Redesigning design hiring on my team
Finding the right people to design for the Canadian government.
10 months ago, my design team didn’t even exist.
Since then I’ve reviewed many portfolios, conducted several 1-on-1 and panel interviews, hired a designer, and today, I’m in the process of hiring another designer for my small (but mighty!) team within the Canadian public service.
When I first joined the bureaucracy as Design manager, I was managing people who—for no real fault of their own—were by-products of a departmental re-organization. They either didn’t want to design, or didn’t adequately know how to design.
Doubling our design resources in less than a year has made me critically examine our organization’s hiring process for designers.
As I explored this area of my work, I’ve been asking myself and those around me:
Are our design selections fair? Are they inclusive?
Do we test for the right things?
Are hiring follow-ups and decisions made transparently and efficiently?
Are candidates (those selected and those not selected) treated with respect?
Are candidates aware of the challenges of designing in bureaucracy?
Is the government prepared and ready to receive talented designers?
Redesigning our design hiring process this past year to be more fair, more inclusive, and more aligned with our organization’s objectives has been its own design project.
Any hiring process is also a chance for the organization to apply a human-centred approach. I’ve been intentional about trying new things, learning from failures, and iterating to improve our design hiring approach. Here are seven of those things.
Make a non-values list
Designers should know upfront that designing for bureaucracy comes with its set of unique challenges and opportunities.
It takes a certain kind of mindset to want to be here.
In her article, “Scaling the impact of human-centered design in the public sector”, designer Krystal Yan alludes to two core differences between doing design for the private sector organizations vs. the public service: motivation and timeline for change.
Because the public sector is motivated by more than profit, the way designers can scale their impact is different. Also, because it’s purposely designed to not change as quickly, it’s even more important for design to play a role.
Accepting these core differences can help prepare incoming designers to take on the complex, long-term challenges ahead of government.
That’s why I love the idea of publishing non-values: an honest set of reasons someone wouldn’t want to join our company.
On Deck, an accelerator that also offers a community of entrepreneurs, tech talent and programs, has a webpage entirely dedicated to their non-values.
I followed suit and made a list.
Being a designer in bureaucracy is different than joining a startup or the private sector in general. Among many points of difference: pace of work, extent of creative autonomy, team workflow and org culture.
Calling out some of these differences early on helps to manage candidates’ expectations, and on my end, saves me from going too far down the wrong path.
Be transparent about the hiring process and timeline
When someone is looking for a new job, there are few things more stressful and frustrating than being kept in the dark about the hiring process.
Although my design hiring process has evolved several times since I first started to define it (thanks to countless helpful readings, research and first-hand learnings), I set an intention from the start to be transparent and very specific with candidates about: the number of interviews, the estimated effort required, and when they could expect to hear from me at every step.
I adhere as closely as possible to the process. Doing so helps with at least three things:
- As a hiring manager, I’m showing that I respect the candidate’s attention, time and interest.
- As a leader, I’m showing that I’m organized enough to have thought the process through and to plan my resources (schedule/time, staff, admin work, etc.) accordingly.
- As someone this designer might be reporting into, I’m building trust early on. If I can’t keep my word consistently during the hiring process, how will this person know if this job is really what they want to be signing up for?
Tell them early on how much they’ll be getting paid
A few years ago, LinkedIn conducted a study to determine which parts of a job description were most helpful, appealing, or made people more likely to apply. Salary range was the most highlighted portion of the job description.
“Of course, there is the corporate culture, responsibilities and growth potential, but if we’re being honest, money talks. You’ve probably noticed that nearly all of the job descriptions lack basic salary information.” — Jack Kelly, Forbes
While there are many debates around the pros and cons of disclosing and not disclosing salaries on job descriptions, I always address salary expectations in my first conversation with design candidates.
The Canadian public service has the benefit of publicly listed classifications, collective agreements and salary ranges. I avail myself of every relevant link to share with designers upfront.
The feedback I’ve received from candidates about this approach is consistently positive: “so helpful”, “a pleasant surprise”, “very refreshing”.
Skip the whiteboard challenge
Like Faire’s design team and a growing number of design-forward organizations revisiting their hiring strategy, one of the latest changes to our design hiring process was to remove the whiteboard and take-home challenges.
Peter Merholz, author of Org Design for Design Orgs and prolific blogger, wrote an insightful article detailing several reasons why he considers design exercises a bad interview practice.
Ultimately, after interviewing a number of design candidates, my team also came to the conclusion that time-boxed, artificial design exercises weren’t the best indicators of a design candidate’s breadth of skill and critical thinking, nor a great predictor of their future performance.
Instead, we found that:
- Having designers share a portfolio project or case study they’ve worked on allows them to feel comfortable and gives them the space to explain their design process.
- Carrying out a thoughtful experience-based interview allows designers to illustrate, based on real-life situations, how they approached a given situation.
- Speaking with references/people they’ve worked with before provided adequate further insight into their reliability, attitude and capacities.
Always hire the person over skills
During my first months as a Design manager in the Canadian public service, Pablo Boerr (Senior product designer at Shopify) shared a piece of hiring wisdom with me: “Always, always hire the person over skills”.
Over time I have found this advice to be extremely wise, particularly in the public service where professional development and learning new skills is largely encouraged and supported. So I have to concur with Anthony Bourdain: skills can be taught, but changing a person’s character is not really up to us.
Hiring a designer who can thrive in bureaucracy is much more than passing a portfolio review—it’s looking for culture fit, long-term mindset, and creative resilience.
Call every person who made it to the final round
I have tremendous respect for the investment that every designer candidate make in me throughout the hiring process. They’ve dedicated time and effort to better understand my needs as a hiring manager, the mission of my Design team, and the vision of the public service.
As simple as it might be to copy and paste a standardized rejection email, as a rule of thumb, I personally like to call every person who made it to the final round of interviews but wasn’t selected.
Before the phone call, I take time to prepare several points and then share them live on the call:
- A message of thanks
- Decision and offer to provide feedback
- What I and the Design panel particularly appreciated about them and their work
- What we noted as particular opportunities for improvement
- Keeping in touch
In a follow-up email to candidates, I like including an uplifting illustration, quote, or article. Something I wish I had received a few years ago when interviewing in Paris.
Recently, for example, I’ve been sharing Briandito Priambodo’s thoughtfully illustrated article, “Being rejected does not make you a reject”.
Don’t overlook the onboarding experience
Although the notoriously lengthy HR process and paperwork can sometimes make it feel like just getting someone in the door in government is the major accomplishment, our job doesn’t really end there. It’s actually just begun.
As Paul Jelinek writes, the onboarding experience plays a critical role in a new employee’s engagement, productivity, commitment and retention:
Once organizations find the right talent, it’s crucial that they’re doing everything they can to keep them on board and engaged. Employers will also need to focus on hiring and getting people up to speed faster to align with changing business demands.
With no dedicated HR team within our organization for onboarding, I started to create customized documents for my new design hires: “Your first day”, “Your first week”, and “Your second week”—complete with realistic tasks, important contact info, projects, org charts and checklists.
I also found that a buddy-mentoring approach, pairing up new designers with another member of the UX team, can help people ease into their new role and feel comfortable asking any questions during their first months on the job.
One of my team’s on-going projects is to build an onboarding manual for new designers, containing all the important information for getting started remotely.
Resources that have helped inform my team’s ever-evolving design hiring approach:
- Leading design hiring at Figma by Noah Levin
- “Non-values” by On Deck
- Designing an interview process for product designers by Alexandra Cottong at Faire
- Design exercises are a bad interviewing practice by Peter Merholz
- Being rejected does not make you a reject by Briandito Priambodo
🤓 I’m super interested in learning from you too! If any of this resonates, feel free to connect with me on: Medium | Twitter | LinkedIn
