Nail Your User Research Job Interview

How to Set Yourself Up for Success with Your Next UXR Job Interview

👋🏻Hi, this is Nikki with a 🔒subscriber-only 🔒 article from User Research Academy. In every article, I cover in-depth topics on how to conduct user research, grow in your career, and fall in love with the craft of user research again.

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Job changes, even if it is something you initiated, are one of the top three stressful life events. This can be even more stressful if you weren’t the one who decided you wanted to switch jobs — whether that be from a move, a toxic work environment, or a lay-off. Regardless of how many times you’ve done it, job interviews are difficult and anxiety-inducing.

I’ve had many instances in my career where I have chosen to take a job interview because I needed a change. I was secure in my role, but wanted to explore other opportunities. Even in this situation, I found job interviews challenging.

And then there was the time that I interviewed at over 70 companies before I was able to get my first user research job.

And then finally, there was the time when I got laid-off from a role I absolutely cherished and was forced into the job interview process.

That said, I’ve interviewed over 100 times. Some of those interviews I knew I completely failed at before the interview even finished. Some of them I thought I nailed, but then got rejected. And others I thought I sucked at, but I moved on to the next stage. For a while, it honestly felt like a toss up. I had no idea what to expect and how to prepare.

Luckily, I then moved to the other side of job interviews. I interviewed hundreds of user research candidates at various companies and started to learn the most valuable lesson I could — what my audience wanted.

Becoming a hiring manager gave me so much empathy and deep understanding of what employers are looking for during the job interview process. With those experiences, I have learned a few tricks along the way to help me feel more confident and increase my chances of getting to the next step. And I want to share those with you today.

What are the General Stages of UXR Interviews?

Way back when, an interview was an interview, but now, there are many stages in the user research job process. Although not every company operates the same way, this is the general and typical journey I’ve found within the UXR job process:

• HR/recruitment call (30-45 minutes). The standard get-to-know-you call. In this call, recruiters are looking to understand your general level, skills, and competence for the role

• 1-on-1 deep-dive interview (60-90 minutes). During the deep-dive interview, you will be presenting one to three case studies to either one person or multiple people.

• Panel interview (60 minutes). You are presenting (usually the same) case studies to a broader audience. Sometimes the team members may be from different teams, such as product managers, designers, or developers.

• Whiteboard challenge (45-60 minutes). Companies use the whiteboard challenge to assess how you respond to a problem - either having to do with that company or completely random. This challenge can be live or take-home.

• 1-on-1 interview with another team member or manager (30-60 minutes). This call is mostly about culture fit to ensure you would work well in the company environment

• Final HR/recruitment call (30 minutes). This step can come in a few different ways, such as a general wrap-up to see how everything went, an offer, or a rejection call.

HR/Recruitment Call - What to Talk About

During this call, explain the different projects you have been working on at a high level. You can mention you do both generative and evaluative research, work collaboratively, and your role in most of your projects (ex: are you leading them, working with other researchers, in an agency set-up?).

Have specific examples to explain these points. For example, if you mention that you recently did a generative project, talk about the method you used and its impact.

1-on-1 Deep-Dive Interview - What to Talk About

The most important piece of advice I can give for the deep-dive is to explain your process. Go step-by-step through what you did and why you did it that way. In this step, we want to see how you approached a problem and why you approached it in that way so we can project how you might address a problem at our organization.

The people interviewing you want to understand if your process aligns with the strategy they are currently using and if you think through all the different steps in a project thoughtfully. I highly recommend presenting at least two case studies: one for generative research and another for evaluative research.

Panel Interview - What to Talk About

Again, it is essential to explain your process and why you approached the problem in that way. This step is also great for talking through how you've collaborated with other teams, such as product managers, designers, developers, or any cross-organizational collaboration with other departments.

You can ask ahead who you will be speaking to and their roles to be best prepared. Again, the most important concept to convey is how you think through a problem and communicating that process effectively.

Whiteboard Challenge - What to Talk About

Again, the people interviewing you are assessing how you approach a problem but, this time, one that you haven't had much time to think about. Like the deep-dive presentations, they want to understand your process, especially when you don't have a lot of information.

It is okay to ask questions or to mention that you don't have enough knowledge and make assumptions. For example, you can make an assumption about which people to recruit for the study, but make sure you can justify why you made that assumption.

Curious about learning the ins-and-outs of the whiteboard challenge? Get my course here!

1-on-1 Interview with Another Team Member or Manager - What to Talk About

My best piece of advice for this call is to be yourself and to answer truthfully. If you end up not being a fit for the company, that doesn't mean anything is wrong with you, but it could save you and that company a lot of time and stress. Be honest when answering the questions.

This call is also the perfect time to ask questions you haven't had time to ask, especially specialized questions if you're speaking to your manager. Have a list of questions ready to assess if this opportunity is good for you (I cover some example questions later)!

Final HR/Recruitment Call - What to Talk About

During this call, you can negotiate your salary, vacation days, start date, and all those other technical details if you haven't already.

If you get a rejection call/email, always ask for feedback and then move past it.

Again, these are the general steps that I’ve found to be most common when interviewing at a company for a user research role. You may end up skipping some, having more calls, or doing an at-home exercise rather than a whiteboard challenge. However, prepping for these most common stages is ideal.

Now, let’s dive into the nitty-gritty of the user research job interview.

What’s the Point of an Interview?

The first big mindset shift I made when it came to job interviews was actually understanding the point of a job interview. For a really long time, I just thought of them as a step in the process, a mean’s to an end. I frequently thought about job interviews (and the whole process) from my perspective, rather than from what my audience needed from me.

After some terribly failed interviews, I was feeling particularly down. This was after the mass layoffs. I couldn’t seem to make anything stick, no matter how I spun it. One day, I decided, instead of trying to force yet another job interview in, to put my user research hat on and look at the process objectively. I crowd-sourced, reaching out to a few hiring managers asking them what they were looking for in the UXR job interview process. I coupled this with quite a lot of desk research.

Maybe this was the procrastination talking, but viewing interviews from this perspective and doing this research felt refreshing and revitalized my job search. Once I synthesized all the information, I had a much better idea of what my audience was looking for during the interview stage of a user research job process:

• Tangible and concrete examples of your work that answer their questions

• An understanding of how you have approached problems and projects in the past

• To see how your work has impacted an organization in the past

• To understand how you collaborate and work with others during your research process

• The information necessary to understand how you would work in their environment/organization

People who are assessing you during an interview need to know if your experience aligns with the organization’s current ways of working. At the end of an interview, they want to understand if you joined the company, you would be able to onboard and make an impact. They want to ensure that you would fit in well with the current structure and be well-supported. They want to make sure your skills are what the company needs and set you up for success at the organization.