Back in the day I used to think about what interviewing and working for a design job would be like. I would always picture a real laid back agency with bean bag chairs (I don’t know why I always pictured bean bag chairs…), a wide open studio with lots of Macs and expensive equipment. As I found out though, this is definitely not the case. Yes, there are jeans and expensive things, but there are also four-hour interviews and tests you have to complete before even being considered.

I would always picture a laid back agency with bean bag chairs, a wide open studio with Macs and expensive equipment. get to meet with some of the top agencies around the area.

I started my job search with this lovely image still in mind, thinking that all I needed was a good portfolio and a resume and all would be well. I put my site out there, applied to a lot of different places, and sure enough landed a few interviews.

My first interview was about a half hour, then to my surprise had an interview with a second person right afterwards. By the end of the day I had long chats with about seven employees total. I was there for nearly four hours before all was said and done. The last person I spoke with gave me what she called a “design test”. I was given the task to create several online advertising campaigns and one online survey.

After submitting my work, it was critiqued in a conference call. After that, I had another day of interviews with the company owners. As it turned out, after all that I did not get a job offer. This didn’t really get me down though. It was only the first place I applied to.

My most recent interview was even more intense than that first place. Like last time, I had a long interview with many different people. At the end I was given a test again, but here it was a bit different.

The company is planning on designing applications for the iPhone (awesome!), so they were looking for someone who could work in 3d or 2d. I have experience with both and I am learning to develop for the iPhone, so I offered to work on both tests. I spent about thirty or so hours on them total.

Things went extremely well when I presented my work and had it critiqued. I got along very well with these guys. It was like I was made for this place. They liked my 2d design so much they said they wanted to use it for the final product. My recruiter told me the job was “in the bag” on the phone as I was leaving. I was psyched.

Things went extremely well when I presented my work and had it critiqued. I got along very well with these guys. It was like I was made for this place.

A week went by and my recruiter reluctantly told me I was not offered this position. Apparently this was because they thought it would take too long to get me up to speed with what they were doing. I’m still not sure what that meant

At any rate, I’m a pretty optimistic guy. I don’t look at this as anything to dwell on. The more you work for something, the more you’ll appreciate it when you get it.

My advice to anyone going through this, or who will be going through this is simple. First of all I am not exaggerating at all. If you want to work as a designer chances are you will have to do everything I talked about here if not more. I find that the best way to go about doing it is to look at these “tests” as a way to polish up your portfolio and improve your interviewing skills because chances are you will go through dozens of these things before you actually land that job.