idea of including some distraction. Our company loves to play strategy games, board/card games, darts, pool, arcades and etc. during or after office hours to relieve stress. We also want to make an impression of our company culture.
Instructions:
1. Pick a design challenge
The candidate will pick (1) out of (6) UNO emoji cards given by the interviewer.
Then, we will then pass the equivalent design challenge. Candidates will open the scroll and will read it out loud.
We have a variety of topics in the challenges, and one of the inspiration came from WeWork.
If the candidate feels okay, then we don’t need to ask if they wants to take another card. Usually, we give them another chance to pick (1) more card and decide which of the two they would like to solve.
Most candidates associate their feelings with the emojis. “I picked #5 because I feel awesome!”
2. Showcase
Because we believe in forgiveness, the candidate has (2) options on how to showcase their design challenge:
- Collaboration & Fun
The candidate will lead and work through the design challenge on the whiteboard in front of the interviewers. It’s also a role playing game where the interviewers will be the participants and the candidate will be the facilitator. They have to think out loud while writing or demonstrating how are they solving the challenge and ask questions if necessary. It can be a form of a workshop or whichever you feel where your design process is going to be. - Focus & Core:
Save your energy by solving a design problem with all your concentration. Present your approach to us for later. Show off your creativity and amaze us during the Q&A.
3. Materials
Paper, pen, post-its, whiteboard marker, whatever, you name it — you have it! Of course, applicants must bring their own laptop or iPad.
As a result
After the face-to-face interview and design challenge, we evaluate our candidates by quantitative (score card criteria) and qualitative methods. At the end of the whole interview process whether they got an offer or not, we will also send Post-Interview Feedback to continuously collect insights and make improvements on our interview process.
