Maya Patterson

Maya Patterson is a self-taught Product Designer at Facebook. This is p art 3 of a 3 part series designed to help you plan, prep, and perfect your product design interview. I’ve interviewed dozens of Product Design candidates and I’ve seen them make the same (correctable) mistakes. Afrotech is almost here and it’s one of the best events to shoot your shot with the companies you want to work for. The goal of this series is to help us tighten up our interview-readiness and feel confident during our job hunt process. Parts 1 and 2 of this series were about prepping for your interview and building out your portfolio. Now that you’ve prepped and done everything you need to do, let’s talk about what to do during the actual interview. Let’s get into it. (Don’t forget to check out the end for links to helpful resources) A Bird’s Eye View of the Process The product design interview process varies company to company, but generally there are a few high level milestones you can expect. An...

Editors note: A portfolio is one of the key things you can create to set yourself apart from the competition. In this article Maya Patterson, a product engineer at Facebook, will walk you through the steps needed to make your portfolio shine amongst the pack. Understand why you’re building a portfolio At a macro level, a Product Designer’s job is to solve messy problems while being laser-focused on the user’s needs. The path to solving these problems falls somewhere in the land of pens, post-its, and pixels. No matter what stage of the process we’re on, our job is extremely visually focused. We lean on paper sketches, static mocks, and hacky prototypes to express our product vision. Interviewers need to see these artifacts in order to adequately assess your skills. A resumé can only tell a hiring manager where you’ve worked and snippets about what you’ve done. A portfolio shows what you’ve done and how you made an impact. Show them your process! As you craft your portfolio, remember...

Editor’s note: For product designers, getting your portfolio together is only half the battle. In this article Maya Patterson, a product designer at Facebook, will walk you through how to best prepare for an interview. I’ve interviewed dozens of Product Design candidates and I’ve seen them make the same (correctable) mistakes. Below are 3 trends i’ve seen among people interviewing for product design roles. Trend 1: You don’t have an “ask” It seems we’ve cracked the LinkedIn code. We’re really good at finding and applying to open design roles. We’ve also become great at reaching out to designers we aspire to work with and hiring managers we want to work for. All of this is great, but let’s pump the breaks for a minute. When talking to hiring managers, a common point of frustration has surfaced –– many candidates lack a specific “ask.” Hiring managers will have an inbox filled with potential candidates pinging them for help, but what they’re asking for is unclear. Do they want a...