6 tips on hiring the right UX designer
You may have had unpleasant interview experiences from the position of the interviewer… whether you were unprepared, nervous because of the lack of experience on this side of the boat, or you may have found that the job description is not relevant to what you really look for from a candidate. Yes, this happens too :).
Next, I will share with you 6 tips that you can use in startups, consultancy, large organizations, or in the service industry on how to hire the right designer.
There is a video at the end of this article if you are not much of a reader.
So let me start with the truth…. There is no perfect recipe to always hire the right person for a job.
However, there are some things that you can do to make your UX hiring process more efficient:
Tip 1: Analyze the Roadmap
Supposing that you know the product or service pretty well and you have a set of priorities already defined, evaluate the roadmap, and determine what are the most relevant skills needed to get the future work done. Don’t over-think it, just start from a large list of UX skills, and after a brief assessment pick those you think are required to solve the specific problems.
If you don’t have a UX, Product, or a company Roadmap, maybe it’s time to create one?
Remember that a UX Designer can be a valuable asset when it comes to business strategy and prioritization.
Tip 2: Skills assessment
If you are part of a design team, evaluate the skills of each team member. The main outcome for our current context should be a spider chart.
👉 Competency Management In 5 Steps
When you overlap all the charts, you will notice what are the strengths and weaknesses of your team. And now you can start adjusting the job description accordingly.
If you don’t have a designer in your team, just use the skills list from tip 1 and try to evaluate what are the gaps in your current team’s knowledge in terms of UX, and find the person who best fills those gaps. In a startup context, this makes a lot of sense, because, in order to be effective, team members must complement each other. One extra tip here also for startups when we talk about a UX Designer that will work for the product, keep skills like marketing design, sales, or coding in a nice-to-have box, and focus more on research, problem-solving, facilitation, visual prototyping, and maybe experience in your industry.
Tip 3: Fictional thank you letter
This is an idea heard of from Jared Spool which proposes to imagine what would you like to write in a 1-year thank you letter to the designer you currently looking for? This can help with setting expectations in terms of technical or soft skills, teamwork, engagement, ownership, and so on. The outcome should be a specific list of expectations in addition to what you already have.
Tip 4: Seek potential over experience
I’m not saying that experience isn’t important, but these days, this can be quite relative. For example, repeating the same tasks over and over for 10 years without extending responsibilities is not the same as following a growing career path in the past 10 years.
So whether if you are hiring a more or less experienced designer always try to identify their attention to detail and analytical thinking. And let me go through some examples: Listen and pay attention to how they structure their story, ask if they did some research on your company and your customers before coming in the interview, notice if the first case study of their portfolio is the most relevant for your product or service, discuss their work in a collaborative way, but constantly asking Why can give you a glimpse of his or hers frustration parameters.
You may be surprised, but sometimes an enthusiastic and eager to learn junior designer can help you more than a bored and maybe a little cocky senior designer. Not to mention the benefit of a fresh energy boost for your team and for yourself.
Tip 5: Avoid bias filters
Discuss with the HR person that supposedly already interviewed the candidate to give you a hint on what to expect next and maybe help you adjusting the interview script.
During the interview have someone beside you. Someone other than the candidate, obviously. It can be a less experienced designer, or a more technical person, or a business analyst, depending on the context you are in. And switch roles from time to time with observation and taking notes, just like in user testing. If you need some inspiration on what questions to ask here are some links for you:
👉 25 UX Design Interview Questions and Answers
👉 15 Essential UX Interview Questions
👉 42 Common UX Designer Interview Questions
Give the chance for other team members to participate and ask questions when reviewing the portfolio. More perspectives can help you make a better decision.
Tip 6: Rating skills
When creating the job description, once you’ve chosen all the required skills, you can rate each one with the level of proficiency you consider acceptable. You can go with any type of rating or range, whatever works for you.
So for example: Let's say we use a simple experience scale of 1 to 3. 1 being for Lowest, 2 for Moderate, and 3 for the Highest. If you need someone with a lot of experience in Primary Research, you rate the skill as 3 for being acceptable. If you evaluate the candidate as 2, obviously that doesn’t meet your criteria. But as I mentioned earlier, here comes-in the potential that can be decisive when choosing from multiple similar candidates.
Bonus Tip: Facilitation skills
One particular skill that you should pay more attention to, is facilitating workshops. Companies tend to cut their busywork and streamline their workflows. So having a person able to conduct structured brainstorm sessions with fast and valuable results, can give you a strong advantage in front of the competition.
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