We’re recruiting at SPARCK, and we want to get the best from each person we interview. Here are a few ways you can prepare.
We’re more interested in how you’ve done things in real life, than in the theoretical.
If this approach is new to you, you might find the STAR technique helpful. STAR stands for situation, task, action, result.
When answering an interview question, choose a real example that shows how you have managed a similar situation in the past.
Explain the situation to the interviewer so they understand the context.
Then describe your role in that situation, and what action you took. Finally, describe the result.
Our interviews are not a box-ticking exercise, nor are we looking for someone who is just like us.
We want you to challenge us, surprise us, and add something new to our culture.
We do want to see evidence of technical knowledge, depending on your practice (content design, research, service design, product design).
But we also want to know that you have the skill and creativity to invent new rules in order to solve a design problem.
We are interested in what excites you about design, where you’d like to take your career, who you want to learn from and what you want to teach.
We’re all complex people with different responsibilities and histories. We’re not concerned about gaps in your CV or key words in your past job titles. Instead, tell us how you’ve taken a human-centred approach to your professional challenges.
We’d love to hear about your interests outside of work, whether it’s an adjacent career, a design project, or a book or TV series you’re engrossed in.
We’re all designers here, and we know that mistakes are one of the most important ways we learn.
We want to hear about a thing that went wrong. And, crucially, how you would do it differently.
We’ll tell you about our mistakes too. We love telling those stories.
We want to know why you’ve chosen SPARCK. Is it our values, or are you specifically interested in consultancy?
Maybe it’s because you follow a SPARCKie’s work or like our company structure.
You don’t have to memorise our website, but we want to see that you’ve chosen us for a reason.
We’d also like to know about your industry knowledge.
Tell us which design books or articles you’ve read lately, and what you thought about them.
Or, which conversations you find interesting in design communities. That could be a Twitter thread, an in-person chat or a Medium blog.
We know that you’re interviewing us too.
We want to answer your questions, especially if they’re challenging or unexpected.
We mean that sincerely.
We don’t mind if your delivery is imperfect or if you think of a better example later. Tell us anyway.
We’ll do our best to make the interview space safe, comfortable and inspiring.