Can I get a referral? If you seem like a fit for a role that's currently open, I'll usually refer you. To save us time, please tell me upfront that you're looking for a referral. Even better if you can provide your email, resume, and indicate the specific job.

Are there any resources you'd recommend to get started in product design or adjacent roles? Yes – general design resources, product design portfolios, product design case studies, intro to design, design systems, design engineering. I'm not actively maintaining these, so some of the older links may be broken.

How did you get into product design? After starting university for computer science and business, I went to a hackathon and learned about Figma. I was failing calculus and thought design would be a more suitable career path, so I withdrew from school after one semester. I worked on a lot of product design projects and ended up at art school to explore my personal art practice.

How did you get internships? I did 3 internships while I was a student and cold applied to all of them without referrals. What worked for me was applying to jobs as soon as they came out, two strong case studies on my portfolio, and extra attention to visual design. Everyone has different strengths and experiences, your mileage may vary.

Can you review my product design portfolio? I'm not able to respond to each request individually, but after seeing hundreds of portfolio websites, this is what I personally look for in entry-level work. Keep in mind that product design is broad and multidisciplinary, and roles can differ based on factors such as team structure, company maturity, and product industry. ​

• Visual design. If you're not confident in this, it's better to keep things simple than to overdo it. I'm talking about colours, fonts, illustrations.
• Case studies & storytelling. Don't make up artifacts. Make it make sense. We know and understand not everything is going to fit a perfect process. I just want to get a sense for how you approach problems and opportunities, and your communication skills.
• Website quality. I want to see that you know and care about our web experience. That means performance, accessibility, Lighthouse metrics. I care about hover states, focus states. How long pages and images take to load. Typos. Screen size responsiveness – I prefer using a wide screen display, although I'll sometimes go on mobile out of convenience. And usually, I can still tell the quality of a website by the mobile version. Not to mention that mobile traffic is a majority of web traffic. But now I'm on a tangent.

Do you have any advice for interviewing? When it comes to interviewing, people can also differ in their idea of an ideal candidate. This is what stands out to me from my experience interviewing interns: ​

• Would you enjoy this job? For an entry-level role, your past work doesn't have to be directly related. But I'm trying to understand if you would be a good fit from the way you talk about your projects, what you liked, what you're good at, and what you want to do more of.
• Sharing context. The audience is often hearing about your work for the first time, and we may not be familiar with your industry. It can be hard to follow your presentation if you don't explain well. But you also don't want to spend too much time on this, because we need to get into the designs.
• Attention to detail. I'm disappointed when a presentation feels too high-level. It's essential to highlight at least one design decision that you can talk about in depth. I want to see that you care about craft, quality, and evaluate how that shows up in your work.

What happened to your previous product design portfolios? I'll eventually make them available again, in some form.