1/10 Someone asked the question of how I screen UX and product designers. Here are a few things I look for:

2/10 Experience with highly complex products. I look for examples in how the candidate communicate the inner workings in the system, such as how the system handles error states, how the system responds the conditions that are outside of a user triggered event.

3/10 Interview question might be: Describe some of the worst edge cases you’ve worked with. How did you discover them, and how did you solve them? What was the hardest thing you’ve ever worked on?

4/10 Good thinking: I look for framing ability, clear intent, formulating concise research questions, assumptions and trade offs and isolate user behavior as triggers in interaction. This is probably the #1 thing I try to assess. You can tease this out from a case study.

5/10 I try to see if the designer thinks like a researcher. This tells me if the designer can be taught.

6/10 Half of designer’s work requires soft skills, understanding and pushing constraints, driving alignment, driving initiative or a persuasion campaign, or working with execs, working through conflict. I look for examples of facilitation abilities in the designer’s experience.

7/10 Interview questions might be: Tell me about a time when you said no to a leader or a stakeholder. Tell me about a time when you had to work with others outside of your assigned team to overcome a constraint.

8/10 Tell me about a time when you’re asked to do something you disagreed with. How did you handle that?

9/10 Values and humility. Interview questions might be: I learn more from my failures than my successes. Tell me about a time you failed. What did you learn from that and how did it inform your next steps? Tell me about an event that change you as a human or as a designer.

10/10 I also look for impact and invention from the portfolio and case study review. How the designer get there is more interesting to me than the final outcome.

Another one I recently thought of: Tell me about a time when you uncovered a blind spot that you had.