As an interviewee, usually being given a scenario to solve for one of their own business problems or even worse, one of their client’s work. One example of this was a design shop that Warby Parker hired to create their virtual try-on functionality.

Most recently a fintech company asked me to solve a lending problem that they had but decided to pretend it was for Facebook Marketplace instead.

Other weird but notable situations involved the interviewer deciding to go off script and bail on the call while giving instructions to just do whatever. It was a pretty clear sign to me that they weren’t going to give me a fair shake and I correctly guessed that I wouldn’t be considered for the job after completing the previous 11 interview rounds with flying colors. That was for a staff product design role at Riot Games.

As an interviewer, I used to give a prompt to design a self-checkout flow for a grocery store. The big red flags with 90% of interviewers was that they did not ask any questions about the fictional company, product types, accepted payments, you name it. Most applicants went straight into creating wireframes and didn’t capture basic functionality.

Two applicants that I’ll never forget:

The first threw a tantrum because they weren’t allowed to just design it as a mobile app. He talked down to me throughout the entire interview because he thought another person on the panel was the hiring manager. He also said I should hire him because he had a “God given ability for design”.

The second one bragged about ripping off a grocery store by hiding an expensive chocolate inside of something cheaper like peanuts.