About this episode

Margo Stern discusses how to effectively navigate design interviews for both candidates and hiring managers.

Do you enjoy the podcast? Please leave a review! 👉 Buy Margo's book, "Good Job", at her website 👉 Our new course, Advanced UX Content for Product , is out! Use PODCAST20 to get 20% off. 👉 Sign up to our UX writing newsletters How to ace your design interview Interviews are horrible. No one likes them. But does it have to be that way? Margo Stern's new book, Good Job, takes on design interviews - both for candidates and for the people creating the interview process. She goes into great detail about how to actually ace a design interview, and for hiring managers, how to design an interview process that treats people like human beings. We delve into all sorts of great discussions about interviews. How to ace them, what they get wrong, and what companies need to do to make the interview process better for designers. Enjoy! What we talked about: ✅ Why interviewing is a separate skill from doing the job ✅ How candidates can prepare through self‑reflection, rehearsal, and storytelling ✅ Why the STAR method works (and why most people use it badly) ✅ The real reason case studies fall flat and how to make yours a story, not a status report ✅ How to research a company without crossing…

People in this episode

Host: Patrick Stafford

Guest: Margo Stern

Topics covered

• design interviews
• candidate preparation
• interview process
• hiring managers
• self-reflection
• storytelling

Keywords

• design interview
• candidate preparation
• STAR method
• case studies
• interview process

Sponsors

Advanced UX Content for Product

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: UX writing newsletters

Books & works: Good Job

More episodes of Writers of Silicon Valley

• BEST OF: How content designers need to change, with Chelsea Larsson · June 24, 2026 · 57 min
• Content design's identity crisis (Oleksii Tkachenko) · May 13, 2026 · 54 min
• The poet inside AI (Adedayo Agarau) · March 4, 2026 · 1h 2m
• Why wearable tech will change content design (Carly Gray) · January 27, 2026 · 53 min
• EPISODE 50! Content design for AI agents (Christopher Greer) · January 8, 2026 · 50 min
• Best of 2025: 5 pieces of content design wisdom · December 15, 2025 · 24 min

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Writers of Silicon Valley podcast page.