Lessons Learned From Leading New Web Professionals

• By Jeremy Girard
• October 18th, 2013
 
• Business, Communication
 
• 25 Comments

Over the course of my career, I have had the opportunity to lead various Web design and development teams, including a number of professionals fresh out of school. Along the way, I’ve made my share of mistakes and learned some valuable lessons.

Some new team members have jumped right in and begun contributing in a meaningful way almost immediately, and others have struggled to adjust to their new role because I failed as a leader and didn’t give them the tools they needed to succeed. One thing I’ve definitely learned is that the success of a new team member is determined not only by their own abilities and drive, but by the leadership on the team they are joining.

Recently, I was preparing to welcome a young new designer to our company. This position would be his first real experience working in our industry; so, prior to his start date, I decided to make a list of some of those lessons I’ve learned over the years as a way to remind myself of what I needed to do to make sure he had the resources needed to succeed here. As I wrote my list, I realized that many of these lessons were actually common sense — and yet, if my past experiences are any indication, these common-sense lessons are exactly the ones that are easy to neglect and that we often need to be reminded of.

MAKE THEM FEEL WELCOME.

Joining a company can be an intimidating experience, especially if the company has a close-knit culture or the team has been together for some time — two factors that contribute to new employees feeling like outsiders. As a leader, you can make your new team member feel welcome by showing them, both in actions and in words, that they are absolutely now a member of the team.

If your website lists biographies and pictures of employees, make it a point to add the new team member’s information quickly. Even in organizations that have a “probationary period” to evaluate new hires, those employees should still be added to the website sooner than later. Having a presence on the website, alongside their colleagues, demonstrates to those new team members that they are a part of the group.

Adding a biography, as FreshTilledSoil does, shows a new employee that they are part of the group.

You can also use social media to welcome new employees to the organization. Welcoming them on Twitter (or in whatever social media you use) shows the new member that you are excited to have them on board. Your Twitter followers will sometimes chime in as well, echoing your welcome and adding to the warmth and positivity.

Finally, you can make new employees feel welcome by involving them in events and activities with other members of the company. This doesn’t have to be elaborate — a simple lunch is a great way to get out of the office for a bit and to interact as more than coworkers. By including new hires in the lunch party, you give them a chance to socialize with others and to feel like more than the “new person.”

MAKE TIME FOR REGULAR MEETINGS.

This lesson is certainly “common sense,” but also one that I, admittedly, find myself failing to follow most frequently.

It is easy to get caught up in projects and other responsibilities and overlook that new employees, especially those new to the industry, need a lot of guidance early on. I try to meet daily with new team members for at least their first few weeks at the company. These meetings do not need to be lengthy — in fact, most are 10 minutes or less — but they provide an outlet for the employee to ask questions without feeling like they are interrupting an activity. Because these meetings are scheduled in advance, the person knows that time has been allotted to their questions; this is important because, even if you have an open-door policy and encourage new team members to come to you with questions, they will be reluctant to “bother” you. You can alleviate this concern with regular meetings.

Without fail, whenever my schedule gets crazy and I start skipping these regular meetings, I notice that the stress level of my team rises accordingly. These meetings not only give new employees an outlet to ask questions, but give me an opportunity to let them know what is expected of them and how they are doing. This open dialogue is essential as the person adjusts to their role in the company.

Of all the lessons on this list, this one is undoubtedly the easiest to let slip — but also the one with the worst consequences if allowed to go too far.

Meetings are essential for new employees, who will need a lot of guidance early on. (Image: Dennis Crowley)

ASSURE THEM THAT FAILURE IS AN OPTION.

No one wants to fail at a task, least of all a new employee who is trying to make a good impression. But, as Seth Godin so perfectly stated in a recent interview with Kara Miller on NPR’s Innovation Hub:

“If failure is not an option, then neither is success.”

New employees need to know that making mistakes is OK. If failure is not an option, then you will become crippled from trying to get everything right the first time. Anyone who has worked on the Web knows that trial and error is essential to the job. New employees need to be assured that failure will not be held against them.

Of course, a balance must be struck here. While failure is acceptable, it must yield a better understanding of the problem and an eventual solution. Failure is a means to finding a solution.So, while new team members should know that failure is an option, they should also know to use each failure to propel themselves to an eventual success.

Mistakes are a part of the job – as long as you learn from those mistakes. (Image: ktpupp)

ENCOURAGE THEM TO CONTRIBUTE.

I once had a manager who felt that if you attended a meeting, you had to contribute to the meeting. He would often call randomly on attendees who had yet to contribute to a meeting and ask, “What do you think of this?” as a way to involve them in the conversation.

While I understood his reasoning, his execution left a lot to be desired. Too often, individuals would be called upon and would struggle to come up with an answer to a question that they really weren’t prepared to speak about. It put people on edge as they waited their turn. Sometimes, attendees would even rush to contribute early in a meeting so that they wouldn’t be called out later. This rush to participate usually added a lot of extra words but very little value to the conversation.

Instead of putting new employees in the hot seat, I try to find other ways to make them comfortable with speaking in front of our group. One way, when conducting design reviews, is to ask a new designer to present their work to the team, alerting them well before the meeting so that they can prepare a short presentation. Furthermore, because everyone is commenting on each other’s designs and offering constructive feedback, new employees feel comfortable speaking up and offering their own comments. This is an excellent way to help them speak more frequently in front of other team members and clients and to engage in other types of meetings.

KEEP THEM BUSY.

You’ve probably hired the new person because your company is busy and there is work to be done. That’s great, because keeping new team members busy is critical.

Long-time employees will undoubtedly have built relationships with certain clients over time. Many of those clients will prefer to communicate with these employees than with a manager or salesperson. This is perfectly fine, as long as your company has a system in place to properly estimate, carry out and invoice this work. These client relationships can keep employees busy with new work.

Additionally, some long-time employees work on internal projects, as time permits. When they hit a lull between projects or wait for feedback from clients, they fall back on these projects to keep busy.

New employees have neither of these sources of work. Instead, they look to you to assign them tasks and keep them busy — and they will likely complete those tasks as quickly as possible to make a good impression. This is great, but also a challenge for you as the team’s leader. If you do not have a bank of work to keep the new team member busy, they will drift and grow bored, unsure of what to do with their time. Aside from your short daily meetings with them, digging up meaningful work for them will require a time commitment from you.

Before bringing a designer on board, review what projects you would expect them to work on for their first 30 to 60 days — both client projects and internal initiatives. Identify accounts into which you can integrate them so that they can begin building their own relationships, and let them know what the process is if they run short on work and you are not around to assign something else. This could be assisting other team members, furthering their training and education, or experimenting with new technologies or techniques for evaluation.

PREPARE TO EDUCATE.

Part of your job as a manager is to continue a new employee’s education and fill in gaps in their knowledge. While this certainly involves mentoring and directing them to relevant resources, one of my favorite ways is to take them to a Web conference.

Many students graduate from school not having had the chance to attend a professional conference. Industry events such as the Smashing Conference and An Event Apart offer new Web designers and developers a chance to meet and learn from their peers in an energizing environment. Taking a new team member to a good conference opens their eyes to just how awesome and welcoming this industry can be. It also shows them that the company has invested in their success and is willing to spend money to help them grow in their knowledge and their career.

Every time I have taken a new employee to a Web conference, the experience has been fantastic. Such events show the team member that they are a part of something much bigger than our company — they now belong to the Web community as a whole.

Inspire new employees by taking them to a quality conference. (Image: Kris Krug)

GREAT EMPLOYEES NEED GREAT LEADERS.

Being a leader is an awesome responsibility, especially if you are leading people who are just entering our industry. Whether you follow the lessons covered here or have more profound ways of leading new team members, the challenge you face is that, to have a great team, you must be a great leader. You must take a consistent approach to welcoming new employees to your organization, helping them to build on their strengths and acquire new ones and supporting them in their career growth.

If you do your job right, then one day, the new hire you are leading will pick up the torch and lead the next generation of designers and developers.

For more thoughts on leadership techniques in a creative agency, see “On Creative Leadership” and “Assuming Leadership in Your Design Agency.”

Summary: Do’s And Don’ts

• Do make new team members feel welcome and part of the team by including them in company activities — both in and outside the office.
• Do schedule regular meetings to allow new team members to ask questions and get feedback on their performance.
• Do not allow your busy schedule to constantly override those regularly scheduled meetings, leaving the new employee with no way to get the guidance they need early on.
• Do assure new employee that failure is a part of the job — so long as it propels them to the solution.
• Do not put new team members on the spot by calling on them unannounced in meetings.
• Do encourage participation by giving employees time to prepare before presenting to the group.
• Do keep new employees busy with meaningful work.
• Do not assume that new employees will know how to fill their time if they run out of assigned work.
• Do educate and inspire new team members by introducing them to the Web community a whole, including at conferences and other industry events.
• Do recognize that the team members you lead today will become our industry’s leaders tomorrow.

(Front page credits: David Joyce)

(al, il, ea)

via Smashing Magazine Feed http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/10/18/lessons-learned-leading-new-web-professionals/

Resources from Hiring The Best UX Designers Virtual Seminar

By Jared Spool

August 1st, 2013

Here’s some resources from today’s UIE Virtual Seminar, Hiring the Best UX Designers:

• First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
• Hire With Your Head by Lou Adler
• The Essential Guide for Hiring and Getting Hired by Lou Adler
• Lynn Teo’s great presentation: Portfolios Matter
• Assessing Your Team’s Skills
• The KJ-Technique: A Group Process for Establishing Priorities

via UIE Brain Sparks http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2013/08/01/resources-from-hiring-the-best-ux-designers-virtual-seminar/

UX Staffing and the Penny Stock Problem

By Jared Spool

July 30th, 2013

When starting to grow a UX team, it’s tempting to shop for new team members with skills to tackle the UX challenges you have now. Unfortunately, now isn’t forever and it’s likely the challenges will change.

UX suffers from something I like to call the penny stock problem. Imagine you’ve bought a really cheap stock on the stock market — one that only costs 50¢ a share. If that stock price increases by 25¢, you’ve increased your wealth by 50%. Nice.

However, when that stock is more successful and trading at, say, $50 a share, a 25¢ increase is not even a dent in the wealth. It would take a lot more to get that 50% increase.

UX challenges grow the same way stocks do. When a team first looks at their product’s or service’s user experience, they often find easy problems that have obvious, easy fixes. They are in the realm of the 50¢ penny stock. You can knock off the fixes easily and quickly, making everyone happy.

As time moves forward, the team does a great job getting through the easy “low-hanging fruit” problems, their job starts to get harder. And this is where those early staffing decisions play out.

If the way the team was built was through the lens of just those early penny stock problems, then it’s likely they won’t have the skills for the more complex problems they’re now facing. It’s critical, when assessing what types of skills the team should have, that they look beyond the penny stock problems, to what they’ll need when they have to tackle the bigger challenges

via UIE Brain Sparks http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2013/07/30/ux-staffing-and-the-penny-stock-problem/

UIETips: Hiring a UX Pro – 4 Techniques from Smart Teams

BY JARED M. SPOOL

Originally published: Jul 18, 2013

Right now, it’s difficult to hire a great UX professional. The demand is very high for both generalist UX designers and for specialists, like information architects or user researchers.

The most talented folks are hard to locate and bring in for interviews. Many of the folks who end up applying for openings lack the skills necessary to do the job.

This puts added pressure on an already stressful hiring process. In research we’ve conducted over the last couple of years, we’re seeing many teams turning away great candidates and hiring people who aren’t qualified to do the work.

Hiring is not a natural process. It needs to be designed, just like any experience. In our research, we learned that most teams amble into the hiring process by copying actions from others or by inventing wacky steps.

Getting great results when you’re inventing what you’re doing on the fly is very difficult. (And HR departments, we’re sad to say, don’t really know much more about hiring in general, let alone hiring great UX folks.)

Yet, we discovered several teams with a great hiring record. They are identifying ideal candidates and building teams that produce great results. Here are four techniques we learned from them that help ensure a successful hiring process:

Tip 1: Assessing the Current Team’s Skills

As one manager put it, “You wouldn’t go shopping if you didn’t know what your pantry and fridge already had or were missing.” We met several managers who started their hiring process with a team skill assessment.

The technique is straight forward. You make a list of the necessary skills needed from the team to complete the work over the next year. These skills might include information architecture, visual design, jQuery prototyping, user research, or copywriting. Whatever skills the work will demand to create great experience design.

In a spreadsheet, with each skill as a row, the hiring manager creates columns for each current team member. In each intersecting cell, the senior UX folks on the team rate the skills of each team member. (A few years back, we walked through a similar process in Assessing Your Team’s UX Skills.)

When done, the senior members of the team will have a great 30,000 foot view of the team’s strengths and weaknesses. Several teams we met keep these charts up to date in between hiring rounds, identifying where the team could use some training, when they might want to bring in consultants, and how to decide who to hire next.

When a team starts the hiring process without assessing their current skills, they end up duplicating skills they already have and leaving out important skills they truly need. The team ends up producing inferior designs even though they’ve just hired new talent.

Tip 2: Hiring Specifically for Hands or for Brains

We found the successful teams based their hiring on two areas - work they already know how to do and work they’ve never done before. The way they recruit, interview, and qualify the candidates changes dramatically, once they’ve decided which way they are heading.

We call these two directions hiring for hands and hiring for brains. Hiring for hands is when the team sees their future work filled with stuff they already know how to do well. They need to hire because they just don’t have enough people to handle the workload.

When a team hires for hands, they look for people with existing work practices that are close to how the team currently works. They want to hire people who quickly learn how their team works and adapt to their ways.

A team wants to hire for brains when the work ahead is unchartered territory. They want to bring in expertise to tackle problems and avoid obstacles they can’t yet see. The team needs an extra brain to figure this new stuff out, hopefully stocked with the knowledge and experience of solving similar challenges.

Unlike hiring for hands, the work isn’t defined yet, so the team will need people who are inclined to study the problem and puzzle out the challenges, instead of being told what to do. They need to look for folks who have comparable experience in the areas of the new work. And they need people who love a challenge, and have a history of bringing their teams along with them as they figure it out.

The personalities of great ‘hands’ candidates are quite different from those who will make great ‘brains’ candidates. If the team doesn’t know which they are hiring for, they are likely to choose the wrong person for the job, even though that individual is a very talented designer. This will yield frustration down the road when the new hire is itchy because they’re being asked to do things they aren’t interested in or can’t handle.

Tip 3: Defining Clear First Year Objectives

Several of the hiring managers we met were disciples of the recruiter Lou Adler, who’s book Hire with Your Head is the bible of performance-based hiring. In performance-based hiring, you don’t rely on previous experience, such as “5 years building e-commerce designs.” Instead, you declare intentions for the new hire’s work and let the candidate prove they can handle it.

One of the core tools in Mr. Adler’s method is the performance profile. This document describes the objectives the team needs the new hire to achieve in their first year.

We saw teams take this document very seriously. Before they wrote the job ad, reviewed resumes, or conducted interviews, they focused on creating a performance profile that accurately described the work ahead. Each objective was time based (“In the first two months”) and measurable (you could easily tell when it would be completed). The objectives were ordered, with the most important ones first.

Often, the entire team was involved in creating and discussing the objectives. These deliberations helped everyone understand why the position was needed. Often, team members who aren’t typically involved in the hiring process contributed details about the work that managers weren’t aware of.

By using a performance-based model, the team directly compares every candidates’ previous experience against what they’ll need them to do. This creates a more objective method to explore a candidate’s competence and potential.

Teams who launch into hiring without having a sense of the new hire’s first year objectives end up with a scattered approach to qualifying candidates. It’s harder to communicate which experience and traits to identify to the screening and interviewing team. Great candidates end up being eliminated prematurely and not-so-great candidates are given stronger consideration.

Tip 4: Design the Interview Experience

One surprise we found was how much effort the successful teams’ managers put into designing the entire interview experience. And they didn’t look at it from only the candidate’s experience; they also took a look at what it was like to be an interviewer.

Every member of the interview team was briefed and coached in advance. They went beyond proper interview techniques to how to qualify each candidate.

They held discussions on what would make a great new hire. They assigned each interviewer their own specific objective from the performance profile, so the interviewer would look at their candidates with a comparative lens specific to what the job entails.

The managers had assessment forms that looked at critical qualities like technical skills, project management skills, team skills, problem solving skills, and cultural fit. Before the first interviews, they went over the various ratings for each quality, establish a common vocabulary on what made a candidate great.

Teams that didn’t design the experience discovered their interview process to be slipshod. At the end of a round of interviews, they’d evaluate based on emotion instead of a thoughtful consideration of the candidate’s real capabilities. They’d miss important details. It was very likely they would dismiss someone on first impressions instead on whether that person was really suited for the job.

Being Thoughtful About Hiring

We’ve learned hiring the right individual is the most important factor to a UX team’s success. If a team brings on the wrong person, it drags everyone down. If they bring on the right person, the team can do more than ever before.

Yet hiring is not something we usually talk about professionally. It’s the most important thing we can do, yet we treat it like an after thought.

It doesn’t have to be this way. With techniques like the ones we’ve uncovered, teams can give thoughtful consideration to their interview process. In essence, they can design their interview process, just like everything else they work on. And when they do, they’ll see improvements to everything they do.

About the Author

Jared M. Spool is the founder of User Interface Engineering. He spends his time working with the research teams at the company and helps clients understand how to solve their design problems.

via UIE Brain Sparks http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2013/07/18/uietips-hiring-a-ux-pro/

Taking the Mystery out of Hiring User Experience Talent

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by Olga Khroustaleva, Tom Broxton

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You’re building a product development organization. Maybe you work at a large company, maybe at a small startup. In either case, the best developers and most enthusiastic product managers have been hired, but something is still missing from the team’s skill set. Who will take all the brilliant ideas and make them work for your users? Who can ensure that the technological solutions your engineers produce become useful, usable, beautiful products? Who will be responsible for the overall user experience?

Hiring user experience (UX) professionals can be a massively time-consuming endeavor that requires navigating a mysterious and hyper-competitive talent market. The standard practices in the UX field are still being established, everything is shrouded by a tangled web of jargon, and there is no shared language. If you have never worked within the UX universe, you’ll need more than just a map.

Making matters more intense, you can’t afford to make a mistake. Bringing someone on board whose skills do not match the role you need filled can have a serious long-term impact on your users and your products. The key to any successful hire is understanding and expressing your needs in the language that potential candidates can relate to. This article will show you how to take the confusion out of hiring top UX talent by following these steps:

• Determine the skill set your new team member should possess
• Identify the level of experience you are looking for
• Understand the qualities that all successful UX professionals should have
• Find a place for your new UX hire within the organization
• Craft a job description you can then use to advertise your role to prospective candidates

Determine the Necessary Skill Set

We’ll start by examining some of the common roles you may encounter while searching for UX professionals. Even within the UX field many people have different opinions on the names for the different roles we’re going to discuss. We will use the names that we consider to be most common, but you may have heard terms that differ from ours yet describe very similar roles.

Interaction design

Interaction designers work through how things function. They are experts in information hierarchies and the ways an interface can transition from one state to another. Interaction design is the art of knowing if an interface should be split across one page or two, and whether a button or link would be more appropriate in a particular situation. Interaction designers can turn ideas into whiteboard or napkin sketches that are easier to comprehend and discuss.

NOTE: An overlapping concept that you will sometimes hear is information architecture—a term that generally embodies the idea of arranging information into structures meaningful for end users.

User research

User researchers can help you understand your target audience—the people you are building a product for. User research is valuable for gathering insights into how people use your product through usability studies during the design process. However, if user research is employed early-on, it can also provide vital information about how your product may be used before you even begin the development process. User researchers may come from varied backgrounds—human-computer interaction, anthropology, psychology, computer science, design—but they are all united by their empathy for people, their acute curiosity, and an analytical approach to problem-solving.

Visual design

Visual designers work on the aesthetics and appeal of a product. The intangible skills they possess delight and inspire users, drawing them into an experience. They have the trained eye and the patience to polish products to perfection as well as the skills to create production-ready artwork. They can develop design style guides for the rest of the team to ensure a coherent visual presentation of various features and products.

Visual designers often have a strong background in graphic design as well as an expert understanding of color, type, and layout. In addition, they need to be comfortable working alongside engineers to help execute their pixel-perfect creations on screen.

UX prototyping and front-end development

Many UX professionals possess coding skills that are becoming more diverse as the web splinters across new platforms. The value of coding skills for UXers is two-fold. First, they will be able to produce designs that are technically feasible from the engineering standpoint. Second, they may be able to build rapid prototypesto help the team visualize ideas, test them with users, and converge on solutions without investing significant development time into creating fully-functioning products.

NOTE: Prototyping can be very different from writing production-ready code. UX prototypers are not engineers, and their value lies in speeding up the design and decision-making processes.

Tied with a bow

You may see other job titles as you review candidate resumes: product designers, UI designers, user experience designers, usability analysts or engineers ... All of these relate to the skills we’ve described above, and soon you should be able to “bucket” candidates in these larger roles. Don’t be surprised if you come across people who have done some or all of the above; there is significant overlap between roles, and UX professionals often develop hybrid skills in areas adjacent to their main expertise.

If you are looking for the first UX professional to join your team, consider hiring a generalist—someone who has some experience in most or all these sub-fields. You should not expect to find someone whose skills truly range from visual polish to survey development and from front-end coding to information architecture, all at the same level. Yet, you can hope to attract someone who is comfortable enough with these areas to fill your needs for now and will then help you extend your team with more specialists.

Determine the Level of Experience

How much experience do you need? You have a few options that depend on your goals and the current make-up of your team.

You can hire someone who has just graduated from a design or HCI program—these greener candidates are usually excited, eager to experiment, and have a good foundation of knowledge on user experience practices. However, their lack of experience working in a fast-paced product development environment can lead to slower development cycles in the long run. If your team is willing and capable of mentoring junior professionals, this could be a very good investment of time.

We consider someone with 3-5 years of relevant experience to be a mid-level professional. These folks are usually confident in their skills and can get the job done well. They may need to adjust to the new domain space and are still developing their leadership skills, but are great for roles that require quality and speed of execution.

Seasoned professionals come in two different flavors. Some remain individual contributors and choose to become experts in a particular domain or method. Others prefer to expand their scope of influence by managing teams of more junior UXers. In either case, you should expect significant leadership and mentoring skills, understanding of all disciplines within the field of UX, and ability to best position their work within the company.

Understand Qualities Important for all UX Professionals

UX professionals will bring a lot more than just design or research skills to your team. Of course, it’s crucial that they are proficient in their core skills, but there is also a set of qualities that will differentiate an outstanding UXer from a merely competent one.

Creativity

Your product is unique and any UXers you hire are likely to face challenges they have not encountered before. A creative approach to problem-solving, the ability to look at an issue from a new perspective, and continuous innovation are all required for success in the field. Good designers follow the rules. Great designers understand the rules and then bend them in ways that make products even better for users.

Communication, engagement, collaboration

UX professionals never work in isolation—their stakeholders include engineers, product managers, peer designers and researchers, executives and, of course, the end users. They need to be able to communicate their ideas to a diverse audience and get buy-ins for their proposals across multiple functions. Moreover, they often facilitate discussions and visualize ideas from other team members.

Successful UXers are proactive about forging strong alliances and collaborating with stakeholders from multiple disciplines. To be effective, they need to speak the same language as their cross-functional peers and garner support from others before diving into UX work.

User advocacy and leadership

Within a team, UXers are the experts on your users and their needs. Designers and researchers need to be fearless user advocates, and it is their primary responsibility to build a shared understanding of users that helps guide product development. This requires self-confidence, the ability to rally support, and a good sense of how to “pick the right battles.” In many organizations UX professionals also need to educate others on the value of their discipline and processes that facilitate UX engagement.

Tied with a bow

Bringing diverse perspectives, including those of users, into the product development process is essential for your success. This often means that UXers may be “dissenters” on the team, bringing up points that others have not yet considered. The people who are not afraid to be seen as such yet are capable of resolving disagreement in productive ways are the ones you want on your team. They will need tact, persistence, desire to work with the their cross-functional peers in the long term, and ability to find creative solutions that align with the product strategy, help users, and are technically feasible.

Find a Place for Your New UX Hire

UX talent is a strategic asset for the organization. UXers—regardless of their specialization—are more successful if they are positioned as an integral part of the product development organization. They can contribute the most if they are involved in product discussions, both strategic and tactical, early on. At the very least, they will understand the business goals and the technical constraints. At best, they will bring in valuable user perspectives that will help you develop a product that appeals to your audience.

Do not fret if you are hiring your first UX professional too late in the process and you need to engage them mostly on the tactical level, implementing ideas that you’ve already defined. Simply be open about your current needs for the role to avoid misalignment and frustration once you bring someone on board.

Craft the Job Description

A good job description serves two main purposes. On the one hand, it describes the position in a way that allows people who are qualified to self-select before applying. On the other hand, it gives prospective candidates insight into your organization and what it might be like to work there. Try not to be too formulaic—the job description should give an honest view of your workplace and the culture the new team member would be coming into. It can be helpful to think of the job description as a conversation starter while still addressing the main points that should be covered.

Your company

This is your opportunity to sell the candidate on your company. UX professionals are in high demand—tell them why they would be much happier joining your team than a competitor’s!

Role

Now that you’ve learned about the value different types of UX professionals could provide, you can outline what actually needs to be done within your company. Be as specific as you can, and if the role is still not well-defined and may change depending on who you hire, mention that too.

Responsibilities

How will you know that your new UXer was a good hire? It’s important to establish common metrics of success, and this is the place to do so. Mention all the core responsibilities you expect your new designer, researcher, or prototyper to have. While they may end up doing a lot more, you want to avoid a situation where you expect them to do something you hadn’t originally mentioned.

Qualifications

Education, years of experience, expertise in a particular domain, software skills, knowledge of certain methodologies go in here. This is the section that you can use as a filter when you look at candidate packets. Be realistic, however! Do you really care about that advanced degree if someone could prove their expertise with a solid portfolio and many years of experience under their belt?

Conclusion

Armed with the proper information, you are ready to get started in defining the role you want to fill in your company. It is key that you understand the skill set and experience you need from a UX professional to fill the position within in your organization. Knowing what it is you’re looking for will help you craft a job description that attracts the right candidates.

Piece of Cake photo courtesy Shutterstock.