UX Design
Where are all the “good” designers?
I took up hiring UX Designers for a couple of months, and I didn’t find anyone.
I wouldn’t call myself a great designer with a super awesome portfolio who can judge people’s resumes and portfolios. But I have a rudimentary understanding of how a portfolio should look — that comes with the experience of seeing so many resumes and design portfolios in the past five years. So I gave myself a little permission to judge.
The HR team shared a list of designers found via job portals, referrals, and recommendations, while the design team made another list via browsing on LinkedIn. We had over 150 profiles, and these were some of the observations made from a preliminary look through:
- No portfolios
- Dribbble portfolios for a Senior UX Designer role — we needed someone to take the lead on client calls, work with cross-functional teams, develop the strategy, build wireframes, etc.
- A portfolio only filled with graphics, illustrations and photography for a UX Designer role. (Eventually hired a few of these for our open graphic designer roles).
- There were portfolios with overly detailed case studies (I am guilty of this and am currently revamping mine 😬). Come to the point. Don’t ramble on and on and on about the project. Tell us your contributions to the project, what the project was about, the proposed solution, and some process shots and screens (if any) of the interfaces you did.
- They were calling themselves experts with 3–5 years of experience. Use the term; let your portfolio speak of it. Don’t if you don’t have the work. None of us is an expert; we are learning every day.
- Some of the portfolios had great work, but the result was overshadowed by over the top animations and interactions. Use animations sparingly and smartly.
- A significant chunk of the portfolios had excellent work, but no section talked about the person.
- A few had mind-blowingly impressive resumes and LinkedIn profiles — with experience working in more prominent companies, but the portfolios were just meh.
I can go on and on about the observations, but you get the gist.
It’s been months on end, but we haven’t found anyone who fits the profile. Some who fit the job description and went through our phone interview round never got back to us with their expectations. While the remaining who did get back to us with their expectations went over the roof with those. Yes, we were willing to pay good for the role, but the expectations that people had, didn’t match their work experience or the kind of work they did.
So yeah, that’s how it is going with the hiring. I have put it on pause at the UX Design hiring at the moment and oversee hiring for other roles. I have had enough of looking at portfolios for the moment—time to look at Content Writers now 🤓 (already imagining the process for this 🥲).
Suppose you have any valuable tips on hiring designers (I am no pro at it, any advice will be appreciated 😊), how to judge portfolios, questions during interviews, etc. Or, if you want to chat, please do hit me up here or on LinkedIn. I appreciate any help/insights/great conversations that come my way.
