Hiring designers

There’s no technical interview and there’s not a lot you can understand about what it’s like to work with the person if all they have is a bunch of cool dribbble shots. It’s a position that demands a unique blend of problem-solving skills combined with a sense for visual aesthetics and a mindset for making people’s lives simpler.

Too many design job applications list the tools and software that the applicant must be proficient at in order to even qualify. A few even go as far as to break down the soft skills required to perform well at the job. The big picture that hiring managers are missing is that all of this can be taught: tools, software, and yes, even soft skills. What we need is a specific type of personality.

Having eight years of experience in Photoshop doesn’t exactly show off your creative thinking skills. Being faced with a design challenge on the spot, breaking down the problem into its core components, and devising alternate solutions shows it off. This can be done as the design equivalent of a technical interview. And it’s not just these skills, either.

It’s about intuition — how you use knowledge acquired from other areas of life and integrate into your design process. It’s about presentation — how you sell the client on your ideas and even sway their minds one way or the other through effective communication. It’s about collaboration — how well you work with other designers, product strategists, and developers.

All of the above are personality traits. Theoretically, these can be coached into the person, but if you find someone who already has these sorts of traits, you’ve kind of hit the jackpot. All you need them to say from that point on is “I love reading design blogs in my free time and love using well-designed products.” Boom. Hired. Their aesthetic sense and visual sense will develop really quickly over time (especially if they nurture it in their free time) and you’ll get yourself a kickass designer.

Design firms already know how to look for these traits and hire based upon them. That’s exactly why it’s so hard to get into a well-reputed design agency. Corporations and startups, on the other hand, struggle to staff design resources (or tend to hire underperforming or incompetent designers) because they’re looking for the wrong things.

Design is a strange profession that not only requires a specific set of skills and the tools to be able to use them, but also very unique personality traits that allows designers to flourish and prosper in the right environment. The sooner companies start to realize this, the faster we will asymptote towards a better designed world.