Week 4
This week we discussed interview skills and what companies will be looking for. We also discussed potential questions we would be asked in interview processes. In the lecture Daniel showed us screencaps from a design company that actively takes placement students from our course. He asked them what do they hire people based on, this is the answer he showed us;
Daniel then asked us what do we think these 5 core values mean. In this blog post I’ll give my interpretation of each of these.
Never Done – I am assuming this means that you are never done with a product and that you will be constantly working on it and refining it.
Challenge Convention – I think this one is fairly simple, it means to think outside the box. Think nonconventionally.
Impact Together – Teamwork, create an impact together.
Bring You – Be yourself? Bring your talent and your personality.
Be an Advocate – Be a person that defends or maintains a cause or proposal a consumer advocate?
This is Daniels translation of the 5 core values. As you can see I was correct with 3 of them, but the first and last was way off.
Interview Questions
Daniel asked us this, as we will most likely be asked this during an interview.
- What are your values? – They should make you employable / be desirable to an employer.
- Prior experience – Any experience counts.
- Understand the role – Explain how you know, with examples (design process)
- Have Enthusiasm – For the job/company/subject… Why do you want to work there in the first place?
- Show you are Willing to learn – Use an example (Past mistakes? Problem solving skills?)
- Aspirations / motivations – What drives you and where do you want to go?
- User-centred approach – Part of your process / motivations (everything really). This should be a big one and will show you have good set of priorities and ethos.
Whatever they ask me, tie it back to one of these, even if it isn’t obvious what the question is asking. Always answer a question, even if indirectly.
- Start with the backstory — just enough context to explain why the project was important.
- Go through your actions — the highlights of what happened, the obstacles you faced, and how you addressed them.
- End with positive outcomes — either a concrete business/project improvement or an anecdotal result (unintended or additional
improvements for the user).
After the lecture during our tutorial time we set-up some mock interviews, I found these very useful, when I was the interviewer I found the process just as difficult. Daniel informed us that it’s very common for the interviewer to struggle with the process just as much as the interviewee because the wording they are looking for is so precise at times it can be confusing.
We where each given one of these and split into twos and placed in different parts of the room. I was paired with Kewin, who preformed very well as both the interviewer and interviewee.
