Cracking The UX Researcher Interview
Note: Long read ahead. Skim this as reference if you haven’t got the time to see this through to the end. Read the entire thing if you’re preparing for an interview. The short of it is: I interviewed as a UX Researcher at both Google and Facebook. In this post, I’ll break down the types of questions you may be asked, and my thought process for how I responded to them. That is all :)
I’ve been through my fair share of interviews, both as a designer and a researcher. There’s the phone screen, the half-to-full day of interviews, the exercises and challenges, and the post-interview wait. But what’s different between the two is what questions are asked.
In a great Medium compilation of GAMF (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook) researcher questions by Eleonora Zucconi, I compared the questions submitted by Glassdoor users to my own questions and experiences in interviewing as a researcher at Google and Facebook. Which questions did I recognize? What unique questions did I receive? How did I go about giving my responses?
I’ll start with the questions I recognized and the unique ones I received.
Questions at Google
Submitted Questions
- How would you conduct user interviews if you were trying test a particular interaction?
- If you had two products and had to ask one question of users to determine which they preferred more, what would you ask?
- How do you handle it when people are skeptical of the value of usability research?
- Suppose you come forward with a usability recommendation, and the engineers counter that with, “All the usage data we have from millions of people suggest that is not a problem.” How would you respond?
- How do you know if you are asking the right research questions for a project?
Unique Questions
- What do you do if neither of the design options given to you for usability testing were successful?
- Please describe a recent discovery research project that you’ve completed that produced a lot of data. How did you go about analyzing the data and how did you produce findings and recommendations to help the team?
- Walk me through this: How do you design a research study for a new or concept product that focus group participants may not fully understand?
- Have you ever had cross-functional team members observe or participate in your user studies?
- What would you do if you worked on a project with little to no requirements?
- Describe the type of research methods you prefer to use. What would you consider to be your main methods of expertise?
Questions at Facebook
Submitted Questions
- What would you tell someone if they came to you and said that they wanted a bigger sample size for interviews or a survey?
- Why do you want to work for Facebook? What are some UX studies you would want to conduct?
- Pick a favorite app. Tell us how you’d evaluate it?
- How do you communicate your findings to different stakeholders?
- Propose a research question and research design. Explain how it is useful for Facebook and interesting to you.
Unique Questions
- What’s an example of one of the most difficult decisions you’ve had to make as a researcher?
- What’s your greatest weakness as mentioned to you by a manager or client?
- How do you know that your findings or research has made an impact?
- What was a really interesting insight or finding that you had from a recent project?
- How have you worked with quantitative researchers in the past?
- Let’s say that I’ve asked you to help my team find new and meaningful ways to engage users with previous content. Where would you start?
Covering everything from process to personality, there’s a lot of possibilities for what you may be asked. Admittedly, the mental gymnastics required to keep up with the breakneck speed of incoming questions (and types of questions) at both of these organizations was a little intense. So, how do you even begin to respond to all of them?
Preparing to Respond
In most interviews, it should be noted that there are a few essential things that prospective employers are looking for in a UX researcher hire (this not a comprehensive list, but there’s a great blog post for Design Researchers from Anthropologizing.com with another full list of questions that cover other areas worth preparing for):
- Empathy: Empathy with team members and customers/users (e.g. how does s/he work to promote understanding of the user or customer and support those around him/her with their knowledge?)
- Analytical: Strong analytical and problem-solving ability (e.g. can this person take data and concisely identify what’s useful to their team? are they logical in their approach to research?)
- Communication & Collaboration: Effective verbal and written communication skills (e.g. does this person communicate in a clear, thoughtful and easy-to-follow way?) AND Past experience with cross-functional collaboration (e.g. how well has s/he worked with team members and stakeholders in the past? does s/he build constructive and productive relationships?)
- Awareness: Self-awareness (e.g. what does this person perceive to be their weaknesses, strengths, and biases?)
- Knowledge & Experience: Command over a broad and specialized range of expertise on research methods, tools and deliverables (e.g. does this person have the ability to mix and match methods as needed? does s/he know when and why to use certain methods for certain types of problems?) AND Ability to proactively and diplomatically manage project- and role-based challenges and opportunities (e.g. what types of opportunities and challenges have they experienced in being a UX researcher? are they capable of providing rationale in a competent and confident way?)
- Cultural Fit: Past research interests, projects or outcomes (or personality) are a match for the organization (e.g. is there a strong intersection between what they’re interested in and what the organization is interested in?)
- Insight and Impact: Strength of insights and impact in past projects and organizations (e.g. what types of insights or findings did they deliver and how did they result in a measurable win for the team, product, or customer?)
I know what you’re thinking: that’s a lot to assess. So to make the most of their time, many interviewers will ask you to walk through your process or thinking in either hypothetical or past projects. From this perspective, they’ll see from end-to-end how you think about your work and solve problems.
Drawing from the list of questions that I received, I’ll walk you through a few questions under each of these categories and what I considered in my responses:
Empathy
Q: Have you ever had cross-functional team members observe your user studies?
- A: Questions on empathy can focus on the user/customer, but they can also be looking for how you help drive empathy for customers/users within the teams you work with and how you relate to others in the organization. For this particular question, I’d worked with companies to encourage product development team members in the observation of usability tests, and was able to speak to my experience in setting up such programs: respect for team members’ time, adequately preparing them for the experience, and having opportunities for discussion and collaboration after studies. As a result, we experienced an increase in conversations around user experience, interest in front-end development, and UI quality. With empathy questions, your target audience or group may be different and that’s okay as long as you focus on providing an answer that speaks to how you relate to and support others.
Analytical Thinking
Q: Please describe a recent discovery research project that you’ve completed that produced a lot of data. How did you go about analyzing the data and how did you produce findings and recommendations to help the team?
- A: This is a multi-layered question because it’s a “how” question. It’s a process, analytical thinking and communications question all in one. They want to know what the past project was, the scale of the data, process for processing and producing, and success of approach — and was it all presented in a logical, thoughtful and solutions-oriented way? In my response, I selected a project that I had worked on, set the context and my process, discussed the data involved (qualitative and quantitative), and reporting and presentation (taking into consideration my audience and their information needs). In analytical thinking questions, the challenge is to not bore the interviewer to tears or mind-wander about while being complete in your thinking and answering of the question. You’ll likely want to practice answering process and analysis questions to get them down pat, they’ll be a big indicator of how effectively and concisely you organize yourself, think, and communicate.
Communication & Collaboration
Q: How do you communicate your findings to different stakeholders?
- A: This question is interested in understanding if you recognize the types of stakeholders you’ve worked with in the past, how you differentiate the information needs of various types of stakeholders, and your approach for assessing appropriate format for findings. My response focused on the aggregate of recent projects, citing a recognition of distinctive groupings of stakeholders and a willingness to adapt based on the nature of the findings (positive or negative), their needs and interests. For example: peers may need to understand how the information I provide will impact them and their teams at a tactical level. So they may benefit from my referencing specific timelines and priorities they have, how findings impact them, and to what extent. For executives and external stakeholders (clients), they need succinct answers to high-level, strategic questions and what options are available to them next. They may appreciate short bullet points, quantifying impact, and clear asks or recommendations with metrics. Whether the output is a presentation and report or a strategic planning workshop, it’s the ability to differentiate and adapt to the informational needs of different stakeholders that’s important. And with communication questions, your best bet is to consider who your audience is or was, what goals you shared, what they needed to know and how you could best deliver that information.
Q: How have you worked with quantitative researchers (or role X) in the past?
- A: At a general level, the questions to gauge collaboration skills can be anything from how someone deals with setbacks or interpersonal challenges to how you and other teams or roles work together. In this instance, this question is interested in my past experiences working with others unlike myself (but also if I recognized the limitations of my own quantitative research experience). I’ve worked with organizations large enough to employ separate qualitative and quantitative UX researchers, and while I have some experience with quant, was able to speak to particular projects where large scale data collection (millions of users) was not my area of expertise but that there was great collaborative interplay between the two worlds in accomplishing goals. With collaboration questions, your focus should be exercising a good deal of self-awareness (more on that in the Awareness section below) of who you and what you do, but also the ability to work in support of common goals with other team members in the organization.
Q: What would you tell someone if they came to you and said that they wanted a bigger sample size for interviews or a survey?
- A: This question is one of many questions that point towards common interactions that researchers encounter on-the-job. Whether it’s a question about making estimations for projects or how you’d handle the lack of requirements, these questions point towards your abilities in collaboration and communications. Do you have a knee-jerk response or do you seek to find common understanding? Do you focus on explaining why you made the decisions that you did or do you hear them out? Personally, I like having more information before offering a response. I’d want to know: What’s their reason for wanting a bigger sample size? Will a boost in sample size impact our ability to make a confident decision? What are the trade-offs of having that bigger sample size now vs. waiting to see what the data says and then making a decision? This line of questioning as opposed to having a definitive one-size-fits-all answer is the mark of a researcher who is able to think holistically before providing an answer. Again, adapting to the informational needs of your collaborators, considering shared goals, and how you deliver a response.
Awareness
Q: What’s your greatest weakness as mentioned to you by a manager or client?
- A: This is an common question that’s found in nearly every interview, UX or not. In general, awareness questions ask you to assess who you are and where you are in your professional development. There are a couple of ways that UX professionals can approach these types of questions, but the unadvisable way is to deny that you have weaknesses or to spin your strengths as weaknesses. Tactful honesty is appropriate here. For this particular question, I had to think about my career and lessons I had learned. My answer had to display awareness and acceptance, a plan for development, and a positive outcome or ongoing desire to grow. For me personally, I’ve always struggled with speaking up when I had an idea or thought. I just assumed that something I noticed was super obvious or I didn’t realize that it was a thought until I considered it in retrospect. A director had expressed concern that I wasn’t inserting (and asserting) myself into conversations, resulting in delays in resolution or less than optimal outcomes. In the interview, I discussed my recognition of the problem, how I took steps to resolve it with the support of my manager, and where I am now. (For those of you struggling with this too, my manager set a goal for me to share one idea or observation per meeting that I noticed OR to speak up by the halfway point of the meeting or session. It was uncomfortable at first, but it helped me to recognize how easily I shied away from things!) For awareness questions, focus on an brief but complete end-to-end answer that shows that you recognize that you’re human and imperfect, but that you are proactive in your growth and development as a professional.
Knowledge & Experience
Q: Walk me through this: How do you design a research study for a new or concept product that focus group participants may not fully understand?
- A: This question is unique to my background as a qualitative researcher with a lot of work in discovery and new product development. But while it’s tailored, my approach to answering it can carry across to other areas of specialization. I have to say: the first thing I noted was how long my answer could potentially get for this (because oh-my-goodness-this-topic-is-my-jam!) and that I should not drone on about it. The second thing was the parameters set for what I needed to focus on: how to design the study, deal with ambiguous information or unknowns, and the users. In most cases, interviewers ask this question as an exercise. They want to know things like:
- what types of questions you’ll ask
- what methods you’ll use
- what do you anticipate the data to look like
- how you think about overarching goals
- if you’re more focused on how you’re collecting information vs. how you’re telling/showing participants about the study (hint: you’re researching, so you should be focused on research)
- how well do you work with users
- how you plan for any needed materials or artifacts for the study
- and how well you communicate your process.
It’s a lot! For my response, I started with questions based on what I prioritized as important and where the biggest gaps were: Did they have designs yet? Yes, prototypes with two design directions . What was the goal? To determine which design direction to take. What hypothesis or challenges did they have in understanding of the product? If we invest in building this. How to use it and if they’d use it, but open to other research question too. I then started to walk him through my approach, continuing to clarify goals and objectives as I went. With knowledge questions, interviewers want to know if you know what type of research you’re conducting, what research questions and methods you’ve considered, and how you plan to conduct the research with the constraints provided. Show what you know, but make sure that you’re pointed yourself in the right direction first (because once you start down a path, it’s hard to backtrack). And be logical and articulate and ask questions if you’re able to. - Side note: I should also point out that in more research-intensive organizations (which tend to be those with better resourced research practices and a significant number of researchers with advanced degrees and specialist expertise), it’s more common to experience knowledge and experience questions that include modifications to scenarios: what do you do if you don’t have budget or resources? what if certain data sources aren’t available to you? what if you were asked to design the study with an alternative method? what if you got pushback from a product manager? With these, they want you to think about the details, be willing to adapt your approach and get creative.
Cultural Fit
Q: Why do you want to work for us? What are some UX studies you would want to conduct?
- A: Ah, the famous “why do you want to work for us” question. Common across many interviews, but be sure to pay attention to the specifics of why you want to work in UX research for them. Maybe it’s because they’ve recently made a shift towards chat bots: You’ve previously done research on social networks and mobile chat apps, and have a lot of great ideas for projects you’d be able to contribute to. Maybe it’s because they have a great recommendation engine, but you have a few ideas of how to improve it. They want to know: how are they interesting to you? are you interested in conducting research to solve challenging problems at their organization? are you able to think strategically about research? This question is a stumbling block for me. I have so many things I want to research and know. I think if I could have answered this differently, I would have focused on very specific areas that are of importance or high-priority for their business, making strong connections between my areas of expertise and their strategic goals. With cultural fit questions, the focus is not on how you can benefit from simply being at the company, but on why you’re the best and most relevant researcher for them and how you plan on delivering big wins for their business.
Insight and Impact
Q: What was a really interesting insight or finding that you had from a recent project?
- A: This is a hard question to answer because sometimes what’s interesting to you isn’t interesting to your interviewer or the company. There are two ways to approach this: pick the universally interesting insight (something that can be applied to anyone) or tailor your response. For this question, you want to step back and assess the specifics of the organization, the team or product that you’re interviewing to work with, and the unique context or experience of your interviewer. It’s hard to manage overlap for all of this, so if you can match for the organization and the team/product, you’re pretty much there. You’ll have to do a little reading and sleuthing before hand, but come prepared with at least 2–3 interesting insights or findings from your past projects that may have overlap with their company’s space or products. If you’re interviewing for a role as an international UX researcher, focus on insights around culture or specific markets. If you’re interviewing as a growth or marketing-oriented UX researcher, recall an insight into user acquisition and retention or surprising engagement behavior. Whatever the insight, be sure to explain why it was interesting or impactful to the project, and conclude with the degree of impact it had in the end. Oh, and be excited to share it because every interviewer loves a fun factoid!
In the end, how did my interviews pan out? They were great and I took away positive experiences from both organizations and their interviewers. I learned a lot about Google and Facebook (so many resources! so many interesting problems to solve!). I shared my thoughts and geeked out with my interviewers over interesting studies (and their PhD dissertations). Ultimately, I got one full-time offer and one no-go.
In the end, I chose to stay independent. I’ve always enjoyed working with small, fast-moving startup teams and while they tend to be resource-conscious, the flexibility to work with teams from around the world and on a variety of products and challenges is exciting to me. Every researcher is different, with unique interests, skills and career goals. But if you’re looking to join the UX research teams at Google or Facebook, I hope you’ll take away some helpful tips from my own experiences. Good luck!
What types of questions have you been asked in UX research interviews? Which ones have stumped you?
Hat tip to Michael Voigt for a typo catch :)
