7 Tips For Hiring First UX/UI Designer

Michał Bieńko
Nov 5 · 6 min read

Recently at jobpal, we decided that it’s high time to hire our first full-time UX/UI Designer. But there was one problem that hit me instantly. How we’re going to verify whether someone is a good fit for us, and who isn’t?

We’ve already been down the hiring road for Engineering, Sales, or Marketing roles before. But when it comes to design, and what to pay attention to during the recruiting process, and how to properly design the recruitment process we have a knowledge gap. Simply because we don’t have at this point anyone who has paved the way.

I decided to turn to my network for help. And while I value theoretical knowledge and online resources, I consider a hands-on experience absolutely priceless.

That’s why I’ve reached out to UX/UI Designers, who’ve been involved in numerous interviews as subject matter experts. I’ve received a lot of excellent advices, some of them specifically tailored to my company’s needs, but some of them seemed to be very universal.

That’s why I decided to gather it all in one article, and I hope you’ll find it useful.

0. Properly Define The Role

It’s tip “0” because it’s not limited to Designer roles. But I’m mentioning it because it’s crucial for further steps. If you don’t know what skills you’ll need, how are you going to assess if the candidate’s skill set is aligned with your business needs?

Do you need a UX/UI generalist who is capable of doing both, and will do both? Or maybe you have a really nice UI design and you actually need someone to focus mostly on the UX part? Take your time and think about it. You need to adjust your recruitment process to your needs.

1. Portfolio

When it comes to the portfolio, there are some major differences between UI and UX portfolios:

UI: They’re mostly focused on graphic design and aesthetics. If someone is a pure UI Designer the portfolio will be focused on images, and it may not mention the context.

UX: I’ve heard that a UX portfolio may have zero images and still be a really good portfolio. I don’t know if all of the domain experts would agree with this, but the point is, that UX portfolio is focused less on the final result(s) and more on the process — what was the problem, what was the business context, how did they do their research, how did they come to particular conclusions, and so on.

To sum up:

If you care mostly about UI skills: Pay attention to the final result.

If you’re looking for a UX-oriented person: Pay attention to their process and check if they can present their thoughts in a clear and easy-to-understand way.

If you’re looking for a generalist: Pay attention to both.

2. Screening Call: Basic Diagnostic Questions

Sometimes answers to the very basic questions can show you, whether the candidate you’re talking to is a big mismatch.

For example:

“Do you feel more of a UI or UX Designer”

If your candidate says that it’s 80% UX and 20% UI, and you’re looking for a UI Designer with basic UX understanding that might be a red flag. It obviously doesn’t mean that this person is a bad Designer. Just not a Designer that your company needs (at least not right now).

3. Screening Call — UX Workflow/Mindset

If you’re not looking only for UI skills, you should definitely dive into UX-related subjects. You can ask questions like:

  • What do you pay attention to when designing a solution?
  • How do you know what should be improved?
  • What metrics do you use and why these?
  • How do you gather feedback?

Designing a solution from the UX point of view should be based on substantial research and data-driven decisions. However, bear in mind that there are no such things as “one right set of metrics”, “one right way to do research”, or “the only list of things you need to pay attention to while designing a solution”.

It all depends on the problem and its context. So don’t look for the right keywords in candidates’ answers. Pay attention to the way they think, learn a bit more about the problem they were facing, and how did they come up with the solution. You’re looking for the ability to solve problems, not “one right way to do xyz”.

4. Screening Call — How did they collaborate with the rest of the team

It’s not about communication skills (which of course are very important). It’s about their background when it comes to different models of teamwork. Perhaps they’ve been working throughout their whole professional life as a sole Designer in a cross-functional team or worked mostly in a Designers team where they were somehow separated from engineers?

And what’s even more important, how did their cooperation with non-Designers look like? Did they actively participate in the decision-making process and contributed to the various discussions and challenged ideas? Or maybe the opposite? Did they prefer to simply gather requirements, isolate themselves and sit down to focus on the job until the first iteration was finished?

I’m not saying that one approach is better than the other. It all depends on your company, and which collaboration style would fit best. But it’s definitely something you should have in mind.

5. Practical Task — is it better to give homework, or do the demo at the office?

It depends. If you want to check UI skills and give a graphic challenge, it’s better to make it a home assignment. Art (even a very structured one) takes time and needs an incubation period, so you can double-check whether the final form is ready to be presented.

When it comes to assessing UX skills, the majority of UX Designers I spoke with was of the opinion that it’s better to solve some kind of a challenge during the onsite interview (from beginning to end). Although I have to say that opinions in this matter were divided. What works in favor of an onsite task is that:

  • You have a demo of a real-life situation and you see how they tackle the problem, and the way they think, and for example how they cooperate with interviewers (aka “stakeholders”)
  • It’s one thing to say something and another to actually do it. Job interviews are stressful, that’s why it’s hard to act against your trained habits. So the onsite-task gives you a pretty honest work sample.

If you decide to do a live task, please:

  • Try not to limit the “problem-solving environment” for the candidates. Don’t suggest what you expect them to do, don’t give guidelines on how to behave. Give them the problem and let them do their job as they see fit.

6: Skills Assessment — Consider External Help

If you don’t have any Designer onboard the company or someone who used to work as a Designer in the past, you have a company knowledge gap, that will make the assessment process much more difficult.

If you feel that it might be overwhelming for you then the support of external expert might be a good idea. You could, for example, invite your external expert to the onsite task, or at least discuss the interviews with your promising candidates and hear the expert’s opinion. Maybe there’s an agency that would agree to such collaboration, or you could make a deal with a trusted freelancer?

7. Seniority is a mindset, not years of experience, or proficiency in specific tools.

Don’t hire someone because they’ve been working with InVision for their entire professional career. And don’t consider someone senior just because they’ve been in the industry for 7 years.

People can easily learn new tools if you give them the time to adapt, and just because they’ve been in the industry for X years doesn’t mean that they’ve mastered their craft. Just because someone doesn’t have a vast amount of professional experience doesn’t mean that they’re juniors.

Trends in UI change, so is the field in UX and our knowledge of human behavior. You probably want to hire someone who constantly updates and expands their knowledge, as well as someone who has a flexible approach to solving different kinds of problems and not being afraid to think outside-of-the-box.

Obviously this article is just scratching the surface and you’ll have to read more on this subject and do a deeper dive in the field of UX and UI. I do hope though that this piece gives you at least some basic overview.

At this point, I’d like to thank all of the amazing Designers called out earlier in the texts, who gave me a lot of valuable insight which made this article come together.

Chris Badura, Piotr Kaczmar, Maciej Kosmulski, Krystian Mrozek, Magdalena Nowak, Mikołaj Pastuszko, Barbara Rogoś-Turek, thank you once again for your contribution!

Michał Bieńko

Technical Recruiter @ jobpal

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