In this article, I talk about my experience and then tips on cracking UX roles. Feel free to scroll to ‘Finding the right startups which fit your profile and getting in touch’ if you’d like to skip to the tips.

While evaluating my options after graduation, the startup world seemed ideal for me- I was willing to hustle and work 14 hours a day, to learn. I did have a handful of offers from startups, but I was clear about wanting to be surrounded by people I looked up to — I wanted to work with the best. It was not just a question of culture fit, but an opportunity to learn and work towards growing into a 10x version of myself. 📈

I had one problem, in that I had nothing significant to offer to the team. There was a lot I had to learn to even attempt to join the best teams in the country, because there are hundreds, if not thousands, who wish to join them. My drive to hustle alone would not cut it. (I tried applying on career portals, cold connecting with startup leaders on LinkedIn & Angel, pinging teams who were looking for enthusiastic graduates- nothing quite worked). Upon speaking to people in the ecosystem and introspecting, I learned that I wasn’t interested in sales/traditional marketing roles and didn’t qualify for most of the tech/product roles. I had no proven track record either.

I decided to upskill myself in the same, but wasn’t sure how I could do that. It was a chicken and egg problem- I wanted to work with a tech startup and learn by executing, but I needed to have worked with such a startup in the first place. 🐣

To solve this, I tried a couple of different options. I hit up few product managers who had handled products at startups and were looking to build something of their own. Quite a few of them were looking for hustlers who fit into their culture and constraints. I expected just enough compensation to stay on my on feet; learning was my primary focus. More than a couple of them were happy to have me on their team — I met/spoke to them continuously to find the right fit in terms of a couple of things:

Did I believe in the problem they were looking to solve and in their philosophy? Was my learning given importance to, or was I a resource to complete tasks? How involved would I be in decisions and the entire process itself?

In April 2019, a month before graduating, I started working with a Product Manager, who is currently at Rapido. He was looking to start-up then and we struck a great chord. I shared his love for problem solving, and I could really sense the ownership from his side whenever we discussed my learnings and trajectory. I started off by reading Laura Klein’s ‘Lean UX Startups’ which gave me an idea of how we were going to operate. We worked hard, validated hypotheses through experiments and were highly iterative and lean in nature. Through the next 6 months, I:

• coldly hit up 300+ people (100+ face-to-face; 200+ phone) to validate the problem, solution and understand user psyche. I studied 1,500+ user interview data, derived insights and created personas.

• analyzed 1,000+ reviews on competition apps to rank pain points and understand emotions around the problem and existing solutions.

• created wireframes, and learned to build features aligning with the psyche of different personas. Designed UI for the app & website through multiples cycles of iteration.

• learned SQL to analyze beta user behaviour on Metabase for iterations in Product & UX.

Apart from this, I carried out general startup ops, hiring, making creative assets, and worked closely with two developers (Android and Backend) to better understand the intersections we had.

I worked hard to learn, internalise my learnings and execute. This was especially not easy as in multiple places, pace of execution was crucial and my pace of learning wasn’t quite enough. I had a tough time finding time for myself, while balancing work @ Tring which led to me learning to prioritise.

By the end of 6 months we had built a product with 500+ beta users and had great professional and personal learnings. We didn’t move forward with Tring, since we got investor feedback saying that although we had built an intuitive product, the business model wasn’t scalable.

These learnings wouldn’t have been possible without the mentorship of Karan.

In November, with these learnings, I figured it was time I decided on a role and worked towards charting a path for the same at a great startup team. While building Tring, I solved user problems and built interfaces according to user psyche, but I was never really a designer. It was more a tool for me to solve problems. I loved problem solving and one of my biggest learnings at Tring was this- identifying datapoints and connecting the dots to arrive at a solution. Product Management (PM) seemed like a great fit for my profile and interests, so I started applying for Product Analyst (PA) roles.

Quite confident, I sat through couple of interviews only to be disappointed with the results. This was because, most PA roles were data analytics first roles. I had an understanding of the same but wasn’t fluent at it, and it was one of the things I wanted to learn. Usually PA positions are oriented towards validating hypotheses presented by PMs via analytics and presenting their insights. I knew that I had to either change my route to Product Management or learn core data analytics + tech.

I chose the former. Since I had already designed and solved problems for users through design, I decided to start with a product / UX design role with a lateral move to Product management in my roadmap, as I made progress.

I had an idea of how to solve user problems and design a product from 0–1, and now wanted to learn how to craft experiences at scale. User was an important aspect of Product, and these learnings could lead me towards maturing into a PM.

I wasn’t sure how long it would take, but I was determined to learn data analytics and gain a good understanding of tech.

India’s digital adoption is increasing day by day, and for millions, a phone is the first digital interface they come in touch with — this interested me.

It’s important to think about what you want out of an experience, because you’re optimising for a conducive environment for your growth.

Some important things I wanted from my team were:

How ownership driven and flat is the team? Do I believe in the captain of the ship and the vision? Are there mentors in my team who I can learn from constantly? Is there freedom to experiment, fail and learn? Is there opportunity to grow without many barriers or hierarchy? Is the startup looking to scale aggressively in the near future?

I got in touch with Heads of Product and Design on Instagram, LinkedIn and attended a startup meet (YourStory’s Future of Work) to meet these folks and understand what their expectations from a good UXer were. Upon having honest discussions, I was confident in my abilities and felt ready to sit for UX interviews.

(Thanks a lot Adil (PhonePe) and 👑 Sidharth (Headout) for the discussions and help. Your advice was simple and actionable.)

Through the connects I’d made, openings on Angel, and cold messages on LinkedIn, I started applying around first week of March 2020. This wasn’t exactly the best time to get hired and I was aware of that. So, I applied to a varied set of startups:

• Top startups in the country that were going to grow due to COVID (more digitally driven products in spaces like consumer internet, ed-tech, etc.)

• Top startups that were going to be affected by COVID (more ops driven like mobility, food tech, etc.)

• Tier 2 startups where I had a much better chance of getting in (backup).My classification of tier 2 is based on the extent of tradeoffs I had to make in terms of what I wanted from my team.

Through December to Feb 2020, I sat to study and solidify my understanding of UX. I went through whatever open source library of design/UX knowledge I found, and connected it with my experience at Tring. I made a portfolio project elaborately explaining my work at Tring and I didn’t populate my portfolio with others. I figured that I’d rather do specific assignments given by startups to better display my thought process. Thanks a lot Kanika (Swiggy) for your advice and feedback. You were really helpful 🙏🏻

Most interview processes:

• Introductory call - A general conversation around getting to know the candidate and see if they are worth pursuing. Sometimes, this may be a discussion around your portfolio, but usually is just a vibe check :)

• Design assignment and discussion - For any design assignment, creating just wireframes and mockups doesn’t cut it. *How you arrived at your solution, and why you think this will work has to be explained.*Ensure that you prioritise, plan and estimate timelines for interviews. You usually receive an assignment for each startup you apply to, meaning that you’ll have to plan your applications. Applying to all at the same time means being overloaded with assignments, leading to a half-baked job on all of them. It’s important to understand the context of each assignment, give it due thought and proceed to breakdown and solve it.

Tip 1: It’s okay to ask for your assignment to be given x days later if you’re already working on one.

Tip 2: Upon discussing with the interviewer, iterate on your learnings from the conversation and send a better version of your assignment. Sometimes requested by startups, showing that you iterate based on your learnings carries immense value.

• Assessment of skills, knowledge - UX & design discussions to assess if you know user and design related theories, principles and more (NN group, Laws of UX, Product school, etc. are good open source libraries).

• Calls with Product Managers - This mostly revolves around problem solving, where the PM wants to understand your approach to a problem statement and how you’re breaking it down to find a solution.

Tip 3: Make sure you ask a lot of questions around the problem statement for clarity, make intelligent assumptions, and after each step, reconcile with the PM to see if you’re proceeding in the right direction. If not, ask more questions and pivot.

• Whiteboard exercise with designer (maybe) - Ideally, this is done face-to-face to see first-hand, how you’re thinking through a problem statement and translating the ideas to wireframes and in turn, lo-fi mockups. If this is happening through video, it’s best to have a notepad or Figma file open so you can quickly draw wireframes as you’re discussing the design problem with the interviewer.

• Culture fit - If not integrated with the above calls, HR, the hiring manager or sometimes, the CEO will assess the culture fit over a call. Just be yourself, ask any questions you have and peaceout :)

Note: I’ve seen quite a few people getting frustrated because there are ‘too many rounds’ in an interview process. It’s important to understand that in teams which are people and ownership driven, it’s necessary for both sides to build comfort and confidence in each other- from a skill and culture fit point of view.

During my interviews, I was happy to answer questions and asked as many as needed, for me to build a mental model of what working with the team was going to look like.

After getting in touch with 20+ teams and interviewing with 10, I got 4 offers excluding ones rescinded cause of COVID-19. Of these, I chose Pratilipi since it checked all my boxes. I truly felt that I could learn, loved the culture of the team and thoroughly enjoyed the interview process - it seemed like a great fit. Compensation negotiation wasn’t really a long drawn process for me here because my primary focus was to learn. They rolled out an offer which I felt was fair, and was happy to accept. It’s been 6 months since I joined and when I look back, it feels like time has flown by. I can confidently say that I made the right decision and I’m glad to be driving impact with this set of amazing people :)

Thanks guys, the last 6 months have been lit ❤

Fund and encourage me to write more if you liked this read and share it with folks looking to crack a UX role :)

To read about my 6 months at Pratilipi and how I transitioned to Product from UX, check out: “My 6 months @ Pratilipi: From UX to Product Management”

Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn!

In this article, I talk about my experience and then tips on cracking UX roles. Feel free to scroll to ‘Finding the right startups which fit your profile and getting in touch’ if you’d like to skip to the tips.

While evaluating my options after graduation, the startup world seemed ideal for me- I was willing to hustle and work 14 hours a day, to learn. I did have a handful of offers from startups, but I was clear about wanting to be surrounded by people I looked up to — I wanted to work with the best. It was not just a question of culture fit, but an opportunity to learn and work towards growing into a 10x version of myself. 📈

I had one problem, in that I had nothing significant to offer to the team. There was a lot I had to learn to even attempt to join the best teams in the country, because there are hundreds, if not thousands, who wish to join them. My drive to hustle alone would not cut it. (I tried applying on career portals, cold connecting with startup leaders on LinkedIn & Angel, pinging teams who were looking for enthusiastic graduates- nothing quite worked). Upon speaking to people in the ecosystem and introspecting, I learned that I wasn’t interested in sales/traditional marketing roles and didn’t qualify for most of the tech/product roles. I had no proven track record either.

I decided to upskill myself in the same, but wasn’t sure how I could do that. It was a chicken and egg problem- I wanted to work with a tech startup and learn by executing, but I needed to have worked with such a startup in the first place. 🐣

To solve this, I tried a couple of different options. I hit up few product managers who had handled products at startups and were looking to build something of their own. Quite a few of them were looking for hustlers who fit into their culture and constraints. I expected just enough compensation to stay on my on feet; learning was my primary focus. More than a couple of them were happy to have me on their team — I met/spoke to them continuously to find the right fit in terms of a couple of things:

Did I believe in the problem they were looking to solve and in their philosophy? Was my learning given importance to, or was I a resource to complete tasks? How involved would I be in decisions and the entire process itself?

In April 2019, a month before graduating, I started working with a Product Manager, who is currently at Rapido. He was looking to start-up then and we struck a great chord. I shared his love for problem solving, and I could really sense the ownership from his side whenever we discussed my learnings and trajectory. I started off by reading Laura Klein’s ‘Lean UX Startups’ which gave me an idea of how we were going to operate. We worked hard, validated hypotheses through experiments and were highly iterative and lean in nature. Through the next 6 months, I:

• coldly hit up 300+ people (100+ face-to-face; 200+ phone) to validate the problem, solution and understand user psyche. I studied 1,500+ user interview data, derived insights and created personas.

• analyzed 1,000+ reviews on competition apps to rank pain points and understand emotions around the problem and existing solutions.

• created wireframes, and learned to build features aligning with the psyche of different personas. Designed UI for the app & website through multiples cycles of iteration.

• learned SQL to analyze beta user behaviour on Metabase for iterations in Product & UX.

Apart from this, I carried out general startup ops, hiring, making creative assets, and worked closely with two developers (Android and Backend) to better understand the intersections we had.

I worked hard to learn, internalise my learnings and execute. This was especially not easy as in multiple places, pace of execution was crucial and my pace of learning wasn’t quite enough. I had a tough time finding time for myself, while balancing work @ Tring which led to me learning to prioritise.

By the end of 6 months we had built a product with 500+ beta users and had great professional and personal learnings. We didn’t move forward with Tring, since we got investor feedback saying that although we had built an intuitive product, the business model wasn’t scalable.

These learnings wouldn’t have been possible without the mentorship of Karan.

In November, with these learnings, I figured it was time I decided on a role and worked towards charting a path for the same at a great startup team. While building Tring, I solved user problems and built interfaces according to user psyche, but I was never really a designer. It was more a tool for me to solve problems. I loved problem solving and one of my biggest learnings at Tring was this- identifying datapoints and connecting the dots to arrive at a solution. Product Management (PM) seemed like a great fit for my profile and interests, so I started applying for Product Analyst (PA) roles.

Quite confident, I sat through couple of interviews only to be disappointed with the results. This was because, most PA roles were data analytics first roles. I had an understanding of the same but wasn’t fluent at it, and it was one of the things I wanted to learn. Usually PA positions are oriented towards validating hypotheses presented by PMs via analytics and presenting their insights. I knew that I had to either change my route to Product Management or learn core data analytics + tech.

I chose the former. Since I had already designed and solved problems for users through design, I decided to start with a product / UX design role with a lateral move to Product management in my roadmap, as I made progress.

I had an idea of how to solve user problems and design a product from 0–1, and now wanted to learn how to craft experiences at scale. User was an important aspect of Product, and these learnings could lead me towards maturing into a PM.

I wasn’t sure how long it would take, but I was determined to learn data analytics and gain a good understanding of tech.

India’s digital adoption is increasing day by day, and for millions, a phone is the first digital interface they come in touch with — this interested me.

It’s important to think about what you want out of an experience, because you’re optimising for a conducive environment for your growth.

Some important things I wanted from my team were:

How ownership driven and flat is the team? Do I believe in the captain of the ship and the vision? Are there mentors in my team who I can learn from constantly? Is there freedom to experiment, fail and learn? Is there opportunity to grow without many barriers or hierarchy? Is the startup looking to scale aggressively in the near future?

I got in touch with Heads of Product and Design on Instagram, LinkedIn and attended a startup meet (YourStory’s Future of Work) to meet these folks and understand what their expectations from a good UXer were. Upon having honest discussions, I was confident in my abilities and felt ready to sit for UX interviews.

(Thanks a lot Adil (PhonePe) and 👑 Sidharth (Headout) for the discussions and help. Your advice was simple and actionable.)

Through the connects I’d made, openings on Angel, and cold messages on LinkedIn, I started applying around first week of March 2020. This wasn’t exactly the best time to get hired and I was aware of that. So, I applied to a varied set of startups:

• Top startups in the country that were going to grow due to COVID (more digitally driven products in spaces like consumer internet, ed-tech, etc.)

• Top startups that were going to be affected by COVID (more ops driven like mobility, food tech, etc.)

• Tier 2 startups where I had a much better chance of getting in (backup).My classification of tier 2 is based on the extent of tradeoffs I had to make in terms of what I wanted from my team.

Through December to Feb 2020, I sat to study and solidify my understanding of UX. I went through whatever open source library of design/UX knowledge I found, and connected it with my experience at Tring. I made a portfolio project elaborately explaining my work at Tring and I didn’t populate my portfolio with others. I figured that I’d rather do specific assignments given by startups to better display my thought process. Thanks a lot Kanika (Swiggy) for your advice and feedback. You were really helpful 🙏🏻

Most interview processes:

• Introductory call - A general conversation around getting to know the candidate and see if they are worth pursuing. Sometimes, this may be a discussion around your portfolio, but usually is just a vibe check :)

• Design assignment and discussion - For any design assignment, creating just wireframes and mockups doesn’t cut it. *How you arrived at your solution, and why you think this will work has to be explained.*Ensure that you prioritise, plan and estimate timelines for interviews. You usually receive an assignment for each startup you apply to, meaning that you’ll have to plan your applications. Applying to all at the same time means being overloaded with assignments, leading to a half-baked job on all of them. It’s important to understand the context of each assignment, give it due thought and proceed to breakdown and solve it.

Tip 1: It’s okay to ask for your assignment to be given x days later if you’re already working on one.

Tip 2: Upon discussing with the interviewer, iterate on your learnings from the conversation and send a better version of your assignment. Sometimes requested by startups, showing that you iterate based on your learnings carries immense value.

• Assessment of skills, knowledge - UX & design discussions to assess if you know user and design related theories, principles and more (NN group, Laws of UX, Product school, etc. are good open source libraries).

• Calls with Product Managers - This mostly revolves around problem solving, where the PM wants to understand your approach to a problem statement and how you’re breaking it down to find a solution.

Tip 3: Make sure you ask a lot of questions around the problem statement for clarity, make intelligent assumptions, and after each step, reconcile with the PM to see if you’re proceeding in the right direction. If not, ask more questions and pivot.

• Whiteboard exercise with designer (maybe) - Ideally, this is done face-to-face to see first-hand, how you’re thinking through a problem statement and translating the ideas to wireframes and in turn, lo-fi mockups. If this is happening through video, it’s best to have a notepad or Figma file open so you can quickly draw wireframes as you’re discussing the design problem with the interviewer.

• Culture fit - If not integrated with the above calls, HR, the hiring manager or sometimes, the CEO will assess the culture fit over a call. Just be yourself, ask any questions you have and peaceout :)

Note: I’ve seen quite a few people getting frustrated because there are ‘too many rounds’ in an interview process. It’s important to understand that in teams which are people and ownership driven, it’s necessary for both sides to build comfort and confidence in each other- from a skill and culture fit point of view.

During my interviews, I was happy to answer questions and asked as many as needed, for me to build a mental model of what working with the team was going to look like.

After getting in touch with 20+ teams and interviewing with 10, I got 4 offers excluding ones rescinded cause of COVID-19. Of these, I chose Pratilipi since it checked all my boxes. I truly felt that I could learn, loved the culture of the team and thoroughly enjoyed the interview process - it seemed like a great fit. Compensation negotiation wasn’t really a long drawn process for me here because my primary focus was to learn. They rolled out an offer which I felt was fair, and was happy to accept. It’s been 6 months since I joined and when I look back, it feels like time has flown by. I can confidently say that I made the right decision and I’m glad to be driving impact with this set of amazing people :)

Thanks guys, the last 6 months have been lit ❤

Fund and encourage me to write more if you liked this read and share it with folks looking to crack a UX role :)

To read about my 6 months at Pratilipi and how I transitioned to Product from UX, check out: “My 6 months @ Pratilipi: From UX to Product Management”

Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn!