How the design process helped us hire our first intern
A few months ago the product design team at Gusto had an exciting opportunity to bring on our very first intern. This was a chance for us to add someone on to the team who had less experience and might not have a traditional design background, which is really important to us here at Gusto, since it makes for more creative solutions and better products.
Since I’d expressed interest in mentorship, my manager asked me to run point. I cautiously agreed, but the task felt super daunting to me. I’ve never been hired an intern before, and this was our team’s first! I wasn’t sure how to approach it. Luckily, I realized I had the trusty toolkit every product designer has — the design process.
Let’s start at the beginning: The project plan
The official start of any project involves creating a project plan. This plan asks questions like what is the problem we’re solving? Who should be involved? Due to outside limitations, we had a tight timeline, so when did things have to happen in order for us to accomplish everything on time?
Align: Get everyone on board.
No design project happens in a vacuum. We had amazing partners in recruiting which helped us get our job posting up and coordinate applications. We also had the support of our Head of Product design, Namhee, who helped us get clarity on what type of candidate we should be looking for.
We started with a kickoff meeting in which we laid out expectations, established each of our individual roles, and the timeline. This meant everyone knew who was working on what at what time, and helped everything run smoothly.
Understand: What’s the goal? Who’s the user?
In this case, who is the intern? At Gusto, we hire very intentionally and interns are no different. Beyond being technically qualified, they must share our values and motivations. We also wanted someone who would be interested in a full-time opportunity after their internship, which became a requirement for who the intern was. This meant we were looking for graduating seniors or those who were recent graduates, as well as those who came from boot camp-style immersive programs.
Because of the size of our product design team at the time (9 designers), we would also need someone who already had visual design fundamentals so that they could hit the ground running. That way, we could focus on mentoring them in UX design and other areas of our process. They should have a portfolio and have excellent verbal and written communication, since they would be embedded with our EPD (Engineering, Product & Design) team working on actual projects.
Research: Don’t reinvent the wheel
Though we’ve never had a design intern, we have a pretty robust Engineering internship program and there have been a few Product Management interns as well. I reached out to those former interns as well as their mentors to see what worked well and what could have gone better in their internships. I even had the opportunity to connect with Chantal at PlanGrid and we talked about the challenges we were faced with as we were both embarking on similar journeys.
Explore: Look at all the possibilities
Defining who we wanted the intern to be turned out to be incredibly important, since we ended up getting 400+ applications in just 2 weeks. Having these criteria helped us objectively review applications and decide who we wanted to have chat with further.
Decision time: Pick a direction
Just like designing, having specific goals to accomplish makes it easier to narrow down from a wide exploration of all possibilities. It’s rough having too many colors or fonts to choose from, and establishing constraints can make your design better.
Of the 400 applications, we picked out around 20 candidates that matched our criteria. From those, we were able to bring 6 designers to an onsite interview, which included a UX exercise, a portfolio review, a values discussion and a 1x1 with the hiring manager.
Drumroll, please!
After meeting so many awesome people, it was difficult to make a choice since we saw so much of ourselves in these aspiring designers. Again, by referencing our goal and criteria, we were objectively able to name one person as the clear winner — meet Caitlin, our very first design intern!
Plot twist — a few weeks ago, we actually made Caitlin an offer and she’s joined us at Gusto full time! 🎉
Launch & Learn: What went well, and what should we do differently next time?
After the dust had all settled from our marathon hiring spree, I made sure to check in with the hiring committee to see if they had feedback. Since everything was documented in the project plan, it also became an artifact we can reference next time to improve the process.
One of the biggest learnings we had was to get more help reviewing applications. Lean teams can move quickly, but since we all had other responsibilities, reviewing portfolios and doing interviews became a big burden on us, especially since it was so time sensitive.
Overall, I would say this was a successful project. Not only did we accomplish our main goal of hiring our first intern, but we were also able to bring on a valuable new addition to our product design team.
Thanks for reading!
Want to use the design process with us?
Even though we’re no longer looking for an intern, we’re hiring for many other positions!
Kudos to Ava, Addy, Will Tsui, Will Newton, Jason Marder, and Ellen.
