The impending end to my days at Carnegie Mellon and the need to find myself a job have left me with little time to develop my recent thoughts into writing. This past week has been particularly exhausting, as I found myself first traveling to New York and then just three days later heading to Palo Alto.

Both trips were good. Though the two organizations and types of work are very different. One largely works on web and mobile applications, while the other plays a more strategic design role, acting as a design SWAT team and design advocates within a largely engineering company. That such different organizations are interesting in me and that I am interested in them perhaps speaks to what I consider to be one of my strengths as a designer: having a design approach to discovering and solving problems that transcends subject matter, allowing me to move fluidly between very different types of projects.

Needless to say, the job search is very time consuming and exhausting, exciting and scary. It is an endeavor full of much ambiguity, but also much promise. Like any good story, there have been successes and failures, and an unpredictable twist. When it is all through, I will share it. For now, I will remain somewhat ambiguous, as my thoughts on the job hunt are fleeting and the field changes by the day.

For one of my classes, I was asked to put a file on the server. But when I saw the possible folder names, none made sense at a destination for my file. “Why is this one called ‘print’?,” I asked. “Why is this one named…why is…,” I continued.

This prompted one of my classmates to say, “Jamin was probably the kid who drove his teachers crazy always asking questions. But why? But why? But why?” This may be true.

“Why?” is one of the most powerful yet simple and telling questions you can ask. As a designer, this question will serve you well. It is a mixture of curiosity and health skepticism. As a former reporter, “why?” was crucial to digger deeper. So too is it with design, whether you’re interviewing or challenging your own judgments and decisions.

Often, however, people take the first answer and do not question further. Later in the day, I was doing directed storytelling with a group. I noticed that when other members of the group were interviewing, they would neglect to probe deeper into the answers given by the interviewee. For example:

Interviewer: “How did that make you feel?”

Interviewee: “It made me uncomfortable.”

The interviewee would then continue, because it seemed the question was answered. “Why?” would have been an excellent and simple follow up. And likely, “why?” could be asked several times to get the interviewee to really consider the meaning of her responses.

Too often we hear an answer and move one. This is definitely true of interviews, but may be true when we reflect on our own designs as well (e.g., why does this improve the experience?). As implied by my classmate’s observation, asking why may seem annoying, but it’s a great way to dig beneath the surface and uncover deeper meaning or, conversely, poor foundation.

On Thursday and Friday of last week, about 50 companies attended the School of Design’s job fair. Friday was the big day, with all interviews taking place then.

Each interview was 30 minutes. Some of my peers had up to 13 interviews scheduled. I had fewer, targeting only companies I might have serious interest in. The six companies I interviewed with were Moment, Siegel + Gale, IDEO, Sonic Rim, SAP, and Cooper.

The day itself was exhausting, and I’m not sure how those with more interviews kept their heads. I found myself struggling for words by the third round.

While it’s a bit maddening to have so many brief interviews crammed into a day, it’s also rather interesting and useful, for you get to see a range of interview styles and learn how different companies view interaction design. Some companies just wanted to see work, and didn’t talk about themselves much. Others didn’t ask to see work at all and spent the interview just getting a sense of my personality and passion. Many companies were excited by the work I showed, but admitted that they mostly worked on software. No products. No services.

Thirty minutes definitely isn’t enough time to show work and also get a sense of personalities and culture, at least not more than at a superficial level. For me, it seemed there was either a focus on one or the other.

Overall, I felt I faired well. Although, if I had to do it over again, I would perhaps put my work together differently, or maybe show more final presentations from projects. However, with each company asking for different elements, it’s hard to know ahead of time what to include.

Now, I follow up and wait, and continue with efforts outside of the job fair. In addition to the companies mentioned, I am interviewing at Adaptive Path, and got my resume in the hands of several Hong Kong design firms through acquaintances from the Hong Kong Design Centre. We’ll see.

At the end of last week, the School of Design held Confluence, a two-day job and internship stress fest.

The madness began two weeks prior, when we could submit our resumes to the companies we were interested in. The companies then selected who they wanted to interview. This was all handled by an online system that was being used for this purpose for the first time. Confusion and frustration ensued.

But in the end, things seemed to mostly work out. I had seven interviews set up for last Friday, beginning at 8:30 a.m. with IDEO and ending at 3:45 with Microsoft. I also met with Google, MAYA Design, Moment, Cooper, and IBM Research.

All the interviews seemed to go well (except with Microsoft—I think my brain was fried by the time I talked to them). Though, it turned out that Moment, Cooper, and IBM Research weren’t actually looking for interns. That was kind of annoying, as I could have lined up other interviews with people who would actually hire me. But it wasn’t all bad, as I learned what those companies were like and got to understand my options as an interaction designer.