As the never-ending War for Talent rages on, more and more types of talent seem to be entering the fray. While
the elusive software engineers seem to be in perpetual high demand, recruiters are increasingly hard pressed to find top sales, marketing, and of course, design talent. The latter of which appears to be due to a re-orientation of large organizations towards focusing on design and installing procedures to nuture and develop designers. Why the sudden focus, and why are top tier designers so hard to find?
Recently, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, one of the world's most prominent VC firms, introduced a new partner, John Maeda. Why is this noteworthy? You guessed it, he's a designer. Similarly, Irene Au, former head of Google’s UI team, just accepted a position as an operating partner at the Khosla Ventures.
The reason VC firms are snapping up design-oriented talent to help them source investments is due to the importance of brand, messaging, and ease of use that we're seeing with hot new companies. Think of Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp. These are all simple applications who see wild popularity due to seamless user experience. Top VC firms are deciding they need critical design-focused eyes to suss out whether the products of young companies have what it takes to take off.
In light of Maeda's hiring, both he and our very own CEO, Jon Bischke, made an appearance on BloombergTV to discuss the very design focus phenomenon. Check out the full interview below:
There you have it recruiting pros. Designers are becoming more integral to companies, both in terms of the start-up and at the very highest levels, as we've seen with top VC firms as well as Apple and Yahoo. The stud designer is also more elusive than ever for the same reason as engineers. The best designers go beyond Photoshop and can build your website from wireframes to production through their mastery of CSS, Javacript, and HTML.
What experiences have you had with the ever-increasing demand for designers? Leave a comment or tweet @EnteloRob!
