Youβre reading an excerpt of Land Your Dream Design Job, a book by Dan Shilov. Filled with hard-won, personal insights, it is a comprehensive guide to landing a product design role in a startup, agency, or tech company, and covers the entire design interview process from beginning to end, for experienced and aspriring designers. Purchase the book to support the author and the ad-free Holloway reading experience. You get instant digital access, commentary and future updates, and a high-quality PDF download.
I have a confession to make. Early on in my career I was terrible at interviewing. I would take months obsessing over every pixel in my online portfolio only to fail in the last round of interviews. That is, if I got lucky to get to that final round in the first place. Most of the time, after submitting my application, I never heard anything back. As a designer I was comfortable generating ideas on a whiteboard with colleagues, but doing a whiteboard design challenge in front of an interview panel gave me performance anxiety. And donβt get me started on the take-home design exercise assignment. Trying to read the lines of what the company was looking for while balancing a looming work deadline always put me in a tight spot.