The UX Strategy of Hiring Juniors Over Seniors

Read this article on our blog at playbook.uie.com.

“That was the big mistake we made.” I was listening to the new Senior Director of User Experience at a Fortune 200 company. They were in their 4th month as Senior Director, having inherited the team from the person who had started the UX group.

The Senior Director had just finished up a meeting with all of the group’s 160 UX professionals. Practically everyone complained about finding their daily work challenging.

Some team members were so frustrated that they were strongly considering leaving. Many already have. The team was losing great people.

“We’re only hiring the best and brightest.”

The Senior Director’s predecessor had a philosophy of only hiring “the best and brightest” UX designers, researchers, and content specialists. Using this philosophy, the team that they built was amazing. Some of the best UX folks in the world were on this team. It was a who’s who of amazingly talented individuals.

The predecessor had grown the team out of just a small handful of mainly visual designers. The predecessor revamped the team, hiring leaders in user research, interaction design, information architecture, content strategy, and other expertise that was new to the…