Sample Interview Questions

What are your qualifications?

I have the most proficiency with Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. I also have extensively used Slack, Word, Excel, and Trello. I have a bit of experience with After Effects, Canva, and Figma. I enjoy learning and researching so I can grow in whichever way a company needs.

List your top qualities as a Graphic Designer

I am a creative problem-solver who loves to research and continue to grow my skills. I am efficient, quick, and communicate frequently. I have worn many hats throughout my career, partially because I volunteer to help find solutions. My portfolio shows my versatility with the varied projects.

Tell us how your background and experience have prepared you to be effective in an environment that values equity and diversity.

I firmly believe in treating everyone with respect and kindness, regardless of whether or not they are like me. Especially in design projects, different opinions and perspectives typically make the project better and more accessible.

Describe a project you are most proud of and why.

Some of my proudest moments at my last jobs involved taking difficult prompts and coming up with something that fulfilled every request while still maintaining the aesthetics the client wanted. There were so many projects where we were asked to do something we had never done before like mixing acrylic and wood or having a two-sided award that was similar but different. My manager often assigned me the more difficult projects because I would persevere until I found a great solution. A specific project that embodied all of these aspects was when a company wanted an award that could be added to year after year without mounting. I built a 5 piece tetris-style award that formed a square when completed. Each piece had a different mixture of their brand colors. I think recipients would enjoy how interactive the solution is, as well as inspire them to want to complete the entire award.

Describe your experience working and interfacing directly with design clients.

At my most recent job, I typically emailed back and forth with clients about changes in the design or text. Occasionally these conversations would be via phone or even in person. As I move toward remote work, I would expect more video conferences.

Share any experience you have with remote design work and the tools or strategies you found most helpful.

Having a project management tool with deadlines is super helpful to me. That is probably the greatest tool for prioritizing what to do. It also helps with accountability and making sure everything gets done. Apple projects have made it easy to mute personal notifications during work hours as well. We used Slack at my last job and it was an incredible tool for shooting quick questions back and forth with coworkers without being too disruptive. It also helped to keep everyone connected and on good terms. It is recommended to also schedule times to stand and look away from the computer to prevent exhaustion, though I get so focused that this is challenging for me.

Tell me about a time when you made a mistake while at work and how it was resolved.

We often dealt with really long lists of names that we copied and pasted into our Illustrator files. The process was ‘triple-click, cut, triple-click, paste’ for sometimes hundreds of names. We had so many office interruptions that it was easy to cut and forget to paste. Three solutions helped this. 1. Working remotely significantly reduced interruptions. 2. We counted how many names were in the template and compared it to our overall number of names. This helped me so many times to catch whether I had missed one or not. 3. I actually created templates for our reoccurring jobs with threaded text so that we could paste an entire list into the document ONCE. It was a game-changer. A job that once took thirty minutes then took 3.