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How to Get Hired in Conversation Design Part 3

3 more conversation designers share their story

elaineinthebay
Women in Voice

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A group of professionals sit around a table in an avid discussion. On top of the image, the text reads, “How to get hired in conversation design, part 3.”

This is part 3 of a 3 part blog series! Visit part 1 here, part 2 here.

Backstreet’s back. That’s right, part 3 of the “How to Get Hired” series is back with 3 more conversation designers. In part 1 of the series, I included designers who had been in their role, at the time of interview, for 1 year or less. In part 2, I included both beginning and senior designers. In this segment, I’ve continued the pattern of gathering people with different backgrounds and varied levels of experience in the field.

As always, I’ve been incredibly lucky to meet and talk to these amazing designers. It’s been through these interviews that I’ve been able to put stories to faces to names and create the connections that I cherish deeply. I’m so happy to work in this field with so many talented and generous people! For anyone starting out in the field, please know your questions don’t have to go unanswered. There’s plenty of people willing to help you get started in this journey of a career we all love. And with that, let’s meet the designers of part 3.

3 more CxDs share their story

Shraddha Singh | LinkedIn

Nathan Bishop | LinkedIn

Angela Kelly | LinkedIn

What is your current job title and company?

Shraddha: I am a Senior UX and Conversation Designer at Walmart Global Tech.

Nathan (Nate): I am a senior conversational AI specialist at Discover Financial Services.

Angela: I am an AI Conversation Designer at Disney Streaming.

What does your career journey look like?

Shraddha: After completing my post-graduation in Industrial Design from MITID in Pune, India, I joined IBM (India) in 2016 as a UX Designer and worked there for about 4 years. I then moved to the US on a dependent visa in 2021. While waiting for my work permit, I wanted to learn new skills and expand my design capabilities. That’s when I did an online course, Voice User Interface Design, from CareerFoundry, and I haven’t looked back since!

Nate: My original idea going in was to be a photojournalist. But, I quickly realized that photojournalism is really on its way out. The only people who do it full-time work at places like The New York Times or National Geographic. So I shifted my focus to find something where I could couple my love for technology with writing. Throughout school, I worked at the IT department and later worked at the Apple store in Boston and it made me develop a strong appreciation for tech companies and things like content marketing.

After graduation, I connected with a few people at Drift when they were hiring AI conversation designers for a relatively new product they had acquired. The role required a lot of learning from the ground up so they were looking for someone who was willing to do that and lead with passion, as well as be passionate about writing and technology. The first time I interviewed I didn’t do quite enough research on the role to understand it, so I didn’t get the shot, but I persevered and kept talking to the people that worked there. Six months later I interviewed again, got the job, and performed very well — which was surprising to me, honestly. I was pretty much owning these high dollar value client relationships and writing and training the AI bots through self-learning and experience alone. It gave me a lot of confidence knowing that I could do all that. Ultimately, I started looking for other roles outside of Drift to seek better compensation and that’s how I found the role at Discover.

Angela: Before I landed in the Conversation AI world in 2017, I was a grant writer focused on raising funds for general operating expenses and programming initiatives for some great organizations like KQED, the PBS Foundation, and DataArts. I became curious about UX Design and decided to take a bootcamp course in San Francisco. Around this time I felt it was worth the risk to quit my job, so I took on a few tech contract gigs while I explored what a new career path could look — I attended meetups, networked, became familiar with tools, worked on my portfolio, and read everything under the sun about UX. A few months later I set my sights on junior design roles and my friend (who studied computational linguistics) suggested I apply for an open VUI Designer role at [24]7.ai. I didn’t know much about voice tech or NLU then, but the company was hiring folks from all different career backgrounds, including educators, writers, linguists, etc. so I went all in and read anything I could get my hands on, starting with the book on Conversation Design: Designing Voice User Interfaces by Cathy Pearl. From there it was on-the-job learning, attending conferences and webinars, and building virtual assistants in my freetime using DialogFlow and Bot Society (RIP).

How did you find your current job?

Shraddha: Through Elaine Anzaldo (the author), haha! Apart from reading, learning, and practicing conversation design, networking played an important role in finding my current job. I attended every virtual conversation design event I could. That’s how I met Elaine, Hillary, Nate, and other amazing conversation designers. It was Elaine’s referral at Walmart that got me talking with the team that was looking for a designer with both Conversation and UX design skills! Though newer and smaller than most other design communities, the conversation design community has given me more than I could ask for!

Nate: I’ve found the best success in finding roles by communicating directly with hiring managers. In this case, actually, I didn’t even know Discover was hiring for Conversational AI. I don’t think the roles had been posted yet. The hiring manager reached out to me on LinkedIn, which was really cool. She was like, “Hey, I’m hiring for two conversation design roles. I would love to interview you.” and I was like, “This is awesome!” We had a phone screen and a typical technical exercise. The interview process was actually really great because we would do like a 30-minute interview and then the people would just stay on the call with me talking about things like Animal Crossing or my favorite things to do in Minecraft. So I knew these are the type of people I want to work with.

Angela: I found the job posting on both ConversationDesignerJobs.com and LinkedIn 🙂

What was the interview process like for your role?

Shraddha: It was very similar to any UX/Product Design role. For me, it was:

  • Recruiter Call
  • Intro call with the hiring manager
  • Portfolio round
  • Whiteboard round
  • 1:1 with the lead engineer

Nate: Initially, there was the phone screen, an intro chat with the hiring manager, and an official 30-minute call with the manager. After that, she sent over an Excel doc with an exercise like “how would you create intents” as well as a flow design question. Once I sent that over, it was a marathon of interviews with a developer from one of the internal tools, 2 product owners, and then someone from the digital customer experience team. We mainly talked about the exercise I had completed.

Angela: This particular interview was very straightforward and transparent — it started with an initial screening call with HR → then I spoke with the hiring manager → then a final round with 2 Product Managers and a few other folks where I did a walkthrough of a fun design exercise I was assigned. Both HR and the hiring manager (my now awesome manager) made time to meet outside of those rounds too, when I had follow up questions.

In the past I’ve felt either rushed or left in the dark during quite a few grueling interview processes, not fun. An interview process that has drags on with long gaps in communication, 43 interviews, and multiple onsites is a 🚩

Could you give us an idea what jobs were offering as compensation?

Shraddha: The compensation is comparable to a UX/Product designer for most mid-size companies or large corporations. With 4 years of relevant design experience, the compensation can be anything ranging from $120,000 — $250,000 USD.

Nate: I found that a lot of contract roles offered anywhere from $40 to $70 an hour USD. Specifically, there was a role from TEKsystems that listed a job at $60 an hour that included using Google’s Dialogflow. I also got a verbal offer for a design position (not a senior level role) where the base salary was going to be $110,000 with a 5% bonus. I would say the most valuable resource was asking people directly like, “Hey, how much money do you make?” because I really needed to know to make sure I wasn’t getting taken advantage of. From that, I learned people at Salesforce are making $200,000 a year or contractors at Home Depot are making like $80/hr. Also, I was extremely lucky to get advice from someone throughout my interview process at different financial institution, she told me, “I make 170,000 a year right now and you’re interviewing for a level below me, but you’re in a higher cost of living area, so make sure to negotiate wherever you interview.” There’s even a little bit more data on levels.fyi, but you see there’s people making like $300k a year as total compensation, and on the other end, there’s people making like $65k total comp. But I guess the 300 number is motivating and it signals that there’s a lot of potential as long as the market stays strong for our field.

Angela: It’s so important to be transparent around compensation so it’s great to see this topic coming up more often. I see a wide range within our field (of course factoring in experience level, location, job responsibilities, etc.). When I was last on the job hunt in 2021, I saw entry level roles offering ~$100k and upwards of $200k base comp. for more senior level/manager roles, or those that involved coding experience. There’s also quite a few contract roles for Conversation Design and they can be all over the place, depending on the company and recruiting agency.

What drew you into the field?

Shraddha: I remember when Amazon Echo (Alexa) first launched in India, and I was among the first few people to buy it. I was so fascinated that it could understand my Indian accent. I did not have to be very deliberate with my questions or requests. Finally, the hands-free experience of browsing and listening to music while getting ready for work or cooking was incredible! But it never occurred to me that somebody called a conversation designer has worked on it. I assumed it was the job of a team of copywriters and developers. Never in my wildest dream had I thought I would end up on the other side just a few years later.

I have come a long way from just enjoying the technology to learning so much about it. It has more applications than just recreation. When designed correctly, it is a great accessibility feature, and it can help businesses save costs and automate processes, etc. I am grateful to be part of this niche that is still growing and changing.

Nate: I’ve always had a love of being able to just take a problem and solve it with technology. Someone compared conversational AI to working at an Apple store and I’ve been stuck to this concept ever since. When you go to an Apple store, it might not look like it, but everyone in the blue shirts has a defined role. All of the employees represent different parts of the customer journey. The 2 people at the front of the store are in the concierge role. Their goal is to check you in and guide you down the most personalized experience whether you’re looking to buy an iPhone and you know exactly what you want or you’re looking to buy an Apple Watch and you have no idea what the offerings are. Or, you could be coming in with a cracked phone screen or you just spilled soup all over your Mac. Those 2 people at the front of the store steer that top of the funnel. They are the first person to greet you and define the store experience for you. If you go to a website or even an app, you’re not getting that same personalized concierge experience that you do visiting an Apple store or a Ritz-Carlton in person. You’re left to your own devices to figure all of that out. Conversational AI is the best solution to that problem.

Let’s say I was charged for something I didn’t buy. With the Discover assistant, within 2–3 turns of a conversation, there’s a dispute filed on my behalf and I receive a follow-up email. So to me, conversational AI can provide that in-person value, remotely. Yes, there will always be a time where a human agent needs to get involved, but in a nutshell, that concierge experience is why I love the field.

Angela: The murkiness and ambiguity of it all at that time drew me in — how do these applications work with NLU? How does one design virtual assistants for different types of users? And ensure trust between product and user? What are user’s expectations? These were some of the (many) questions I had when I first began and was so curious to learn all I could.

I like that there’s creativity involved while also utilizing the data that’s available to make informed decisions around continuously improving the experience. Conversation design is very iterative, so there can be a lot of fast follows after releases re flows and intents, but also working with the training data to improve performance and confidence scores has its own fun.

Which conversational apps do you like as a conversation designer?

Shraddha: I am currently exploring ChatGPT like the rest of the world. I will reserve any judgments, but I am sure to be inquisitive! It’s a piece of work and has much potential to change how we will work in the future. Apart from that, I still use Echo (Alexa), Google Home and Siri for things like music, reminders, alarms, weather reports, and to ask random questions.

Nate: I’m currently a big fan of all the work Voiceflow is doing to bring tools and excitement to the discipline of conversation design. While, admittedly, I don’t get to use their tools much on account of them not being part of my company’s tech stack, I’m always delighted to use Voiceflow for various experiments especially as LLMs within NLUs start to prove their utility. Also, us as conversation designers have a love-hate relationship with spreadsheets, and while I’m an advocate for streamlining our many manual tasks, I’ll gladly choose Google Sheets over Microsoft Excel. As a documentation enthusiast, I love using Notion. And, I like to put a couple extra minutes of time into making my internal deliverables prettier and more intuitive — using tools like Canva and Miro — it goes a long way.

As a consumer of conversational tech, I love what I’m able to do with Siri. While voice assistants and particularly Siri are increasingly the subject of doubtful sentiment, engaging with Siri as a user of the Apple ecosystem (i.e. multiple devices coupled through iCloud), means I’m able to automate a lot of mundane daily tasks. This is especially helpful as I’m driving (using CarPlay of course) and I think of business ideas or a wholesome text to send someone.

Angela: I’m as curious about ChatGPT and what will come of it just as much as everyone else is at the moment. Understanding how it and/or other LLMs have the potential to become tools in our day-to-day work opens up a huge opportunity to put human-centered AI design at the forefront of our work.

In my recent everyday though, I’m exploring Siri anew — I bought a car (after not having one for 10 years!) and appreciating the advances in hands-free car technology that is Apple CarPlay 🙌.

Alexa for reminders, Spotify, weather and sometimes Prime shopping. A great use for a home voice assistant that I don’t think is widely known is to have it remember things for you e.g. “Alexa, remember the extra set of house keys are on the book shelf.” You can later ask Alexa where they are when you’re running late.

What skills make a great conversation designer?

Shraddha: With Conversational AI becoming so popular, every sector and company wants to integrate it into their product or service. While it’s great to ride the tide, the team must identify the genuine need for this technology. That includes the designer. Can the designer ask basic yet tough questions like “WHY” and “WHAT”? Is Conversational AI the right solution for the problem?

Nate: In my opinion, there’s 3 main skills you need. First, you have a knack for writing. Second, you can use and understand Conversational AI tools, which is challenging because those platforms are usually not beautiful or easy to work with. Third, you love to learn and have a demonstrated experience in self-learning or fast onboarding. The reason for this is because there’s so much stuff that’s changing in the field: the tools and the tech stacks are almost entirely different depending on which company you work at.

Angela: 1. Curiosity — being the one in the room to ask the “whys” of whether or not it’s the right use case you’re focusing on, a meaningful and necessary product feature, etc.

2. Being a proponent of using research and data to make informed decisions when designing net new or optimizing existing flows.

3. Diplomacy — working alongside different stakeholders while also standing behind your work is an important soft skill.

The bot building platforms and all the accompanying tools can be learned.

Finally, what learning resources do you use?

Shraddha: This is a list of resources and people that I recommend to anyone looking to get into Conversation Design:

Videos:

Books:

Amazing people to follow:

Nate: I use Dialogflow CX, so whatever platform I’m using, I use the help docs. For example, in my previous role I never worked with entities, so I had to figure out entities for the first time and test them in a mock bot experience. Right now, I have to learn about event handlers for a new Dialogflow feature that’s coming out. So the help docs are my best friend. Then, if I have a question, I usually try to look for it on YouTube. A lot of the support docs say, “Just do this thing,” but you’re left wondering, “how do I just do this thing? You left out the 10 steps in the process!”

Angela: S/O to Conversations with Things by Diana Deibel and Rebecca Evanhoe — I’ve referred to this book often the past few years.

Here’s a list of resources [Getting Started with CxD] I’ve compiled and shared with folks who are either interested in getting started in Conversation Design or continuous learning — there are so many more resources out there nowadays (esp. now with ChatGPT hype) but this is a good place to begin.

Seeking out webinars, conferences, podcasts, etc. are important places to join in on topical conversations like best practices, emerging trends, or new tool demos — Conversational Collective, Voiceflow, Women in Voice, and Content Strategy Seattle are a few examples of the events I most often join.

About the author

Elaine Anzaldo is a seasoned Conversation Designer, having worked on voice technologies at companies such as Meta, NLX, Apple, and SRI International. As a designer for both influential voice assistants and the customer self-service industry, she has created natural conversational artifacts for voice, chat, and multimodal interfaces. Elaine is deeply passionate about designing for AI and exploring the benefits and implications of this cutting-edge technology. In her spare time, Elaine is an evangelist for Conversational AI, promoting her discipline via mentorships and articles about Conversation Design, while also co-producing the Voice This! Podcast.

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elaineinthebay
Women in Voice

Written by elaineinthebay

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Conversation designer | CxD mentor

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