After interviewing more than 50 UI designers, I summarized these job hunting skills!

Some time ago, the company was recruiting UI designers, which lasted for about four months. We received four to five hundred resumes and interviewed more than 50 designers, including those from large companies such as Sina, Xiaomi, and 360, but most of them were from general Internet companies.

From the process of screening resumes to interviews, I found that many designers had some problems in their portfolios, self-introductions, interview skills, etc., which I, as the employer, felt were inappropriate, so I summarized some practical experiences to share with you.

Table of Contents

• Industry status
• Designer Recruitment Process and Tools
• Works resume preparation stage
• Resume submission stage
• Interview stage
• Summarize

Industry status

Now is really the cold winter season for Internet job hunting. Let’s first look at some Internet news.

Huawei recently released the "Resolution on Implementing the Company's Talent Supply Strategy", announcing that "Huawei will stop general social recruitment in principle". Departments that are not in the scope of outstanding graduates, key scarce talents, and special recruitment of the company are not allowed to issue offers. Special circumstances must be approved by the rotating chairman. An internal employee of Huawei revealed that this move is to reduce employment costs. According to Huawei's 2017 annual report, its expenses on wages, salaries and other benefits reached 140.29 billion yuan, an increase of 15.11% year-on-year.

Other major manufacturers have the same news.

• Alibaba: We have comprehensively reduced headcount (staffing). We will not approve offers for any business line, including technology. Those who cannot be recruited in the near future may be laid off.
• JD.com: "Total suspension of external recruitment, the document has been issued."
• Tencent: In early September, there were rumors that Tencent would lay off 6,000 employees, but Tencent's public relations director Zhang Jun refuted the rumor, saying, "HR has a social recruitment task of more than 3,000 people this year, and is very busy. There is no time to lay off employees. Welcome all aspiring young people to join Tencent."

Although all the major giants have come out to refute the rumors, everyone in China understands that official refutation basically means it has been confirmed.

At the same time, everyone has more or less heard about the recent tax and fee reforms and adjustments to the five social insurances and one housing fund, which will increase the employment costs of enterprises. Some small companies have already begun to make personnel adjustments.

In short: the Internet winter is here again, and designers’ employment pressure will become greater and greater.

But there is still demand, and personnel are constantly moving. China's huge Internet market means that there will always be job opportunities. Of course, good opportunities will eventually be left to capable designers as well as designers with interview skills. So how can UI designers stand out in the current fierce competition?

Now, from the perspective of a recruiter, I would like to share with you some experience and skills in resume writing, submission and interviews.

Designer Recruitment Process and Tools

As a recruiter, I divide the job search process of designers into five stages:

Work resume – submission – interview – probation period – regularization.

In the UI recruitment a while ago, the designer A from a small company was hired. At the same time, it was found that some designers from large companies were not competitive enough. As for why A was hired and what advantages he has, we will reveal it later.

When recruiting, our company uses Boss Direct and Moka.

Boss Direct Hiring is aimed at C-end users and is familiar to everyone. It is one of the best tools for designers to find jobs on the Internet. I can chat with designers directly, which is convenient and fast.

However, the company also has a complete recruitment process, so it uses Moka internally. It is a management system that improves the efficiency of corporate recruitment and is aimed at the B-side.

Let me briefly describe the workflow: the resume submitted by the designer will be initially screened by HR and put into the Moka system. I will receive a prompt, and then a secondary screening will be carried out. If suitable, I will be contacted for an interview through HR.

As the saying goes, knowing yourself and your enemy ensures victory in a hundred battles. Knowing some information about the recruiter will increase your chances of being hired. As a demander and a recruiter, what do I think when I see a designer's resume? What aspects of the resume interest me? What points in the resume make you stand out in the fierce competition? Please read on.

Works resume preparation stage

Unlike other professional resumes that are mainly in Word, a designer's resume is more about visually displaying your abilities, and can be presented in many forms. A resume is your first work, and its quality directly affects the subsequent interview. Generally, a designer interview requires a work, so a file that combines a resume and a work will be generated, or it is called a work resume.

For designers, a resume is actually your first work. You need to fully demonstrate your design skills through your work, including prototype interaction, animation production, front-end code and other skills. This will make the recruiter feel that you are worth the price. At this point, I suggest that you learn some front-end skills, which is really a shortcut to promotion and salary increase.

The above can be summarized into one point: packaging. Packaging needs to be combined with one's own reality and based on truth. Do not make false claims, otherwise the interview may be exposed. Therefore, improving one's own abilities is the best way.

After reading many designers' resumes, I summarized the following points.

1. Choose the right resume format

Currently, most designers use resumes in PPT and PDF format, and of course, there are also personal websites of design experts. If it is not necessary, it is not recommended to use resumes in word or image format.

PPT has motion effects (provided you know how to make them), but you are not sure whether the other party's platform is Mac or PC, and there is a high risk of font compatibility. The effect after the other party opens the PPT is likely to be different from that on your own computer. You can convert the text content in the PPT into pictures to solve the compatibility problem. If we have the ability to produce motion effects, we can also embed motion effect videos into PPT to increase core competitiveness.

Although PDF cannot display animation, it is cross-platform and has no font compatibility issues. 80% of the resumes I received were in PDF format, and the effect experience was pretty good.

As for personal website, I think it is the best way, but the threshold is relatively high. First of all, you have to learn html+css. If you want a personalized address, you also need to consider purchasing domain name, server, filing, expensive fees and other issues. The process is more complicated.

In summary, it is recommended that you use PDF as your first choice for resumes. Of course, it is great for a technical designer to make a unique personal website, and it is also a general trend in the industry for UI designers to master some front-end skills.

2. Pay attention to the details of your resume

UI design pays the most attention to details. If the details are not in place, it will feel cheap. This cheap feeling is reflected in many details, such as fonts, shadows, pictures, text filling, alignment, additional information, etc. A resume that pays attention to details and is carefully made looks very professional, which will make the recruiter feel the urge to interview immediately.

Of course, I have also met many designers who have just graduated or just received training, and their understanding of resumes is still stuck in many years ago. This will make the resume look particularly cheap, and the chance of interviewing will be greatly reduced. Even if you are lucky enough to be accepted by some small companies, you will be labeled as cheap. So we must take our resumes seriously.

3. Don’t show skills in percentages

I have come across many designers who use this display format, which looks quite unprofessional. Some even directly put out the percentage, which is actually inappropriate because no one can master a software 100%, and doing so also exposes your weaknesses.

We just need to list the software we know. The interview requires bargaining between both parties, leaving room for negotiation.

4. More works are not necessarily better

You should know that your resume is your first work, and its quality directly affects whether you can get an interview, so try to put works that you are satisfied with and have good visual effects. The quantity does not need to be large, but the quality must be good.

Therefore, you must pay attention to the quality of your own work resume, and never put some other poor works in there just to increase the quantity.

5. Don’t have too much work experience

Start writing from your most recent job, and write from recent to old. Since recruitment is not a one-person job, the boss will look at what you want to show to HR, and HR will not care so much, only looking at experience and resume, so you have to consider their readability.

Another important point is that you should not have too much work experience, which is related to your job loyalty. It is recommended to change jobs as little as possible. If you change jobs frequently, just write down the two or three most recent jobs. You don’t have to show some information in your resume, but don’t falsify it. For designers who have just started working, it is recommended to make a good career plan and be cautious about frequent job changes.

6. Pay attention to the use of prototypes

This is used more often. The mockup must keep up with the times. If you still use the iPhone 5 mockup, it will look outdated. It is recommended to use the iPhone X. However, this depends on your design draft. If you use the size of the iPhone 8, then use the iPhone 8 mockup.

In fact, the prototype plays a role in covering up flaws, which will make your design more stylish. However, it is not advisable to use too many distorted and beveled prototypes. If not handled properly, it will be counterproductive. There are many prototype materials on the Internet, you can go and look for them.

Editor's note: 500 sets of mockups for free download → "500 sets of VI mockup PSD templates for download!"

7. Pay attention to the text and image data filling in the interface

The data in the interface must be realistic and must be filled with data. Do not put text randomly, the most common is repetitive text. Do not paste pictures randomly, put pictures with feeling and style.

For text and image filling, we can use Sketch52's latest data source function, which is very powerful. Here is another free and commercially available high-quality image website → https://unsplash.com/.

Resume submission stage

If a UI designer is reduced to looking for a job on Zhaopin.com, his ability will be questioned - a senior HR in our company said.

There are many job search platforms for UI designers, but most of them use Boss Direct and Lagou.com. When it comes to efficiency, Boss Direct is used by many people because it is more efficient than Lagou because you can chat directly with the boss (some are HR).

As mentioned before, our company uses Boss Direct Hire and Moka. Of course, the designer who was finally hired was the one I talked to on Boss, and he is indeed very useful.

I used Boss Direct Hire for about four months for UI recruitment some time ago. I met some great designers and many junior designers. During the communication process, I saw some questions that made me want to pass on the job seekers, so I summarized some key points to share with all designers.

When you are looking for a job, you must try to understand the boss's mentality, the environment he is in, etc. This will help you stand out from your competitors and get an interview opportunity. I face hundreds of greeting messages every day, just like marking the Chinese composition of the college entrance examination. Many times, I only spend less than a minute to understand the job seeker. Therefore, in addition to the resume, how to make the boss interested in you at the first time has become a problem that designers need to consider.

1. Greet

For example, when a male peacock is courting, he will open his gorgeous tail and try his best to show himself to attract the attention of the female peacock. This is the law of nature, and it also applies to us when we are looking for a job. We need to show our best side.

First of all, we must make it clear that the boss will hardly take the initiative to greet you, unless you are a top-notch designer, so in general, designers should take the initiative to greet the boss. But how to greet the boss to make him interested in you and then open your resume to browse, this requires some thinking.

Below are some negative examples of greetings collected during the interview process.

Boring nonsense type

When I encounter someone who greets me like this, most of them don't have any follow-up, just such a simple sentence. Basically, I won't click on his resume.

This person is here just to distribute advertisements, but the key impression she gives me is that she is very rude.

In Boss Direct Hiring, most of the recruitment information you can search for is currently recruiting. If it is full, Boss will close it.

In short, don't talk nonsense. Make your greeting message more substantial and attractive, and don't talk nonsense.

No context type

After seeing this, I also wanted to talk to him, and really wanted him to send a link to his work, and really wanted him to continue talking, but there was no follow-up. In this environment, you must take the initiative to show yourself.

Talking too much

I really want him to edit the post before sending it back to me. This designer combined the above types. Generally, experienced designers would not ask questions like this. If you were the boss, what would you think when you saw this?

Cute

Recruitment and job hunting is a serious process, but sending emojis can also be a bit of a highlight, but sending a series of emojis is a bit strange and the atmosphere is awkward, so use emojis with caution during communication. Of course, if you receive an interview invitation, sending an emoji is great.

Here is a reference for greeting. Another point is to pay attention to paragraphing. If you write a long paragraph to your boss, it will not be very readable and will be tiring to read.

Hello, after reading your company's introduction, I think I am a good match for this position.

I have experience in entrepreneurship and working with large teams.

The skills mastered include Sketch, Ps, Ai, Ae and html+css front-end capabilities, and have certain mouse drawing design capabilities and motion effect design skills.

Led and participated in the overall design of the company's major APP and website projects, and has rich experience in iOS, Android, Web and WeChat H5 design.

2. Personal information

There will be a personal introduction in Boss Direct Hire, and this introduction will be presented to me in the form of the following picture.

Basically, this is your minimalist resume. The boss doesn't need to look at other things, just this one item to make a score for the job seeker. So we must write the personal introduction in the most concise words.

The designer above lists a lot of work experience and skills, and seems to know everything, but it is easy to lose focus. The key is to use concise language to describe your core competencies so that the boss can remember them easily.

3. Send email

Many times after talking to your boss, he/she will ask you to send your work to a designated email address. In fact, this means that your boss has a certain degree of approval of your resume and just wants to know more about your work, so you need to send an email. Of course, you will also encounter some inexperienced HRs who will ask you to send your work without even looking at it. In any case, designers will encounter some problems when sending work emails.

Attachment is too large

The designer's attachment is nearly 200M, and it takes more than ten minutes to download. At this time, your contact with your boss is cut off for more than ten minutes. So again, the quality of the work is not important, it's not the quantity. Just send the work you think is good, and pay attention to compressing the size of the image appropriately. Many designers send attachments that are too large because the images in them are not optimized.

Attachments not checked

Yes, you read it right. A png is 96M. The designer must have sent it without checking it. This mistake directly makes your email invalid. Some bosses may pass you. If you are so careless when applying for a job, you will be even less careful when you are working.

Attachments are not organized

There are 8 attachments in total. Maybe after downloading, these files were mixed with my other files, without considering the boss's feelings at all. It is recommended that we compress the attachments in a folder instead of sending them separately.

Another shortcoming of the above email attachments is the naming. Chaotic and unreadable file names will lower the quality of the work and the boss's impression of you. The same applies to the email title. Here is a title format reference for you:

UI Designer-Zhao Xiaoming-Resume and Works-20181016

How to make the boss interested in you requires job seekers to think from the perspective of recruiters. Unless you are a big shot, any flaw may make the boss pass you. So from greeting, introduction, to sending work, this series of processes must be considered comprehensively. Job hunting needs to be taken seriously. If you don't take it seriously, then the employer will not take you seriously in turn.

Interview stage

If your resume is well written and you do well in the conversation with the boss, then congratulations, you have entered the interview stage.

For interviews, each interviewer is different, and there is a lot of randomness. For example, dirty clothes, bad breath (this really has an impact), chat attitude (very important), whether the computer desktop is clean, etc., these details need to be paid attention to. In short, in addition to personal ability, details will also determine your final admission.

I have met two candidates before, both of whom were quite capable. When discussing the choice with HR, it might be that one of them was too flamboyant, so we finally chose the other one.

So the interview process varies from person to person, but overall it is still about your personal abilities. The interviewer will ask a variety of questions. For example, I often ask the following three questions during interviews:

• Your understanding of iconfont - investigation and technical collaboration;
• Let’s talk about Material Design briefly – it examines the breadth of design knowledge;
• For example: A design problem actually solved in the company - examining problem-solving capabilities.

It is recommended that you bring a computer to the interview, which is more professional. If you don’t have a computer, you can bring a USB drive or hard drive. I asked you to come for the interview because your work is good. I want to get to know you more deeply and examine your other abilities.

Don't just bring a resume of your work from Boss, as this will make the interviewer feel that you are not prepared or that your work is fake. It is recommended to put in high-quality works that you are satisfied with, and also one or two source files. You can put more works, but the quality must be guaranteed. Don't put in low-quality works, as it will reduce your score.

In this link, I generally examine the following three points:

• Computer folder directory classification - check whether the work is organized clearly;
• Design draft source file layer grouping - examine design habits. This is very important. Students who are not used to layer grouping need to pay attention.
• Personal gallery maintenance – examines the designer’s ability to collect and organize materials.

Usually at the end of an interview, you will often encounter this question: Anything else you want to ask?

The answer is never say that there is nothing left. You should learn to find topics to talk to the interviewer. You can talk about the team situation, career development, etc. It depends on the specific situation at that time. If you have been chatting for a long time and feel that the boss is interested in you, continue chatting and be more active; if you feel that the conversation is not smooth and the boss is making things difficult for you, ask some professional questions.

At this point, the interview is basically over. If the interviewer is interested in you and thinks you are good, a small company will most likely ask you to wait a moment and the HR will come out, and you will have a better chance. If you are asked to wait a moment and there will be a second interview, then change your mood and prepare well for the next interview.

Of course, in most cases, designers need to go back and wait for news. If there is no news after 3 days, they need to take the initiative to call HR back.

If you are unfortunately passed, just summarize: what work you forgot to bring, what questions you didn’t answer, what abilities you forgot to demonstrate, etc., and be prepared for the next time.

Summarize

Back to the question at the beginning, why would I hire designer A from a small company?

Because his resume looked very neat and organized, he was well prepared for the interview, his documents were in good order, his AE animations were quite good, he knew a little bit about coding, his experience was quite broad, and most importantly, his attitude was very good. The feedback from HR was not too critical.

In contrast, the one who impressed me the most was a Xiaomi designer who was responsible for one section of an APP for more than two years. He worked on this section for more than two years, and his actual work ability was a bit narrow. Another one was that he came from a big company and might have a sense of superiority, so his attitude was a bit worse than that of Student A.

Of course, the overall ability of designers in large companies is very strong, which is beyond doubt, but in fact there are also some designers whose ability is not so good...

Finally, we chose Student A. Of course, there were candidates with better abilities than him, but he was rejected due to his attitude, attention to details, etc. The company is looking for people who can get things done and solve design problems for the company, so we must highlight our own value.

Finally, I hope this article can provide practical help to designers who are interviewing or preparing to change jobs. I wish everyone can find a job that satisfies them.