How to hire a designer (from a designer)
By: Ragini Bharadwaj
Tags: HR, Design, Hiring, UX, Recruitment

As a designer of over 5 years and a freelancer of 2, I have spoken to many hiring managers, HR people, senior designers, tech leads, CEOs and Founders in their recruitment process. Every team and role is unique but I have found there are a few steps you can follow to make sure you don’t waste your time making a bad hire.

My observations stem from personal experiences going into interviews and questions I hope the interviewer has the answers to. Over the years, I have learned to identify when I would be the wrong hire for a team, often turning down offers in the process.

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to designer hiring. One appointment might involve a few rounds of interviews, while another may be a quick phone screen followed by an on-site interview. A one-hour interview could also stretch for two hours, all depending on the situation and candidates.

So before you go out designer hunting, ask yourself the following…

1. “Why are we hiring for this role?”

Of course, the power of hiring someone new onboard cannot be underestimated. With new designers come new ideas, creative ways of problem-solving, and fresh energy. Sometimes new perspectives on your designs can make all the difference in the world.

But why are you hiring for this role? Is there a sudden increase in workload at your firm? Is your company expanding rapidly? Are you about to take on more clients? Is an employee about to go on parental leave? Does your project need skills that your current team lacks? You know your own business better than anyone else and should be able to decide if this is a pressing issue or not.

For example, you need a UX researcher/ designer at the beginning of a project, before the visuals of the product and how it works has been decided. Do you know when you don’t need a UX designer? A year into a project when your developers have already “designed” the app for you. That’s when you need hope. (Oh, a friendly reminder to take everything with a grain of salt.)

2. “How urgently do we need to hire for this role?”

Do you need a designer yesterday or are you doing routine hiring? This is a simple equation, the more time you can spare in looking for the ideal candidate, the more choices you will have. More time will also allow you to be thorough in your search.

On the contrary, don’t stretch this out too much. If you take your sweet time deciding whether you want them or not, they might fail to remember your name 2 months later.

3. “What skills are we looking for?”

Designers come in all shapes and sizes; some T-shaped and some with a wide breadth of work to show. Within UX, for example, designers may choose to specialise in UI design, UX design, user research, UX writing, etc. Although these skills overlap they are still very different jobs to do.

Make a list of all the skills you need. What do they need to be able to do after they’ve been hired? Think about it in real-life situations your team will face and then see if that person has that skill set. If not, can they learn going forward?

I would even recommend going as far as consulting with developers, product managers, or anyone in the company that the designer will work closely with and getting their perspective on who they think would be a good fit for this role. This doesn’t have to directly influence your decision but it will help immensely.

For example, she may be a UX designer but does she need to have excellent communication skills because she will be required to handle clients directly? He may be a product designer but can he make the occasional illustration as the team is small and everyone wears multiple hats? I repeat — be specific, make a list.

4. “What are some challenges we are facing that could benefit from hiring this person?”

These challenges can be specific, unique issues that you can form detailed initiatives around, or something entirely general. Whatever the case, having it well framed will allow a potential employee to get a peek into what life at your firm might look like once they join and understand if this role will challenge them at this point in their career.

Some examples of this may be — you have found product-market fit but are facing issues scaling your product; you are looking to create a strong design culture in your company; you find that your design team is not in sync, etc.

I once asked the hiring manager this exact question and all I got was — “It’s a UX role… so you will be designing.” You get the point.

5. “What is our budget for this role?”

As remote work has become more common the world is literally your oyster, but in the end, it really does boil down to who you can afford at the time. How much you are willing to compensate for this role will directly affect your wiggle room to pick the skill level, expertise and seniority of a potential hire. This one is obvious but it helps set expectations early on and will simultaneously streamline and speed up your hiring process.

I personally make it a point to check this early on as I have been foolish enough in the past to go through the entire hiring process only to realise the compensation didn’t begin to come close to my expectation for that role. ‘No es posible’ I say!

I give you… an example of what your hiring process could look like. Take what you must, make it your own.

1. Introductory call

Reach out to the designer and introduce yourself. Always check if you called at a good time or if you should call back later. A little courtesy goes a long way. I once turned down an offer to interview when the HR person spent 30 minutes explaining the role to me in excruciating detail when I was in the middle of another engagement. I can’t recall if she paused to breathe.

Be sure to inform them of the steps involved in the process and what your hiring timeline looks like to make the agenda clear right off the bat.

2. Interview with relevant teammates

Once the candidate is warmed up, set up interviews with relevant team members. This can be the hiring manager, a senior designer, or even the entire design squad — essentially anyone responsible for accessing this candidate. If she will work closely with the marketing team, arrange that call too. If possible, introduce her to the founders and CEO as well.

Fun story — I once interviewed at a large company and despite 2 calls with the HR person, 2 calls with a senior designer and 1 portfolio review session with their entire design team, it was eventually a product manager that was able to give me the true picture of what the role entailed. Let’s just say, I’m glad I pushed for that call.

These calls will involve or lead to the next 2 steps — portfolio review and culture fit test.

3. Portfolio review

When you see a resume, you get a higher-level, skeletal view of a potential candidate. But in requesting a portfolio you are trying to get a closer look at past work to access how the candidate will fit and evolve in this new role.

This is not a critique, it is merely an information-gathering process to understand if they have the experience, expertise and skills as their resume states. You aren’t looking for the most mind-blowing portfolio, but the most relevant one based on the skills you have previously listed (Done your homework yet?). Once you have seen a few portfolios you will automatically develop a framework of sorts for quick comparison, particularly if you must peruse tens of portfolios.

Bear in mind, every portfolio is unique and every designer chooses to express and showcase their work differently. The medium can be the message, or not. Often designers will sign non-disclosure agreements, prohibiting them from showing projects they have worked on. Within consulting especially, it is up to the client to execute the final designs however they please — many projects never see the light of day. Skills like people management, cross-collaboration, handling stressful deadlines, etc. cannot simply be judged by looking at a portfolio. (This is where step 5 will come in.)

4. Culture fit test

“Our company has the best work culture” is a subjective statement. How you communicate, what the workplace hierarchy looks like, what methodologies and frameworks teams use to succeed, attitudes, unspoken rules and benefits etc. will all be a prominent influence in this match-making process.

Do the candidate’s goals, values and core beliefs align with yours? Can he see himself succeed in this environment and most of all, will he be happy?

5. Take home assignment OR White-boarding session

You’ve seen their work, you’ve spoken to them, you love them — and YET you can’t seem to decide if they have what it takes. This is where the take home assignment comes in.

A take home assignment is a small sample of work that is given to candidates to test specific skills and thought process. The candidate can complete this in their own time so long as they meet the agreed upon deadline.

Not all roles and candidates require this step though. There are only 2 reasons to even give one — first, if you have quite a few contenders and want to maintain a level playing field, or second, if the previous steps involved in the interviewing process haven’t convinced you of their merit. Prepare the assignment so you can test for skills you need and ones you concluded are not well reflected in the candidate’s body of work.

For example, does the role need strong user research skills but the candidate hasn’t shown enough of it in her portfolio to convince you? Draft an assessment to specifically test for this instead of giving her what seems like an entire freelance project masked as an assignment. (Trust me, she will see it and drop it like it’s hot.)

A good rule of thumb is to add constraints to a task. Constraints are good; constraints make you more creative, save the candidate a lot of time in coming up with imaginary scenarios, and most importantly allow for a ‘control’ when you are accessing multiple applicants.

I once reverted to an assignment with more questions than were given to me and informed the hiring manager that they hadn’t provided sufficient information for me to take the necessary steps required to complete a task (even detailing the steps I would take). This is what I heard back — “the other candidates have referred to Dribbble and given us great visual outcomes for the task already; why don’t you do the same”. Just….NO.

Alternatively, you may choose to do a white-boarding session or workshop with the applicant instead of giving them a take home assignment. No two people are alike — if you want to get the best out of someone, there’s no better way than to do it in person or a live session (remote works too). When testing candidates, take home assignments aren’t the most productive way for you or your potential employee to spend time together. A white-boarding session or a workshop allows for a more dynamic experience as well as the opportunity to see how someone thinks on their feet and reacts to new information.

Find the right designer, not the best designer.

When hiring a new designer, the obvious goal is to find the best person for the job. Too often amazing candidates get overlooked because they’re not considered the “perfect” fit. Rather than seeking the most skilled person, look for the best “fit” for the role and your organisation.

Unless you are a small team crunched for resources and would like your designer to be spread out across the board working on every step in the product and design process without going too deep into any of your projects, it’s never a logical option to seek someone who knows and wants to do it all. Design is a spectrum of skills, and different skills take time and consistent effort to whet. The same goes for programming skills, marketing experience, product development techniques, and many other skills integral to a successful project.

Recruitment is a two-way street.

Let’s face it, hiring is hard. More often than not, it’s a two-way street: your candidate is interviewing you as much as you’re interviewing them. The hiring process has now become more public than anything else, it’s the epitome of transparency. You’ve got candidates reading Glassdoor pages about your company; they’re telling their friends about your company too.

When hiring a candidate for your team, you are essentially selling a vision and the idea that joining your company will benefit the employee. At the end of the day, hiring someone is an investment, never underestimate the time you are putting into bringing someone onboard and up to speed.

Good luck. Now go get that designer!