UX Research Internship Interview Prep Guide

If you’re interested in an internship in UX Research, keep reading! The purpose of this

document is a guide to help you prepare for UX Research interviews.

Preparing for a UX interview

Know your portfolio
1. If you haven’t created a portfolio already, make one. Almost all employers want to see a
portfolio of your work.
2. Every interview will have a portfolio review where they ask you to go over a favorite
project you worked on, or they self select a project for you to talk about.
3. Make sure you know the content of your project and can speak to it in a clear and
concise manner.
4. Plan on discussing a wide range of methods that you know. It is always a good thing to
adapt new methods but make sure you know a good amount, and can defend if asked
why, how and what about your choice of methods in a project. A good guide to polish on
different methods is : Universal methods of design by Bruce Hanington
5. Do not read off your website. Instead be able to speak through it conversationally.
6. Address these key points:
a. General overview of what the project was for, and why you did it.
b. What is the problem you were trying to solve?
c. Approach -- how did you identify the problem? How did you dive deep? What
methods did you use to understand your user and their needs?
d. What were your top 3 key findings? (If the project was NDA, then state that)
e. What was your solution/recommendations?
f. Why did you choose the research approach you did and recommendations?
g. What were challenges you faced, if any?
h. What was your role in the project and who were the main stakeholders?
7. Examples:
a. https://nishamohan.com/
b. www.hrishirao.com

Conduct company specific research before the interview

1. Research your company, visit their website and find out what they value in their
employees, and portray yourself in a way that shows that you align with their core values
2. Read news articles about the company in the last six months, see if they have
announced any new products or if there are reports related to how their product is being
used/not used
3. Read up on the competition - read reviews of the competitors’ products, specifically if
people report those as superior
4. Understand the job description well and emphasize the skill sets they’re looking for in
your resume and while talking to them about your projects
5. Visit glassdoor.com and see if there are questions posted for a UX Research position at
the company you’re looking at from previous interviewees. These can be for full time or
internship -- I’m assuming they’ll be pretty similar.
6. Identify what questions you want answered from the employer. Interviewing is a two way
street -- the better, and more thoughtful questions you have, the more it shows that
you’re genuinely curious in knowing more about the role/company, and makes you stand
out.
 7. Go on linkedin and see if you already know someone who works there.

Practice your stories - behavioral interview questions

1. Interviewing is basically a conversation where you tell the other person stories about
yourself, especially when asked behavioral interview questions.
2. Come up with specific instances in your professional, academic, or personal life that
addresses the question being asked.
3. Good stories are those that involve a struggle - a difficult situation with a co-worker, a
stakeholder, or an interviewee who was tough to get to speak - and how you succeeded
in overcoming that struggle.

How to best answer behavioral interview questions? Below is a great resource that talks about
the STAR framework to answer questions clearly, and concisely:
https://www.thebalance.com/behavioral-job-interview-questions-2059620 (The Balance,
“Behavioral Based Interview Questions”)

During the interview

1. Show enthusiasm! Show excitement and genuine interest during the interview.
2. Even if an interview is not intended to be personal, it in some ways always is, so your
attitude is often used as an indicator of whether people want you as a colleague
3. Don’t forget to ask thoughtful questions at the end of the interview. Some interviewers
are okay with going back and forth regarding questions, but with what I’ve seen,
questions from your end are usually asked for when the interview is winding down.
4. If you don’t already have it, ask for the email or Linkedin of your interviewer - Look for
how you may be connected to the interviewer!

After the interview

1. If you were able to get contact information of your interviewer, make sure to email them
to thank them again for their time. Here’s an example and more specifics on do’s and
don’ts:
https://www.thebalance.com/thank-you-email-after-job-interview-2063958 (The Balance,
“Thank You Email After Interview Example ”)
Some companies will not give you the contact information or the last names of the
individuals who interviewed you, if this is the case DO NOT worry about sending an
email, I personally do not believe it will make or break you

UX Research specific interview questions (based on

experience)
1. Why are you interested in pursuing UX Research?
2. Tell me a little bit about yourself.
3. Walk me through one or two projects in your portfolio.
4. What were some challenges you faced in your project?
5. You’ve used a lot of methods -- do you believe that you needed to use all the methods to
identify the key findings? Which method would you choose out of these if you were short
on time and budget?
6. What is your favorite research method and why?
a. What are the downsides to those methods?
 7. This was asked during my final round of interviews - You are trying to test the user
experience for the shopping cart feature on Amazon.com. Put together a research plan
to carry out this task, and explain what kind of research questions you would think about,
how you would recruit participants, what method(s) you would use, how you would carry
out the research, and provide rationalization for your choices. Take a few minutes to
think about it, and feel free to ask questions along the way to get clarification.
a. I answered this by first thinking of questions along the lines of resource and
budget constraints -- like how much money did we have to spend on research?
How much time did we have to carry out this research and deliver findings?
b. Who is our target customer? Are we interested in customers who use Amazon
frequently, or those who rarely use it? What are some demographic information
regarding users? Are there confidentiality issues with bringing in people who
might not be Amazon employees? (they test confidential products with internal
employees)
c. I ended up choosing a usability test to observe how users interaction and walk
through checking something out, how did 1 Click Ordering impact the user’s
journey?
d. I chose to recruit users who were UMSI Alumni/students since the users could be
anybody, and conduct them remotely because of minimal budget.
e. I was asked to walk through my protocol, what I would tell the user before
beginning the usability test, what technology would I use to conduct and record
the remote usability test.
f. Would I stick to the protocol exactly? How would I interact with the user during
the test?

Common Behavioral Interview Questions:

There are plenty of resources out there that list out common behavioral interview questions.
Here is one that provides the top 10, and gives you an idea of how to answer each:
1. https://www.thebalance.com/top-behavioral-interview-questions-2059618 (The Balance, “Top
Behavioral Interview Questions”)
2. https://www.thebalance.com/behavioral-job-interview-questions-2059620 (The Balance,
“Behavioral Based Interview Questions”)