How we hire product designers at Casumo
Turns out they’re not so easy to find
Hiring is a topic that usually gets a lot of lip service, but not many go out of their way to clarify exactly why someone is a yes or a no. There’s a lot of uncertainty in general within the industry as a whole, and that’s down to a multitude of reasons.
In my experience as a product designer, I’m fortunate enough to have been on both sides of the aisle. I’ve felt the jitters and unexpected dips in confidence when I walk into an interview, as well as the undeserving decision maker hat I get to wear when I’m entrusted to do my part in shaping a design team.
The typical pipeline usually goes something like “Read ad. Send in application. Go meet potential employer. Receive offer.” In my personal view that’s a very limited way of how hiring is done. We want you to feel comfortable enough to be your best self every step of the way, and for that to happen we can’t just make you go through a rigid interview process where we ask you questions like “Please explain the Gestalt Principles”. So here’s some role play to explain the Casumo way of how hiring is done.
It all starts with a form
Let’s say you, dearest reader, are applying for a role at Casumo as a product designer. You’ve got your portfolio all nice and tidy, with some meaty well-thought out case studies stacked on top of each other, all contained within this new grid system you’ve been harking on to your designer friends about.
You’ve just clicked ‘Submit’ on your application, and suddenly you’ve got these tingling sensations coursing across your body, racing thoughts of “will they, won’t they?” and a bunch of other feelings that you thought were never there. Or perhaps, maybe you just exude confidence and anxiety is not a term in your vocabulary. Regardless of who you are, you go through the same process as other people do.
What happens next?
Well what happens is, we jump straight to your work and have a look since your work is part of what defines you. Are you a sideproject nerd? Have you shipped something recently? Do you reframe a problem to uncover constraints? Are you full of ideas? Can you look at your own work with a critical lens? These are just some of the questions we should have answers to when we’re done taking a look.
We’re looking for portfolios that are built with intention. Like a product, portfolios are built to solve a problem. What’s that problem? Well, one of the primary functions of a portfolio is to get a job. So essentially, you’re trying to make sure that you’ve given enough reasons for someone to reply back. It gets even tougher when you realize that the person you’re designing for, which is us, go through quite a few portfolios every day.
What do I need to show you guys?
There’s already a wealth of material written on how to build a great portfolio. The one piece of advice I’d pass on for future candidates applying at Casumo is to make sure you include work you want to be hired for. Bring work that’s relevant to the job — not everything you’ve ever done.
The role of your portfolio should be to give us a gist of your capabilities and what you’d like to be doing, not stand as the entire thing itself.
Are you a design systems ninja? Great, don’t just tell us about it show us how you’ve aligned your co-workers in building a framework. Do you think of yourself as the product gal or guy? Sweetness! What have you shipped recently, and what’s been your biggest takeaway from that experience? Are you the Sherlock Holmes of user research? Hello there! What questions have you been asking to get to the bottom of what you were trying to learn?
Getting to know ‘the real’ you
Good news! Your work fits the bill and some of us are somewhat (albeit healthily so) jealous too. Jealous, why? See, a lot of the time applications don’t really make it to this stage, so this is already a great first step because you’ve answered that one question that was ringing around in our head when we were looking at your portfolio.
What can we learn from this person that we don’t already know, or can’t learn alone?
So the purpose of this first meeting, as the title suggests is to get to know the real you, not just the design demigod that we saw as we excitedly swiped through your work. If we were to hold up your work alone as the barometer for how you’d do here, that wouldn’t be fair for both of us.
One of our founders tells us that we should be able to have a Sunday beer with whoever we let into the Casumo castle. What if they’re not a beer drinker? Whatever, they can have water instead. The point is not about what beverage they should have, it’s the underlying cultural message attached to it. No one wants to hire any jerks. One bad apple can easily spoil the whole bunch.
We like you, how about that second date?
Turns out we really like you and are already giddily picturing you working on a few things, but before any of that happens we’d like to see how you work, and why you take the decisions that you do. So this second meeting will be specifically oriented more around the work that you’ve done. We’ll ask you to walk us through some of the stuff you’ve shipped or worked on so that we can get a sense of what your problem solving ability looks like.
What do you guys look for in a team mate?
Well for starters, we like people who are innately curious. It can be curiosity about the business, how it works, where it’s heading and what the strategy actually is to get there. Ultimately, whatever work you do here has to contribute and further the strategy of the company so as to tie back to the main goals.
Intentionality and rationality are two other qualities we look for. Like any other company, the design decisions you’ll make here will influence revenue. Thoughtful and compelling explanations about why you did what you did and how does it help solve the problem, are something we expect when looking at each other’s work, regardless of how small a change it may be. Great designers do not make random decisions.
We also really value people who have a healthy balance of introspection and product-thinking. Being able to look inwards and ask why is the thing you’re working on, a problem in the first place is something that comes with purposeful introspection. Similar to how startups try to seek that mystifying product-market fit, we want you to find the problem-solution fit. Don’t worry we’re not expecting you to have all the answers from the get go. We’re trying to figure out if you’re the best fit to ask the right questions in order to find them.
We believe every designer should be a great communicator and also a great listener. In making product decisions there are moments where you need to be able to stand up in a room and debate. However, there are also moments where you need to hold off your opinion until you have the entire picture. There’s a fine line between being inquisitive and being disruptive.
Lastly, we want you to love what you do. Here at the office, it’s rare that you see someone with no side projects or other stuff going on. Everyone’s busy working on something, not because they have to, but because they have an infectious sense of enthusiasm to do so.
Don’t forget to be yourself
Let’s make one thing clear. We’re not going to give you any personality questionnaires or orient the interview to be a behavioral analysis where we vigilantly study your every move. Avoid the temptation to have a script at the ready or come in with a set of preset answers to a bunch of questions you’ve scoured the internet for.
We’re not expecting you to be perfect at every single one of these traits, otherwise we’d be hiring the same person over and over again. They’re just there to serve as a baseline for what a designer at Casumo could look like, as well as strive to be better at. We’re hiring you for your know-how, life experiences and your opinion, not for your ability to read articles and recite them back to us. Just relax and be yourself, this is a normal conversation with human beings like yourself.
Almost there
You’re quite the hot shot aren’t you. If you’ve made it this far, you’re doing super well! Now chances are that after the second interview we might have sent you a design exercise, or better yet we asked you to come to the office for a working session with the rest of the team. The former is generally a small take-home exercise that helps us address certain gaps that we might need more clarification on. The latter, on the other hand, happens when we really want to embed you within the team to look at how you’d tackle a hypothetical scenario that’s bound to happen when you work here.
It could also be that you’ve had neither of the above and we’ve just invited you to talk to one of our founders or the design lead. This is usually the part where you’re briefed as to what the company is actually trying to achieve and why it’s going towards that direction. It could also serve as an indicator for both of us as to whether your own personal values align with the company’s values. You might also get to hear the backstory of Casumo and what the ‘end goal’ actually is.
Up to us now
Bravo! You’ve done your part, now it’s up to us to make a decision. Now this is the tough part. This is where that introspection I mentioned earlier comes in handy because here we’ll get together and speak about you, more specifically about what your role will be here. We often think from an outcome-based perspective where we would ask, if placing you in a specific team will mean a positive effect on a specific part of the product, given what we’ve seen and what you’ve shown us so far.
By doing this it we could compare your previous work to what problems lie ahead and how you could build solutions towards them. Everyone who’s met you will share their impressions and thoughts, all whilst keeping in mind the work that you’ll be doing, the work that you’ve done and what type of designer we’re actually looking for. If it’s a yes, then we’ll ping our design recruiter who’ll eagerly send you an email with the good news.
Pat yourself on the back
Welcome aboard! We’re super excited to have you join the team. Don’t dwell too much on the formalities, we’ll make sure everything’s set up. If you want to get a feel for how the first few weeks will look like, here’s another piece I penned back when I was a newbie.
Thanks to Slack, I rarely use email but after I’d gone through the Casumo hiring funnel, and got all set up I sent myself an email as a congratulatory pat on the back. You’re more than welcome to do something of the same ilk, you’ve got a new job, go nuts!
If you didn’t make it
We’re sorry it didn’t work out. Sometimes we might regretfully miss out or say no to certain people due to a number of circumstances. That being said, we definitely have a lot of learning to do. The one thing we’ll make sure of, is to send you clear concise feedback on why we didn’t say yes. That’s the least we can do for you, for the time you’ve spent getting to know us.
Let us know if you’ve been through our hiring funnel and could have had a better experience. It’s important for us to know that we’re doing the best we can to create a space where people are allowed to be their best selves. Even if you’re not a good fit now, that doesn’t mean you won’t be in a year’s time. So don’t be a stranger!
If you have any other questions, comments or suggestions go ahead and ping me on Twitter @justinmfarrugia or just leave your response below and I’ll try to answer as soon as possible.
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