We are hiring a designer: how can we ensure the hiring team members are all on the same page?
Anyone who has tried finding the right employee to fill a vacancy knows that multiple factors shape the hiring decision. But what do we do to safeguard the decision-making process against subjective bias? Last year we introduced a scoring framework to assess technical interviews for prospective designers, and we can already see how this facilitates the process and makes it easier for the best designers on the market and inDrive to find each other.
Posted by Nina Deeva-Kazanova
What is scoring?
Scoring is a system for assessing a candidate’s skills based on specific metrics. For each critical criterion essential for the position, points are awarded based on the candidate’s expertise and experience. For example, if we were hiring runners, how fast they ran would be one of the essential metrics for us to consider: we would give ten points to the fastest runners and two points to the slower runners. But when hiring designers, we usually evaluate typography, design skills, systems thinking capabilities, and other hard and soft skills.
It looks like this: the hiring manager interviews the candidates, asking them about their track record and experience. The manager gives the candidate a score based on the answers provided, cases, and test assignments. For example, five points for typography, seven for the ability to design interfaces, and four for systems thinking. The sum of the scores in this example would be 16 points. So, at least overall, this candidate is of more excellent value to us than the one who scored ten points.
Why do we need scoring?
As the company grows, the number of unfilled vacancies is also rising, which makes the hiring process more complicated. When sorting through a large pool of candidates, it’s important to process them systematically and figure out why a particular person is not a good fit. This information must be transparent to all stakeholders at any stage of the hiring process.
If more than one person shapes the hiring decision, it’s crucial to scrutinize the candidate’s actual strengths and weaknesses while avoiding any subjective judgments based on personal likes and dislikes. Any candidate has a unique set of strengths and weaknesses, and it’s critical to weigh and evaluate them in the aggregate, ensuring that a minor flaw is not turned into a block or a barrier.
The second important point is that we have many teams, and a designer who is not a good fit for one of them might be excellent for another based on one of the requirements. With this in mind, the hiring manager must have access to all the information from previous interviews. Scoring provides a perfect format for this: giving you a better understanding of the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses.
For example, we seek a designer with research experience to launch a new product. Prospective job applicants without that particular “feather in their cap” don’t cut us. Still, during the search process, we may come across great candidates with perfect systems thinking capabilities who fit perfectly into our design system team.
This approach also allows us to qualitatively compare candidates with each other without falling into the trap of subjective impressions. If we have two candidates with similar scores, we can analyze their scores and make an offer to the one whose skills best complement our team.
Mapping of competencies
To better understand the current level of skills and abilities our teams have, we use a competency map. And let’s evaluate our contemporary team designers against these criteria. Our new colleagues must also meet the same standards, so the basic scoring is done using our competency map.
Scoring, of course, cannot cover absolutely everything, but the basics are:
A range of technical points:
- a product mindset;
- custom research;
- design skills;
- experience working with analytics.
In addition, we include several soft skills, such as communication and teamwork. The items may vary slightly for different jobs, but the basic set looks like this.
With the grading system, we had pre-agreed the number of points corresponding to each skill level. Here’s an example of our breakdown of the analytics skill set for a designer.
It’s also important to base assessments on evidence and facts to avoid subjective feedback. I usually write brief interview notes in the comments for most skills evaluated, so I can refer back later and see why I gave that score. If this document goes to another hiring manager, you can save both parties time and forego a new technical interview if the candidate is interviewing for another position.
The hiring process is a funnel. In this case, we are not trying to move as many users as possible to the next stage, but on the contrary — we do everything to ensure that the time allotted for the next stage is not taken by any candidate who will fail. It requires collaborating with everyone involved in the process, for example, by finding out everyone’s key requirements for a designer’s position and trying to check these out in the previous steps.
At inDrive, job interviews consist of three phases: a brief call with a recruiter, a technical interview, and a test assignment afterward, followed by the final phase with the Head of Design and Head of Product. I conduct the technical interview, whose primary purpose is to determine if the candidate can successfully work as a product designer in our company. To ensure all applicants who are interviewed are eligible candidates, I pre-agree with the recruiters on what they check at their stage of the process. For example, this might require specific experiences, like dealing with high-load services or mobile apps.
The stage after a mine is the final interview with the Head of Design and the Head of Product, and I’m aware that at that point, they will be scrutinizing the candidates for product mindset and assigning product problems for them to solve. So, I can pre-test their product mindsets during the technical interview to make sure that only those who fit the bill here make it through to the next stage.
How to determine a grade based on a scoring evaluation
As mentioned earlier, each skill has four proficiency levels and an approximate score ranging from 2–3 points. The highest score corresponds to the position of Principal or Lead and the lowest one to that of Junior. If we multiply the range of points for senior by the number of skills, we get an approximate number of points for that level. We can get distortions when dealing with a range, but for an initial alignment between stakeholders, this scale is good enough for our purposes.
What have we gained?
Our most important advantage is that the hiring process has become more transparent for everyone involved. Scoring makes it much easier to make hiring decisions and discuss them with stakeholders. Hiring decisions are now made in a more informed way, taking into account the candidates’ skills and abilities rather than on post-interview impressions.
Now we can review the scoring sheets along with detailed notes after each interview, and when we want to refer back to the candidates’ profiles again, we can save the time spent on the technical interview phase. We have multiple product design teams in our company. Often, when we have selected our new team member, many great designers might get left by the wayside even though they would also be a good fit for us.
In this case, we can recommend prospective designers for other open positions within the company and pass the related materials on to another hiring manager. Here, the scoring approach ensures there is no need to process them through the entire hiring funnel all over again.
