Hiring and growing a UX team from scratch

Andreea Popescu
UX Collective
Published in
11 min readDec 26, 2021
A group of people
image source: Natalie Pedigo

*being a non-native English speaker, this article may have language mistakes.

Each journey I started in the latest couple of years brought me new challenges and a lot of things to learn. In June 2021, I got hired as a User Experience Manager for a large company for its innovative division. I was very excited to start the journey because the company trusted my skills and ability to evangelize the user experience and its importance and user research and grow a team from scratch and make it great. Somehow, this thing wasn’t something new because, in the past, I had the same chance to build a team and to lead it, but this time the things were different and more challenging compared with the past.

Somehow, with all excitement, I felt a little bit under pressure, thinking that I would not be able to accomplish that, or the process would take time, cause usually, that’s happening — the recruitment process takes time, sometimes there being involved many weeks, and sometimes months. Well, “being married with my work” and quite optimistic, after doing what I value the most on my UX process as well, research and analyzing, I put together a hiring strategy.

The identified problems in the process

Girl drawing a design process
image source: Green Chameleon

In the last couple of years, I changed jobs because I moved from a city to another and the “working remote” opportunity wasn’t an option for the company I have worked for. Changing the jobs put me in contact with many HR people — great people, by the way, but the process was prolonged, and were times in which I waited so much for an opportunity, and in the meantime, I found a new position. And this is not just my case, but also many other people I know. So, one of the problems I knew that going on the classical process I would meet was the timeline of the process.

The other major problem… well, I have many friends working in the recruitment field who complained that the professionals are not taking them too seriously when writing a message on LinkedIn or another recruitment channel. They said this is happening because sometimes they need to recruit quantity, not quality, and the messages are not personalized. So, the second problem, who is sending the message and what kind of message it has been sent.

I put down all these aspects, and I found a solution: to simplify the process by going directly to possible future colleagues. But wait, what the other people involved in the process would say? Would it be good to break a process? Would it be beneficial for the company? Will the colleagues embrace this change? And many more questions were raised in my mind and somehow prepared me to put the right approach on my proposal to my division director. After analyzing all the facts and discussing with the director and HR assigned to my division, the process changed slightly.

Somehow (actually, I know how), I started to do some recruitment work, searching for potential colleagues in the team of one (just I, the UX manager), analyzing their profiles and contacting them, establishing the interviews, and so on. It was a win situation, and I am happy that the management and HR trusted my judgment and “my superpowers” (in those moments, I needed ones because I engaged that until October, the team will no longer be a team of one, but ten).

1. Knowing what you need

Great vision without great people is irrelevant. (Jim Collins, Lecturer and Author of Good to Great)

The process was now mine, and I needed to coordinate it and make it entirely flow until the offer. Once again, the research and analysis helped me better understand the problems and develop potential solutions that may fix them. Having a strategy for the future team and knowing what kind of professionals I would like to have in my group, I started to discuss with a few friends of mine from the HR domain to better understand the recruitment websites, potential dealbreakers, and people profiles.

With the information gathered and confidence, I started to shape the search for my future colleagues in the UX team. And, now, looking back, it was one of the most remarkable “research” experiences because what I have found helped me have new knowledge about people and their behavior. As a parenthesis, the specialty literature regarding the user research said that sometimes (mostly, usually) we say that we need something, but in reality, the things may be pretty different. For example, were many times in which I conducted an in-depth interview with intended customers of the products, and they said a thing, but after more discussions and putting the right questions or even adding the needs on the paper, I found that they needed a different thing, they had a different perspective compared with what they primarily said.

Searching for Aurora Borealis in Iceland
image source: Jonatan Pie

This time, I did this (research) with myself. Knowing what I needed from a team and how a team should be, I put the job description on paper. I tried to think about the UX process, about what qualifications my future colleagues should have, and, more important than that, how they should be as people, how they will be complementary to each other. The last part, at least, I consider highly important because regularly we are spending 40 hours each week working with others, and the way we interact with each other can affect us, not only personally but also professionally. And I stayed on those items, reviewing them, and writing down, and deleting, and again writing, and again deleting. After reviews and reviews, I had the final job descriptions and a clear view, and I was good to go further on the next step.

2. My “dream” team

After I had a great experience with my magenta team, I knew what kind of experience and personality the team members should have, and, also, which will be the things I would want to avoid. So, I created a list of my future colleagues’ qualities in the first step. The most important ones were honesty, ethics, curiosity, and desire to learn and, at the same time, to give/share with others the knowledge they have. Also, I wanted to find enthusiastic people, people who love what they are doing at the job because, whether we like it or not, we are spending more than 8 hours working (not considering the flexible time because this is a variable).

Secondly, after the positive qualities come, I wouldn’t want to have into my team: “I know everything” mindset, superiority, and listlessness. From my past experiences, I’ve seen those as deal-breakers that lead to unfunctional teams, frustrations, and, in the end, people left the group — myself included.

Also, the other thing was to be human and to not be competitive in a team but to be more empathetic. I know that since we are kids we are somehow taught to be competitive and to be better than the other kids, but in reality, we can be better without being competitive and walking through others just to become the best. You may ask yourself why? Well, in the team, I wanted to have an equilibrium and to help ourselves to become better and better, I wanted to let everyone rise, and I wanted to give each colleague the possibility to rise and to prove himself because each person is different and have a different skillset and many things to show.

Couple of people watching the sunrise
image source: Chang Duong

And, those being said, I started to analyze profiles on LinkedIn, from experience to descriptions, to studies, to be present or not on different design or academic websites, and so on. And, for those profiles I liked, I started to write a personalized message. I started with a more straightforward message, maybe clumsy and not so “manager” style (reading them after a while, I can see improvements and create them better), but I was honest from the beginning, and I wanted to find out more about each person I contacted. I remember one of the best moments I had, a moment in which I happily jumped and danced (glad my dog can’t talk to say how I dance) was when the UX writer (the one who is now part of the team) wanted to have a call with me. For me, her profile was excellent, experience in anthropology and ethnology, and a fantastic experience in academic writing. And what a joy I had after the interview and how amazed I was after the discussion with her. And this is just a great moment from many I had during the hiring process.

3. On the field

Disclaimer: In the last couple of years, I’ve learned how not to have expectations, and this helped me a lot from not being disappointed (even we’re moments in which I can’t do that).

Even though were moments that invited me to reflect on them, overall, having a broader picture, the process went great, and it was amazing to wear the recruitment hat, as well. It was fantastic to speak to each person. Also, I need to point some the following:

  • After three months, the whole recruitment process ended, I see things different from when it happened. There were many moments in which my trust in honesty was brutally shaken because there were discussions with potential colleagues built on lies, many inconsistencies about past experiences, and so on. I recognized that in those moments, I started to think that it is possible not to build a team until October?! But, each time, I said to myself that those cases are just the exception from the rule, and I continued to be optimistic and search for the right people.
  • Another thing that made me think about the user experience as a process and its terminology is not having the property of terminology. The excuse they had was because they know how to do things, it is not necessary to know how to explain them in the specific terminology. Well, that’s wrong. A UX designer needs to have the property of UX terms because they work in multidisciplinary teams in which other team members do not have the property of terms, and they will need the help of the UX person to explain it to them. Also, while presenting the project or product to a client or making a pitch for a project or product, you need to know how to express yourself and make the client understand what you will do. I never asked for complicated questions, but questions a UX designer needs to know, and if not know them, at least to have a desire to learn attitude and not “I do not need to learn them, I have experience and that’s all that matters”.
  • One of the things that I have discovered on the field was the superiority attitude, which I consider not healthy for any work environment. We as individuals should have a workplace where we can develop ourselves, and even though we have 5, 10, 15, 20, and + years of experience, we should have an attitude that can’t harm others. I wasn’t happy to discover this in many cases, especially at senior UX designers. As a senior UX designer, I expected to find a person willing to help others learn, a person with a place for improvement. Seniorship is not a synonym for superiority :)

Were many other things that I meet on the field while searching for colleagues in the UX team, but at the beginning of October 2021, the whole team was set, and right now we are doing amazing things and each day brings to us new things to learn and to discover. What kind of people do I have in my team? I will quote a message from someone in the team I received at the end of a week:

Know that we see everything. The late hours, and the heavy meetings, and the difficult people. And all your work to keep the difficult issues, inconsistencies, or frustrations away from us. And the warmth with which you talk to us and always understand our needs. And the attention with which you give us personalized study materials. And the care with which you look for growth opportunities for us. We see them and cherish them. Thank you! (LJ)

4. What I’ve learned

Group of friends
image source: Helena Lopes

When it comes to lessons learned the list is long and for sure it would be longer in the future when I will face again the recruitment process:

  • With patience and desire to change things and with documented “homework” you can change a process.
  • The potential colleagues were happy and appreciated the fact that I wrote them personally and I was there for them to answer their questions (not just in the discussion time, but after).
  • The joy you are feels when you create a team from scratch and see how they are helping each other and how they are working as a whole, it is amazing.
  • The happiness you feel when people believe in you and are honest.
  • I learned many things about people and how the recruitment job is not easy as may seem from the outside. I value most the people who are working in the recruitment field. Kudos to you :)

Bonus: my leadership style

Even my marriage with work is strong and still healthy, I do not forget to be human. So, somehow the article below summarizes very well my leadership style (I read it around October and confirmed it with the others around me). I am Sharer with some sparkes from Hero (but, are just sparks, rarely seen), somehow I am not a technocrat at all, but I admire those people whose leadership style is in that direction, as well.

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Published in UX Collective

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Written by Andreea Popescu

Principal Digital Health Designer | UX Mentor | Certified Product Owner

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