Dan Shilov is a product designer with over a decade of experience creating products for consumer and enterprise companies across web, mobile and wearable platforms. When he’s not hard at work pushing pixels, he mentors designers and speaks at local design organizations. Over the course of his career he’s interviewed countless designers and design managers and seen them all struggle through various parts of the interview process. As a result, he’s been sharing his insights and documenting interview best practices to help designers put their best foot forward in order to land their dream job. Dan holds a master’s degree in Human Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University.
It was 11 am on a Wednesday. Slumping on a kitchen chair at home staring out the window I couldn’t help but think—what just happened? Hours earlier the company I was with went through layoffs and I got cut. This was my third design job in a year and a half. Startups are not for the faint of heart—the companies I was with went through rounds of layoffs or abruptly shut down due to lack of funding.
A few days after the shock wore off and I went into overdrive. I spent mornings and nights revising my design portfolio. I talked with designers at events and reached out on LinkedIn asking for feedback. Then a recruiter contacted me and just like that, three weeks after that fateful slump—I got a new gig. Call me stupid but I said no. Early on in the process I promised myself to take the time and not settle. So I continued looking.
New, seemingly perfect roles came up again and then things stalled for weeks. Other times I found myself running from one interview to the next while squeezing out an hour to work on take home design exercises. It felt like I was working multiple jobs without the pay.
But it paid off. Two months after, I had a great problem on my hands. Now I got to decide among three excellent job offers—good companies with bright futures and most importantly with great people. I say all of this not to brag but because I want you to have the same problem too—where multiple companies are fighting for you instead of the other way around.
This is why I wrote Land Your Dream Design Job. I want to share and give back to the community the lessons I learned—as an interviewer and an interviewee over the last decade plus in the design industry.
I wish I had this book when I was starting out. Early in my career I failed at countless design interviews: I solved the wrong problem during the whiteboard challenge, messed up portfolio presentations and responded with panicky answers during the peer interviews. When I found myself on the other side, interviewing candidates, I’ve seen the same mistakes happen even with senior designer and design managers.
At its core, the design hiring process is fundamentally broken. Companies need designers but frequently accept only senior candidates. Other times candidates go through rounds and rounds of exhaustive (and exhausting) interviews that bear little resemblance to the actual design process. In the end, organizations suffer for it. They ignore talent right under their nose and staff designers not representative of their customer base.
The good news is that the hiring process is changing. But it will take time to fully correct. Until then—you, the designer looking for work, have more power than you realize. You don’t have to take the first thing that comes along and you shouldn’t count yourself out when you’re debating on whether to go for that cool gig.
By leveling the interview playing field my hope is that more designers of different backgrounds can join and shape the industry forward.
At the end of the day, you still have to put in the work—there are no shortcuts. But knowing what to expect will put you on a stronger footing. Nobody should be disqualified from a role just because they’re not good at interviewing.
This book is meant to cover the entire design interview process from beginning to end. It’s meant to arm you with techniques and strategies for you to navigate the (at times) turbulent waters of job searching with confidence, like an experienced captain guiding their crew to safety in a storm. This book will help guide you to a role that plays to your strengths while providing enough support for professional growth.
You’ll learn how to build a stand out portfolio and tailor it to your dream opportunity. You’ll find in-depth advice on how to apply beyond the job boards. You’ll also learn the ins and outs out of various design interview types from portfolio presentations, whiteboard challenges, app critiques, to take home design exercises and many others.
As designers, getting feedback is critical to our work. From reviewing your performance to helping you do your own due diligence and negotiate salary, the book covers all the nitty gritty of the latter stages of interviewing.
Lastly, employers want to help their candidates ramp up quickly so in a bonus chapter I cover how you can get up to speed in your first three months on the job. So if you’re interested in taking control of your design career and your job search while saving time and moving with purpose—this book is here to help.
I’m excited to publish this book with Holloway. The brand is known for publishing high quality, well-researched content and it’s honor to be part of this group.
As a reader, the Holloway experience is the best, hands down. Having the ability to highlight, annotate and leave comments make the reading experience a two way street. Let’s face it—tech books are more like bread than wine. They don’t get better with age. But by having an active feedback loop and by versioning the books, Holloway’s platform flips the old-school publishing model on it’s head—now content can evolve and improve over time.
My hope is that this book evolves with you as well. So if you do end up purchasing it, I hope you’ll comment and leave your feedback. After all, as any designers know, no design is perfect and iteration is at the heart of the process.