My interview experience at a company with 100 million users and 1 billion USD in Revenue

It was 10 AM on a Monday morning. Me and two others with me, were waiting for our laptops to arrive after which we will be given a series of design challenges and would be asked to create our solutions for it. I was sitting in this big building which I had a feeling that as if I was sitting inside Hogwarts in Harry potter movie with huge windows around, enclosed in a bricked wall building.

The person next to me had come from central Tamil nadu and is already a UI designer in a company for more than three years and the other person with less than a year of experience. Both their portfolio were so good that, the person with less than a year of experience had a created a video using Figma prototype which was way-ahead for me.

And then, there was me who was sitting in my first interview after completing my college around 2015. I knew nothing about UI and UX design and we three were selected among 55 people, where we had applied for the role and completed a task in a week’s time. This happened one month prior to the interview day and I was glad that they had liked my portfolio and the assignment that I had submitted.

“One thing that I had learnt in this process is that, I never thought that I would be called for the next round even though I was wishing it to happen. So even if you don’t feel that you are not up to the expectations of the company, you still apply, because you never know what the tide could bring.”

Regarding the assignment, it was a family medical app dashboard and a one-minute marketing video for the same which had to be done in 7 days. I had done an entire flow right from signup to adding members to the app, up until the settings page using Adobe XD. I had also created a working prototype for the flow. For the marketing video, I had done a Kinetic topographic video similar to Apple’s Don’t Blink ad. Since I knew a little bit of video editing, I used Davinci Resolve to create the video with the designs using photoshop, to create each frame for my video and somehow matched the frames to the beats in the music of the video. I used all the tools at my disposal to create an output that would put me in a better position for the next round.

One of my friend working in the same company had referred me to this role and that also would have added some extra points for me, but honestly I don’t know and the process never looked liked it.

“There is always a higher chance of getting called for an interview when you go through a referral as people generally tend to lean towards social proof when deciding on something.”

And there came our machines and we were handed over a list of tasks to complete before the end of day and all three of us started. For me, it reminded the good old days of exams, getting a question paper and figuring out what to do with it!

We were two and half hours into the task and I was figuring out some solutions, sketching it hoping to create the screens later half of the day. Being a B2B SAAS company, the tasks were aligned along the lines of product design. It has questions related to version control in a chat app among others and mostly pretended to what all the company had been working on.

“It is very much important to know about the company’s business because they would be assessing the candidate based on their requirement mostly.”

Most of them were basic questions, so to say, as we had been interviewing for the role for a fresher UI and UX designer.

Now came one of the exciting thing to be a part of this company among the employees, the in-house prepared office lunch. We three went to the lunch hall, and picked our favourites from the items available and got to know each other personally a little more. It was a quick lunch and we returned to our spots to continue on the tasks.

As the evening approached, I was almost stuck with many of the challenges and was pondering on the solutions and by then, the technical head who was heading our recruitment process attended each one of us in silo to get an idea of what we had been working on. He asked me a few questions to unblock me in some of the tasks, but I wasn’t able to provide the right answers as he had expected. Suddenly I saw one of the participant leaving the hall and I was wondering whether he had been informed that he would not be selected of sorts.

Then, the other participant was told to wait and the recruiter came to me and said that, I can leave and the result would be informed through the HR. I packed up my things and while leaving I was having a word with the other participant who was working on and somehow in the conversation I got that, he was to told to come on the next day too whereas were not. Hence, I almost knew the result and left the campus in mixed feelings.

“Even though I did not get the job, the experience is still fresh in my memory which is a good thing I guess.”

So, here I was, with my first interview in my life and expecting to get the opportunity with zero failure rate. After a month’s time, I was told that I had not been selected and the other participant who was asked to come the next day had been selected. It was a good experience for me and I would definitely cherish it for my lifetime. Thanks Zoho.

PS: I got another job in a startup in the next one week where I am working right now and it is another roller coaster story to brag about!

Thank you for reading. All the best for your interview!