I hired 100+ Product Designers. 10 Steps to Find, Engage, and Make the Right Hire.
1. Prioritize your design needs.
Before diving into the hiring, it’s crucial to understand your current design needs. Start by answering these 3 questions:
- Why are you hiring for design now and not earlier?
- What value will this hire bring?
- How will this role fit into your organization?
Get clear on your goals, and what candidate experiences and skills are the most and least needed for your team now. This will help you focus on what matters, rather than looking for a Swiss-knife professional.
2. Define hiring criteria and a scoring system.
Create a shareable document/notion page with others involved in hiring, where you define the criteria and skills the candidates will be evaluated on. It keeps everyone aligned on what a “perfect match” means for your company.
A scoring system, even a simple one, will help you make fair decisions after interviews. Here’s a basic example: after you and your team speak to a candidate, assign 0–5 points for each required skill, then calculate the candidate’s total score. It will also help you track your thoughts and remember all the candidates.
3. Write a clear job description.
A great starting point is to combine a ChatGPT-generated reply with similar job posts from companies that share your product area and/or culture. This raw job description will surely need your input and edits, but you can start with a prompt like this:
Let your job description sound like a story and align with the company’s tone of voice. Start selling the role right in it — let it answer the question:
“Why would a perfect candidate want to apply?”.
4. Establish a clear hiring process.
One of the best things you can do as a hiring manager is to establish a streamlined hiring process. Make sure each step has clear timelines (e.g. 2–3 days max for a candidate review), and everyone involved in interviews and communication with candidates knows what is expected from them at each stage.
A typical design hiring process includes:
- Portfolio Review.
- Intro call with a recruiter/hiring manager.
- In-depth portfolio presentation, whiteboard session, design critique, take-home design challenge (one or two of them).
- Meeting with the team.
5. Promote the role (get inbound leads).
You can post your design job on:
Linkedin is still the most powerful place to promote jobs, find, and engage with talent. You should be able to post one free job, and if you need more, your recruitment team should be able to assist you.
Let your connections know you’re hiring — high chances are your perfect candidate is already in your network!
6. Engage with candidates proactively (build the outbound strategy).
If you’re hiring for a senior role, seeking specific skills, or struggling to close the position with inbound applicants, you should reach out to candidates proactively.
First, you’ll need to find the ones that are a good fit. Linkedin is best for sourcing.
A good starting point is to look for people who design products similar to yours (you can also filter by company size). This way, you get a list of designers likely tackling similar problems required for your product. You can also use keywords to find the right person (e.g. iOS, travel, research).
You might need to get a Linkedin Saves Navigator subscription to access all the filters. I created a detailed UX sourcing guide — it’s here.
7. Craft genuine messages that engage.
You can message candidates on linkedin, dribble or in an email (usually found in the portfolio).
Let your messages sound genuine and spark the conversation. Use some personalization to grasp the candidate's attention. Here’s a nice example you can use:
I love using a free TextBlaze text expansion app — it saves time with standardized messages like outreach, follow-ups, and rejection notices.
8. Create a set of interview questions/scripts.
Prepare a set of questions you and your team will ask all the candidates. Using the same questions ensures fairness in hiring. We’ve put together a list of the most frequent questions and design challenges you can use in your interviews.
Track your interview feedback and candidate updates in the ATS (applicant tracking system), or if you still don’t have one, use the Notion Applicant Tracker free template:
9. Make candidates feel valued and respected.
60% to 80% of candidates believe that their interaction with the hiring manager influences their decision to accept a job offer.
Put your u̵s̵e̵r̵ candidate first.
You’ve been a candidate yourself many times — think about the hiring processes that made you feel good and the ones you felt like a real struggle. Some tips on creating great candidate experience that are often overlooked:
- Make it easy for candidates to apply for your jobs
- Tell candidates what to expect in each interview
- Give feedback within 3–4 days max
- Share a “no updates update” if some decisions take longer than expected
10. Build trust and sell along the way.
Candidates will fall off at every step of the funnel. You will likely talk to hundreds of candidates at the top of the funnel to make your first few hires.
Answer yourself: “Why would they choose us?” and ensure each interaction between the candidate and your company reflects that.
Be honest about the challenges and opportunities you have. It builds a genuine relationship between you and the candidate and makes people want to work with you.
Our complete, free guide to hiring UX designers, recommended by Vitaly Friedman is here: https://hirey.notion.site/UX-Hiring-101-28bbac41094b4888ac3f5ed4e4229300?pvs=4
I’m Kris, founder of Hirey Design Recruiters 👋
We help our clients build design teams worldwide. Let’s connect on Linkedin!
If you need help with hiring or you’re looking for a design recruiter’s advice, drop me a line.
