Developing design teams, creating new era career paths
As a Design Lead every day, I’m looking for new ways to improve design teams. You will create a strong design culture if you put a lot of effort into it. For a long time over the years, the career paths in this industry have been going in a single direction and have usually always had one way to walk them. However, this issue too exists in different sectors.
The demand for designers has been increasing; they have taken advantage of the labor environment to improve their salaries, at the cost of their career paths, which could have been generating frustration for them further ahead.
Designers have disagreements such as:
- The career paths weren’t clear from the start. A designer doesn’t know how to reach a new level or improve their professional skills.
- The structures inside the team are always thinking about the current size of the organization. In general, companies don’t have a future vision.
- There isn’t a concept of a design role (mentor) focused on improving the team (some designers would like to have it)
- Not all designers want to manage people or have the skill necessary to get the work done.
- Some designers have a passion for one specialty that doesn’t exist in their company.
Luckily, companies with future vision as Spotify, Google, Microsoft, Square, Facebook, N26, and Zendesk, have been making efforts to create parallel paths for professional growth to allow people, to be able to choose between Individuals Contributors or People Manager.
We decided to move forward into this to build a better user experience in a design career path. Our company believes in this model and promotes a trend in design teams.
How Might We create a new career path model that gives value to designers?
Creating a custom path for designers.
Design principles and values
Simple: One can choose a path according to his preference.
Human: People are always first as the principal objective of our design strategy.
Realistic: Clear rules from the start, designers are clear about the conditions and the necessary skills for their personal growth.
This model decreases our employee desertion rate, and it will create a better employer brand experience that helps optimize the hiring budget.
We use The Dual Track Model
Expert path [Individual Contributor]
Preferred skills:
- Has extraordinary technical design skills.
- Delivers delightful and quality products that solve real problems.
- Executes with autonomy.
- Influences the product roadmap and builds a product impact.
- Makes effective executions (trade-off).
- Identifies and solve product challenges with tenancy,
- Mentors other designers
Manager [People Manager]
Preferred skills:
- Acts as a connector of ideas linking teams.
- Proceeds as a dual mix role between soft and hard skills.
- Knows when to be direct o suggest.
- Builds a strong team culture.
- Mentoring talent in different disciplines.
- Proselytizes the best design practices.
- Enjoys people growing.
- Creates new ways of working.
- Defines strategies in function of team improvement.
Remember, being a manager is not the only way to develop.
One of the biggest known problems that people or organizations have nowadays is the shortage of leadership talent. It’s important to highlight that being an expert in hard skills won’t make you automatically a good leader.
A good leader is a person who can communicate, inspire, get out the best of each team member, take care of them and foster professional growth.
Being a manager is requires implicit leadership skills. It would help if you spent time listening and protecting people’s wellness.
Pay Scale ‘3 non-traditional career paths to increase employee retention.’
We will be a reference in design career paths locally and globally. We might bring a solution to the pains of designers, creating a differential value to attract and retain world-class talent.
That opens the door to a new era of hiring and efficiency.
Would you please not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any further assistance
