How do I become a better interviewee? I feel I become a bit flustered or over excited, and am not as articulate as I feel I should be. I believe that if I could present myself better, I’d be having a bit more luck as I search for my next!

My best success was with a mental shift.

I kept good boundaries. I didn’t let myself “fall in love” with a job or company.

What I cared about ? Numbers. My objective/outcome measurements:

Number of applications per week - 3
Number of screening interviews per month - 3
Number of skill interviews per month - 2
Number of fit interviews per month - 1

I set low numbers and increased them when I met my OKRs. So my emotional investment (celebrate because I met my OKR) was in getting the interview.

I thought of the interviews as “story telling time”.

My pre-interview rituals…

I would read the job description, read the organization’s website, and read the resume that I sent them.

Then I would think about the organization’s values.

Then I would pick which stories about my experience that I wanted share… and they matched the organization’s values.

Then I would stand in front of a mirror, breath deeply 5 times. I would smile at myself and tell all the stories. These are basic stories to the more complicated.

Basic 30 Second introduction - My name… and I greatly enjoy untangling complicated…. worked for 2 years….

Complicated 3 to 4 minutes - Explaining the hardest project that I worked on

I interviewed for a year on and off looking for the right role. I probably talked to 100 companies, and did about 40 first round plus and the full process with ~8 companies.

First - are you super clear on what you want? Size/stage/market?
I spent a long time really honing in and realizing I wanted a specific kind of culture. If you’re not sure, don’t put pressure on it and use your first few interviews to figure it out and explore!


Second, our industry needs an interview redesign so badly it hurts.
Director of Product Design roles are TOUGH. Often this role is the first design leader, so the team has no idea how to hire one. It means the interviews can be out of left field, and unfortunately unless you have a great interviewer they don’t often showcase the best out of you.

You have to be ready for:
- IC Level questions and design challenges 😑
- PM questions about market/TAM (usually from VP prod)
- “leadership” case studies and design challenges that take a TON of time
- Tons of questions about data and design, and especially examples of how you use it.
- leadership philosophy/management philosophy
- how you work with each discipline
- who is your favorite designer/inspiration (I find this particularly infuriating in leadership, but that might just be me)
- Relationship between marketing/product design and brand
- design systems
- what rituals you have with your team to make sure experiences are consistent and they collaborate well across silos

I look younger than I am, and I’m a blonde female I’m tech. It does fight against you. Presenting myself, I found I had better luck with:
- my hair up/back
- wearing glasses
- always dressing professionally, a bit over what feels normal for home

I hate that this is true and I’ve shed many tears over it. I got second on multiple great companies who hired an older white guy with a beard who had “experience” (great news—both were about the same age as I was)

Lastly, prep and homework. I always looked up the people and company in detail and asked before every interview if they could share topics/questions in advance for me to prep. Often they did, and it helped SO much.
Also, I have a file in the background with topics and bulletpoints to keep me on track because nerves are a real thing. I’d be happy to share it as a template! If I spoke from memory I fumbled a lot. Use whatever works for you, but I’m telling you I was a different person after prep and 6 months of interviewing!


I hope this helps and I’m very happy to give you my template/grab a coffee and chat about this. I just landed my absolute dream job but interviewing was so hard and the imposter syndrome was real— I’d love to help in any way I can!

Find someone to do mock interviews with. Or practice in a mirror. Or, even better than the mirror, record a video of yourself practicing and then play it back so you can get an idea of what you look like to an interviewer. I did it and it helped me to tone down a few visible nervous habits I didn't even realize I had. You've got this!

Practice makes perfect. Practice in the mirror, practice in the car, practice what to do if you get ahead of yourself and practice deep breathing while you talk to slow yourself down and collect your thoughts before you speak. Just practice as much as you can, it doesn't have to be with another person! Feeling confident in your own body and skin is important too, day of make sure you do things that make you feel good if possible.

Thank you for sharing your ritual!!

Be good if not great at what you do and align yourself to job opportunities that to some degree align with those responsibilities. Being over qualified helps with confidence a lot. As a severe introvert who is extremely socially awkward, this is the only thing that works for me. I never do mock interviews it’s too mechanical of an approach for me. I am an intuitive thinker and like interviews to be organic. This doesn’t mean that you don’t need to prep your stories/questions in your head in advance. This has been the way for me. I have never not gotten a job/offer I interviewed for but that may just be luck as well. Everyone faces a reject atleast a few times which is totally ok too.

Have to echo the practice practice practice. I also worked with a voice coach and that helped tremendously!

Honestly as much as I hate to say it, practice makes perfect. The more you do it, the better you get. I would even do some mock interviews if you need extra practice.