Succeed in Your Graphic Design Job Interview!

 

 

We can see work of graphic designers everywhere. On the screen of your mobile phone, on the wall of nearby buildings, on the body of your car, or clothes you just wear… People are visual beings and decide rather emotionally than rationally. Therefor, to have an excellent graphic designer in a team is a must for practically every single company.

It is a good job, but not everyone can get it in an interview. An applicant needs to demonstrate different abilities and “sell” his skills and knowledge to the recruiters. Creativity, good understanding of the needs and desires of various people, ability to interpret the business needs and develop a campaign from scratch are just few to mention. On the top of that, every designer should have practical knowledge of Photoshop (or similar software), CAD, and other tools needed for the job. So, how do they test all of this in a job interview?

Practical interview

Like in every other job interview, employer will ask you several personal, behavioral and technical questions. However in this case, a practical part belongs to an interview too.

They may let you to do some work directly in an interview, e.g. to improve a simple design, or give your ideas on certain concepts and layouts. In some cases, recruiters let the applicants to prepare some work before an interview. The same task is given to all the interviewed applicants. Later they can compare the work of all the applicants and decide.

Knowing it, you should for sure prepare your working portfolio prior to the interview. It does not matter if you have worked for clients for ten years, or if you are just a starter and design things only for yourself. In both cases, you should pick your best works and prepare a presentation, either in a form of .PPT, or simply on the paper. Doing so, you may avoid doing practical tasks in an interview. But even if not, such a portfolio shows that you really care for getting the job, that the interview is important for you. Every employer will see it as something positive. So, do not hesitate to do it!

Then, your ability to answer all tough questions and sell your skills in an interview will decide. To learn how to do it, as well as to see multiple brilliant answers to the toughest interview questions, see our Graphic Design Interview Package.  Thank you.

 

What questions do they ask in graphic design interview?

You can expect a mix of behavioral, technical and personal questions. Each part has its meaning. They try to assess your motivation and communication skills with personal questions. Your answers to behavioral questions should uncover your behavior in various work related situations. And technical questions test your ability to do the job, or at least your ability to talk about doing the job . Practical exercises, often the final stage of an interview, will test your ability to really do the job… Let’s have a look at some questions they typically ask:

• Why did you decide for a career of graphic designer?
• What caught your eye on the job description?
• Why do you want to work for us and not for other company? There are many offers for graphic designers…
• What characterize a good designer from your point of view?
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• What do you want to accomplish on this position?
• Where do you see yourself in five years time?
• Describe a situation when you needed to meet a tight deadline with a project.
• Describe a situation when you worked under pressure. How did you handle that?
• Describe a conflict you had with your boss, or with your colleague. What was the situation and how did you solve it?
• What kind of design projects are you most interested in?
• Name all software products you can work with. How long have you been working with it. What do you like about this and that program? Why do you prefer it to other, competing programs?
• What do you consider to be the current trends in the area of graphic design?
• How important do you think communication in graphic design is?
• What is a primary goal of a graphic designer? Is it important that the design is good looking, or what else should a designer consider his first priority?
• Tell me something about your latest design projects. What challenges did you face and how did you handle it?
• What do you consider your most successful design project and why?
• What are the differences between associative hatching and non-associative hatching in CAD?
• If you wanted to select a line and there were other lines on top of it how would you select it in CAD?
• What is the difference between a crossing polygon and a window polygon?
• What is Linking Layer in Photoshop?
• How to modify one image from one layer to another layer?
• Explain about Lasso tools in Photoshop.
• What is the shortcut to zoom back to 100%?
• When are you able to start?
• Do you have any questions?

Practice before your interview

CAD and Photoshop have pretty intuitive user interface. If you have good computer intelligence, you should be able to find what you need in an interview. But I suggest you to work with it for couple of hours prior to the start of your interview. It is much better than studying some theory, because there are way too many possible theoretical questions about it. However, do not forget that an ability to learn and a creative thinking is more important than your actual knowledge of CAD or Photoshop.

If the very best expert on Photoshop does not understand the main goal of his design work, or can not transfer the business needs into final results, his knowledge is worthless. Oppositely, a creative person who knows what to design and why, thinking about the needs of both business and customers, simply a guy who can design things that actually sell themselves, can always learn to work with a software, and after all it’s not the main thing. I believe it is clear to you which one do recruiters prefer to hire… Please, do not forget on it, when preparing for your job interview and check some online interview trainings for graphic designers.

What to say at the end?

Well, even if you are the best designer in your city, still, they may not hire you. Why? Simply because employment relationship isn’t about your design skills only. You must convince the employer about an added value you can bring, you must show him you fit well into company environment. And, you must answer all their questions… It’s not easy. But with our Graphic Design Interview Package, you will be ready for all the interview challenges. Thank you for checking it out here!