Module 3 Kristen Byers Interview Questions and Answers Introduction: -works for Columbia University -web designer but also does print stuff -posters -online RSVPs -day in the life depends on what s going on and what s coming up -works from home -Washington DC used to live in NY -portfolio needs a refresher, there s stuff she can t put in there, is useful for interviews, people look at it before interviews even if you don t give them the link Questions: Q: Looking at your two websites for Applied Fitness Solutions (AFS) and Fortin and Associates, most of the information is streamlined on a single page for AFS with little information in the context menus at the top. However, Fortin and Associates has most of the information in the top context menus with less information on the page. What influenced the different design decisions for the tw0 websites? A: Did these as a subcontractor, freelance. The Information architecture was supplied for her, clients often have a lot ideas they want. This particular client didn t want to listen to her advice. Q: While you were at MSU, what would you have done differently? A: She took a lot of great classes, wishes she found PW sooner because she started in premed. She wishes she was more prepared for interviews, nailing your first job is really difficult. GO to mock interviews, don t avoid them, it s great practice in a low pressure setting. Portfolio can serve as a pre-interview.
Q: Are you where you are at because of PW? How has PW served your professional needs? A: PW teaches you to articulate what you do and what you re good at. The PW alumni network is awesome. You can find them anywhere (she s lived in three places across the country and they re always around). She enjoyed the variety of coursework she did at MSU in PW and in specializations outside the major. She wished she could ve studied InDesign more because she uses it every day and only had a basic understanding of it before graduation. However, she was set up for success because she s proficient in Photoshop and Illustrator (thanks to PW) which made Indesign easier to learn. Q: In interviews, what did the businesses respond to the most in your portfolio? A: Interviewers will ask specific questions about certain projects on her portfolio, what her involvement was in certain projects, she is often asked what her favorite project was, so only put your favorite works on your portfolio that you can be proud of and back up. The portfolio is the basis for whether or not she secures the interview. Clients will choose you based on your style. Q: What did you like learning the most in the program? Was it the most useful professionally? A: Being able to back up her design decisions with confidence is the most useful thing she learned professionally we should do this because xyz, being able to argue your ideas in an articulate and polite fashion. Memos are helpful for this, she does it every day. Wasn t her favorite thing to learn but she does it allll the time. She enjoyed visual rhetoric and learning the CRAP principles. Q: How did you establish business connections and get your foot in the door with companies? A: Getting the initial foot in the door is the hardest. Major description is vague, so experience helps, people will see your work and be less hesitant to hire you. You have to display your skills. She interned at Purdue which gained some connections. Q: What track did you do? Does it matter? A: She dual specialized, started with editing and publishing and added technical writing. Taking classes in every track is helpful. Interviewers don t ask about your specialization, it s up to you to sell it if it matters. Define PW and sell it to interviewers. Q: What was the hardest step in getting into the career you have now?
A: Besides interviews, GETTING the interviews is hard. She moved around quite a bit and it s hard to get people to respond if you don t have a local address. Tailoring you resume for every different job you re applying to is helpful write a huge one and then cut things out for certain companies if they won t care about it. Q: How long did it take you to get where you are? A: Her career path hasn t been a straight line: she interned at Purdue, then moved to California, moved to NYC and tried to get back into higher education but couldn t get in, worked for a small creative agency which she disliked, worked for the city and didn t like THAT, and she eventually jumped to work for Columbia. It s been a winding road; she likes higher ed, working for a specific department (but not always). She graduated in 2008. Q: What else would you like to accomplish in your career? A: Her natural next step is to be in charge of people, but she isn t sure if she likes that; she likes to do the work. She was considering going back to school to get a degree in XA stuff, but it could be limiting because she is so involved in print work too. PW does not normally make people think of computer stuff, but now that she has experience and work to prove she knows what she s doing she s fine. She does a lot of freelance work, she hopes to do that one day because it would be awesome choosing your own client and being your own boss. Q: On your portfolio you normally use an informal tone, why? Has it affected you professionally? (For some reason here in the transcription, I switched to writing responses in first person. I m not sure why I did this. Sorry if it s confusing.) A: My portfolio has changed a lot since I first made it. I ve revised the text a lot. My intro is informal because if people don t like that kind of intro, I don t want to work for them. As a new grad you can t be as picky, a neutral tone is probably better. But after working for the government (it was stuffy!) I don t want to do that again. I changed it much later. I want to work with people like me. There are bad jobs out there. Q: Is it hard not getting calls back for interviews? Does it ever feel like you ve chosen the wrong path with your major? Or the jobs weren t what you wanted? A: I graduated in 2008 and in the fall of 2008 is when the recession began so it was super frustrating. A lot of my friends had a harder time than me because they had less versatile degrees and couldn t sell themselves as well. Don t get frustrated, keep applying for jobs that interest you, do practice interviews, I have my husband interview me and act like a jerk so it
helps put me in the right frame of mind. It gets easier once you get some experience in your resume. Especially if you re really suited for the job you re applying for. Alexandra White Interview Questions and Answers Introduction: -a web developer in NY -graduated in 2011 and was sure she would be a social media manager -applied to 50 jobs and got 1 -started as a digital marking manager for a small nonprofit, did social media and also built their website -recommends advanced web authoring -now does website building full time, gave talk at Codecademy Questions: Q: On the website you designed for the Lee Anav Chung White & Kim firm, the locations part of the site utilizes Google Maps in between each address. When I scrolled with my two-in-one, the maps would zoom in and out. Did you intend for this design choice? What were your thoughts as you designed it? A: That s not intentional; I m still working on making that more functional. It works better on mobile, hopefully one day I can replace it on the computer with just an image. Q: I noticed the use of your blog on your portfolio - any strategic reason to connect the personal with the professional? A: I update once every few months I ll write a lot and then leave it for six months. I think what s important is selling ME, and I want to work for someone who values me and the work I do outside of work. I m stage managing a show tonight, and when I work somewhere I want them to know things like that about me. We re all professional and personal, so integrating them makes sense.
Q: How did you go through the process of choosing fonts, images, layout - how did you make it your site? A: This is the fifth version of this portfolio. I originally built it in 2011 before graduating; I ve redesigned it multiple times as I ve gotten better. I wanted to make this final version fun, but simple and clean to navigate. I used to have a separate home page, but now I decided to focus on the portfolio because that s what people are there for. Also I happen to like pink. Q: Do you keep certain things on/off your resume depending on the medium (print/digital)? A: I have a giant master resume, which has EVERYTHING, all my experience and all my skills. It s a document on my computer and I edit based on the job application I m filling out. I position myself as someone those people want to work with. My online version doesn t have my address on it. There s more on the online resume than on print resumes, like my writing center experience. People don t want to read a super long resume, one page is good, and as someone who s hired people I know that. Q: Your opening page and portfolio are on the same page - what inspired you to design your portfolio that way? A: I got rid of the language of home, I consider the portfolio the home page. When I m applying for jobs, I want to give them as little work as possible. The easier it is for them the better. Q: Why is your design structure the same for all of the pages except your portfolio? A: Good question, I repeat the mantra because that s who I am and that s what I m trying to present. I want you to know that all the time. If you re on an inner page you ve already navigated away from the portfolio so I didn t see a reason to link it on other pages if you want to go back, you can. Q: Are you where you are at because of PW? How has PW served your professional needs? How much extra did you have to do outside of web authoring classes? A: PW is a powerful asset in that when you re talking about who you are, like your skills and stuff, you re very unique. You have more than others have. A lot of schools don t have PW. We come with hard, sound skills, unlike English majors. Being able to talk about PW and those skills was crucial in interviews. And you can position it to whatever job you re applying for, which helps. I loved PW so much, it changed everything for me. Outside of the web authoring classes practice helps; rebuilding my portfolio, taking Codecademy classes, picking up freelance gigs, hackathons, etc.
Q: How did you establish business connections and get your foot in the door with companies? A: Networking is 90% of getting a job. The way I got my first job was that I happened to have been in an employer s annual report ten years earlier. I didn t even remember that, but they were like, oh you have stock in our company, and hired me. Other jobs, connect with someone, talk with someone, buy someone coffee and get to know them. Q: In interviews, what did the businesses respond to the most in your portfolio? A: Two things. One, everyone comments on how small my portfolio is. I have a lot of projects but I don t feature all of them I just want to feature projects that I m proud of and can talk a lot about. I worked for a small startup called Swagger NY and when I started for them they had a little website and 1,000 FB fans and after I came through they had 1.5 million fans, so it s interesting and I can talk about the experience and living in NY and the work I did. It opened doors because people are curious about it. People ask about internships more than my portfolio pieces. Q: What else would you like to accomplish in your career? A: Everything! This year my goal is to become more of a speaker, I ve done two talks. I wanna be invited to conferences as an expert I don t want to run my own business; I want to help other businesses be the best they can possibly be. I want to work for a company that cares, about users and about what their presence looks like. Q: How did you decide to use grids (or squares) to present your work? Do you think that using one-page scrolling website is a good idea for personal portfolio website? A: I use the squares because they re really easy to make it look the same across desktops, tablets, phones, whatever. It looks clean and organized. As far as scrolling, I think those kind of websites are great, Matt Bush (an alumni) also has a one page scroll like that. If you have enough content but not enough for multiple pages than one page might work great for you. Q: Casey asks Alexandra to talk about the importance of testing. A: The first couple times around I did no testing I just needed someone to hire me! But as I ve become a web professional I ve realized that testing is important. All browsers are different. Something that looks really cool to me might not give off the same impression to an employer. This time I built a mock-up, which I never did before. Always plan!! I sent out these Photoshop mock ups to some friends and asked how they would navigate the site, if anything was jarring,
etc. I got some feedback, built the website, and sent it around for notes. I got some good questions. You wouldn t turn in a paper without proofreading it, so you have to test your website for bugs so that people can actually use it. My Response A lot of what Kristen and Alexandra said in their interviews was extremely helpful, especially for creating portfolios. For example, I liked Kristen s explanation for why her portfolio employs an informal tone. New graduates are so desperate for jobs sometimes (as I m sure I will be) that they can forget there is such a thing as a bad job, and it s okay to present yourself in a way that attracts employers you would enjoy working for. Kristen also gave great advice concerning preparation for getting jobs; like going to mock interviews and pushing yourself to practice before the real deal. I also appreciated what she said about writing memos about how she hated writing them in class, but they turned out to be one of the most useful things she learned how to do and now she must back up her decisions every day. I myself dislike memos, so it s nice to know I m writing them for a reason and that being able to write them is an important skill. Alexandra s interview was incredibly helpful when it came to considering choices for my future portfolio. I really like the grid design that she employs, and her reasoning behind choosing said design made a lot of sense to me. I also found her answers about keeping her portfolio small to be helpful; like when she spoke about keeping certain projects on the portfolio that she loves and can talk about and sell herself with. It s important to impress interviewers, so if they ask about something on my portfolio that I don t have much to say about, it could be pretty bad. Now I know there s nothing wrong with picking and choosing which projects to show off. I m really glad we did these interviews because now I feel a little more prepared for what lies ahead, especially in creating my portfolio.