Went through Target's product design interview for a senior product designer role on their Digital Commerce team last fall. The portfolio review specifically is different from most design interviews I've done, so worth sharing.
Initial screen (30 min with a design recruiter): They asked about my background, design philosophy, current tools (Figma, they use Figma heavily), and specifically whether I'd worked on consumer-facing e-commerce or retail contexts. They seemed to weight retail fluency, which makes sense. If you've done checkout flows or product pages before, lead with that.
Portfolio review + design discussion (60 min with two designers):
This was the part I want to highlight. They asked me to walk through 2-3 case studies from my portfolio. Standard ask, but their follow-up questions were more rigorous than I've seen at other companies.
For each project they dug into: What constraints were you working within (engineering feasibility, legal/compliance, timeline)? How did you handle disagreement with stakeholders about the design direction? What did you measure to know the design worked? What would you do differently?
They're not impressed by polished Figma screens. They wanted to understand your decision-making process and whether you can defend your choices with evidence. One of the reviewers was former retail, ex-physical-store UX background, and she was particularly sharp on whether my research accounted for users who weren't digitally native (Target's customer base is much broader than a fintech app's).
Onsite (4 rounds):
Design exercise: Given a hypothetical scenario (I got: "a significant portion of users are abandoning at the size selection step in apparel, redesign this experience") with 30 minutes to sketch and 20 minutes to present. They explicitly said no polished mockups, they wanted to see how you think, not how fast you can make Figma components. Whiteboard-style on screen share.
Cross-functional round with PM + engineer: How do you balance user needs with technical constraints, how do you spec handoffs, how do you respond when engineering says the design isn't feasible. Collaborative not combative.
Craft + systems round: Do you have experience with or opinions about design systems? Target runs their own design system and they wanted to know if I could both contribute to it and work within it without constantly wanting to break convention.
Behavioral + values round: STAR format. Fairly standard, but they pushed on times I advocated for an underserved user group.
Overall: Strong design team, real problems, broad customer context. The portfolio review is the make-or-break round. Emphasize your process and outcomes over visual polish.