New York Times Product Designer Interview Questions
& Process

It was a 5-stage process: first a recruiter screen, then a chat with the hiring director, followed by a portfolio presentation, then an engineering interview, and finally a product interview. Everyone I met was really nice and had good things to say about working at NYT. The recruiter was super pleasant, knew their stuff, and was thorough. I ended up getting rejected after the third round, which was the presentation with about 4 senior designers and the hiring manager. They were nice but totally ignored me during my presentation, multi-tasking while I was talking and didn't ask any questions about what I presented, which was pretty weird.

So the first interview was with a recruiter, just to get to know me, and they asked me about myself, why I chose the New York Times, and if I was good at working alone, and then they told me which team was interested in me. After I asked some questions, a week later I got an email for a second interview with two senior product designers. They sent an email beforehand explaining the interview format: I'd have to present one of my projects for 10 minutes, and then we'd have 20 minutes for questions and conversation. I presented a project for about 12 minutes. Although they mentioned in the email they might ask questions during my presentation, they waited until the end to ask a couple of questions. They seemed pleased with my presentation. Then, we went into behavioral questions where they talked about their team's projects and asked me questions about teamwork, collaboration, and handling conflict. We were running out of time, but one of the designers asked one last question that seemed to come to him on the spot. Three weeks after that, the recruiter who first contacted me reached out with an offer.

The interview process started out great. The recruiter was knowledgeable and responsive, and I really enjoyed my interviews with the team. I got nothing but positive feedback, and I had a good feeling from the process. There was a screening call with the recruiter, conversation with the hiring manager, a panel portfolio review, interview with Engineering, and interview with Product. After 2.5 months and finishing the interview process, the recruiter went radio silent, despite my emails checking in and asking for an update. Ultimately, I was ghosted after the final interview. A couple weeks later, I noticed the same exact job description re-posted on LinkedIn.