The key to successfully hiring designers
Creating an effective hiring process to guarantee you attract and retain top-tier talent.
In my 20+ year career in design, I have participated in thousands of job interviews either as a candidate or hiring manager. And from this, I can safely say that the design recruitment process is broken almost everywhere. Now, this claim is generalising in nature but hear me out about why and what you can do to avoid the known traps that fail most organisations.
Before I start, let me set the context. In the last seven years, I have worked for three separate tech companies going through aggressive recruitment hyper-growth periods. Through my active involvement in these initiatives, I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on how to approach hiring designers successfully.
As I see it, there are five key areas to improve how you hire designers, and in most cases, you may need to work on all five.
- Define career levelling
- Write enticing job descriptions
- Simplify the application
- Improve how you interview
- Support and nurture growth
Define career levelling
Before you hire designers for your organisation, take the time to work on a career matrix to outline the expected behaviours for each level within your team. In doing so, you will be able to consistently identify candidates that display the behaviours required for each level specified in the matrix. In addition, you can use this matrix to support the growth and development of the existing team, which I’ll cover later.
When drafting a matrix, it’s essential to tailor it to the organisation’s values as much as it is to hone in on specific criteria that will contribute to the design culture you are nurturing. For example, what importance do you put on things such as craft vs soft skills? What core behaviours do you look for and support? What values can contribute to individual excellence and the overall improvement of the wider team?
It would be best to consider what career paths your organisation supports. For instance, does your organisation support a single-track IC to Manager path, or does it follow a more modern approach and support a dual-track where ICs and Managers each have their pathways?
Write enticing job descriptions
A company’s job description is often left to the recruitment department to write and can come across as lifeless and dull. And because of this, most job advertisements have become cookie-cutter copies of each other. The job description is an opportunity to get creative, to be different and give candidates a taste of what it would be like to work for you.
Start by laying out the vision for the company and how the particular role you are hiring will support achieving the said vision. Keep this short, sharp, and punchy, but make it equally creatively enticing.
Follow up by clearly outlining what you look for (in a candidate), what they will do, and how the candidate will make an impact. In doing so, you have identified the successful candidate’s past, present and future.
Following this, follow up with the company’s requirements regarding a commitment to inclusion and diversity, global reach or pay equality — if these are relevant.
Simplify the application
There are two types of job application forms. The first is outdated and wastes a candidate’s time inputting information already outlined in the resume. And the other is easy to fill in, allowing candidates to upload a portfolio or resume. Who even reads all the information in the first type? It’s likely not the hiring manager.
Do away with the unnecessary bullshit and make design applications straightforward. Allow the work to take centre stage and ask the candidate to qualify for their role in the team (as most projects take more than an individual to deliver).
Another consideration is to add a qualifying question focused on design to weed out low-effort submissions. A design introspection question is a great way to ask candidates to put in the right effort when applying. An example of this is something like:
What’s something you’ve witnessed in your day-to-day that’s changed how you approach design and why?
Lastly, using a service such as Greenhouse or Lever can simplify the application process if your company can afford it.
Improve how you interview
Interviewing designers is different to interviewing other roles, and recruiters are often surprised that what works for other disciplines falls flat with design. This stage warrants extra attention; don’t mindlessly succumb to your organisation’s standard operating procedures. Tailor interviews accordingly to the specific roles you are recruiting.
A great way to take control of this is to write a hiring playbook that supports outlining expected outcomes for each stage of the hiring process. For example, how do you want your interviewers to conduct themselves, what questions they should ask, how to score interviews, and what signals will help inform interviewers?
Teams that use playbooks to hire will deliver more consistent experiences while limiting candidate hiring biases. They can also support individuals taking part in the interview loops to hone their skills and become more confident interviewers.
Some material ideas to outline in your hiring playbook:
- Interviewer training
- Interviewer preparation guide
- Interview questions tailored to each type of interview
- Interview scorecards
- Candidate signals aligned to your company values
- Submitting interview feedback guide
A platform such as Coda or Notion will enable you to create an engaging recruitment playbook for the entire team to share, evolve, and learn how to improve how they contribute to the hiring process.
Support and nurture growth
As I mentioned earlier in the article, the career matrix can also support the growth and development of the existing team, which is an attractive offer for many designers looking to advance their careers. Providing clear expectations of the behaviours at each level encourages designers to achieve and promote their current roles.
As designers move through the levels, the scope of responsibilities further widens, from specifics to more holistic areas — for example, a shift from contributing to outcomes at the lower levels evolves into influencing how to achieve results at the more senior levels.
Delivering a solid framework to support and coach designers to learn how to evolve their skill-sets is essential to sustaining their growth and development. Regular 1:1’s, where managers encourage employees to focus on setting goals and self-manage their progress, reflect on successes and have regular two-way feedback, will give designers a sense of empowerment in achieving their career development.
A process like this allows leaders to support employees rather than manage them. The conversation shifts from telling people how to do their job — to coaching their achievements, aligned to their self-identified goals as outlined in the career matrix. Encouraging autonomy helps designers not only own the work but also how they arrive at their outcomes.
So I can hear you asking, “if leaders don’t manage people, what do they do?” and it can be answered by — removing obstacles! Suppose leaders mico-manage employees less to focus on what they can do to support them. In that case, the conversation shifts to unblocking, supporting, coaching, mentoring and sometimes even influencing when the designer asks for help.
In summary
These five steps are just the start of planned activities you can implement to improve hiring performance within your design organisation. If you would like further information or support in learning to create this material, please review the references I’ve provided below or contact me directly with your questions. I would love to help!
References
Org Design for Design Orgs
Levels framework by Peter Merholz & Kristin Skinner
ADP’s Product Design Career Ladders
Designer job levels at Intercom
Levels.fyi
