Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
When it comes to hiring a new designer, you are the beholder and the beauty is a portfolio you may not truly understand. Creativity is frustratingly slippery to quantify, and there's much more to the design process than a few hours in Photoshop. If you're going to assess candidates at a meaningful level, both at the sourcing stage and interview stage, you need to have a firm understanding of where they are coming from. This begins with knowing what you're looking at when it comes to a digital portfolio, and progresses with knowing the right questions to ask in an interview to really learn about their process and where their skills truly lie.
Assessing Portfolios
Whether you're looking at a personal website or a Dribbble profile, don't think of the work just in terms of individual pieces. Rather, think of the entire portfolio as a single piece. Is it well organized? Easy to navigate? Does it make sense top to bottom? If the presentation of their work doesn't appear to have considered User Experience, why would any of the rest of their work? As our Lead Product Designer quipped, a portfolio with no UX would be like coming to an interview with a wrinkled and coffee-stained resume.
Next, take a look at their individual style. Finding someone whose work already leans toward the aesthetic of your brand guarantees they'll create relevant and useable material. Not having created material finely on brand for you shouldn't be an automatic red light, however. Give the individual a chance to describe why they landed on a specific mood or theme for a piece, and if they can articulate a process by which they received constant feedback from the client and made something directly in line with their needs, it can show their versatility and mindfulness towards an end product and client needs. Still, even if a Designer is extremely talented, if they don't show a proclivity towards or interest in the type of content you're looking for, you run the risk of them winding up as a disengaged, unstimulated employee. Have them explain their natural style and how they average that with the sometimes unrelated needs of clients.
Meet the Real Designer
Once you've assessed a candidate's work, reached out to them in a meaningful, personal way, and they've agreed to come in for an interview, you've still got loads of work to do. First, remember that you're still selling them on your opportunity, and there's only so many hoops someone will jump through in order to work for you. Great interviews run as a two-way street, a give and take of assessment wherein both parties sell the other on their abilities and professional attractiveness. Bearing this in mind, you want to ask them the sort of questions that let you truly learn about their background and skills. Here are a few examples of things you can ask in order to meet the real candidate:
What's your favorite font?
This type of question exists for every department, because what you're really doing is gauging passion and engagement. The answer here is not so much important as is the individual's ability to answer. In my experience, any Designer worth their salt can riff about fonts until your ears bleed, and have equally strong opinions on their favorite and least favorite type.
Tell me about the full lifecyle of your process on X project.
Like I mentioned above, design is far more than a few hours in illustration software. Clean and usable design is the result of research, iteration, and feedback. If they can't walk you through the multi-step process in completing a recent project, either the project wasn't completed with true forethought and care, or they weren't personally involved.
What are some examples of companies whose design you admire?
Somewhat related to the font question, this one shows how engaged in the space your candidate is, and gives you a sense of what they consider to be great design that they presumably aspire to.
What's your dream design project?
This one is illuminative in that it speaks to the Designer's true wheelhouse. An individual's focus underneath the umbrella of what's referred to as design is unique, but when you ask them something that makes their eyes light up you begin to learn what's specific to them. This is a great closing question to ask when you want to see just how much a candidate's skill and desire lines up with your specific design needs.
What are some questions you ask Designers? Leave a comment or tweet @EnteloRob
