Wanna hire a stormtrooper?

So this is an article that I’ve been mulling over for a while, and it came up as a point of note in the comments when I posted my ‘Quiet Feminist’ article. Something Kevin brought to my attention.

The idea that in some instances, female designers won’t apply for roles as they don’t often feel qualified to do so, despite them being entirely suited to the role.

It’s also been something I’ve been wrestling with in the last few months as I’ve been supporting recent final year undergraduates and some recent graduates in their pursuit for a first career step or move. What’s the best way to write a job ad for a designer to ensure you get the best mix of creative applications?

Before I start, maybe a few caveats…

I’m coming at this from a product/industrial designer’s point of view. I’m sure there are plenty of relevancies across multiple disciplines but it’s worth stating this from the outset. There will be terminology and references to skills that are fairly specific to PD/ID.

I’m thinking more about designers in the first few years of their career. The time when they are most fragile, the least confident in their abilities and have little or no experience of the professional landscape (bar possibly a placement year) to speak of.

So here are my thoughts.

As always, in no particular order of importance…

1. Attitude or skills?

We talk a great deal about hiring for attitude, but most job listings are a stream of skills. Can you DO this? Are you trained in THAT? There seems to be a tendency to try and shortlist candidates before you’ve even had a chance to speak to them.

I completely understand that you can’t speak to everyone and there has to be some level of shortlisting, but surely that’s for the experienced person viewing a portfolio to decide. It is pretty evident from someone’s work, what level their CAD, Photoshop, Illustrator or KeyShot skills are at. Is it necessary to state it in a job listing?

To be perfectly honest, you can send someone on a CAD course as part of most businesses’ CAD support/subs packages, so it shouldn’t ever really be a condition of the job. All you are doing is putting off people who might be brilliant who happen not to be able to use the software and the tools you happen to have chosen to deploy throughout your business, and which - with a few supportive colleagues - won’t take too long to master anyway.

In fact, most people pick up more in the first month working somewhere than they’ve ever learned beforehand or at Uni. Learning on the job. Something that you will inevitably want to hire for anyway!

2. Baying to your tribe

I’ve been guilty of this in times past and particularly as a small business owner. You craft a job description on the basis of what you do and how you like to do it.

But that’s just bonkers. Firstly, if you ever find another you, it is likely you won’t get on as you’ll be TOO similar and no-one likes to see fault in themselves. And secondly, creativity thrives on differences. I’m not suggesting you find a polar opposite, but different ways of thinking and approaching a problem tend to result in better outcomes.

When you write that job listing, try to describe the kind of person that you think the BUSINESS would benefit from. Not just someone you think could do your job (or at least the practical design bits of it) because you’ve run out of time and space and need to get more work in. In our society, our channels and platforms use algorithms to ensure we align with our own tribes.

Just be careful you don’t hire from your tribe. Or at least the tribe closest to you.

3. Try not to use industry terminology.

I get it. You need another industrial designer so the post goes out with ‘Industrial Designer’ as the title in some way, shape or form. However, whilst you might be immersed in a set of terms that suit your own industry or team, those outside your bubble, often find terminology confusing, and if they don’t identify with the terminology they are likely to think they don’t fit the job description.

The term UX can mean 10 different things to 10 different industries. The term ‘Product Designer’ has been hijacked and now means two entirely different things - one is predominantly physical and the other is entirely digital. Innovation is a hackjob of a descriptor. Research can mean a whole host of things. Industrial design is one thing in the US and another in the UK. And don’t even get me started on ‘Strategic Consultant’.

If we know it, we know it. But if we don’t know it or we are uncertain if we fit the term, we shy away. You are missing out on loads of talented folk because they don’t feel confident enough to call themselves a ‘UX consultant’ or a 'Strategist'. They might be phenomenal empaths, acute systems thinkers and all round clever cookies but if they don’t consider themselves to be ‘UX trained’ or an ‘Innovation Consultant’ they won’t apply.

4. Men are from Mars.

I’m not going to try and dissect gender differences* in a single article, but there have been enough anecdotal instances of men applying for roles they typically feel under qualified for and enough instances of women NOT applying for roles they are clearly entirely qualified for, to realise that there may be something in it.

I’ve heard countless examples of female designers - on reading a job description - identifying a few items that they don’t feel entirely, 100% confident in delivering, and passing the opportunity by. Similarly, I’ve seen countless male designers apply for jobs that they clearly don’t have a cat in hell’s chance of securing but they felt it was worth a pop.

Now, (whilst massively over generalised) neither the male 'over confidence' nor the female 'over caution' should be criticised as they are both valuable virtues, but when you circulate a job listing that runs the risk of distancing a large proportion of society and talent, surely there’s an argument to rewrite it to be much more inclusive and much less ‘specification led’. Use language that allows for more emotional interpretation and less target based assessment.

At least…that’s my opinion.

(*I'm well aware that there are many more definitions of gender than simply male and female, but for the purposes of making the point I trust you understand?)

5. Less ‘superstars’, ‘jedis’ or ‘stellar individuals’ maybe?

A follow up to my previous point.

Do people looking for a job sit there telling themselves that they are a superstar?

Nope.

Job hunting is a fragile, often ego destroying exercise. If you want a vastly egocentric narcissist to come and work for you, then ply them with overly exuberant superlatives, but I rather suspect your recruitment strategy might not be too rewarding to a balanced creative team.

A decent team is made up of a mix of introverts, extroverts, craftspeople, narrators, storytellers, dreamers and nerds. Many of these skills come from independent development and honing. Skills that require more introversion and thoughtful solitude than bombastic, outward facing extroversion.

If you use words that favour the bold, loud, confident ones, then that’s what you will get. But most of the really thoughtful, brain bendingly useful people that can pull a proverbial rabbit out of a hat in time for that client presentation, might just be the ones to whom ‘superstar’ just warrants a cringe.

6. The holes and the glue.

If you keep hiring the same types of people, you end up with stormtroopers.

Lots of people in the same mould, doing the same stuff in the same way.

That way might be incredibly profitable and useful to you as a business but it will soon result in some of those stormtroopers having a look around, realising they are commodities and start considering looking elsewhere to ply their trade. The other issue with this, is that you start to form unhealthy comparisons between team members.

X is better at that than Y.

Natural tendencies start to form and team start to divide. Maybe consider looking at the team and considering where the holes might be or where the glue that could bind different parts of your team together might come from. Not everyone needs to use the same tools to achieve the same goals. Just because someone can’t sketch very well, it doesn’t make them less of a designer. Just because someone can’t use CAD, it doesn’t mean they can’t create.

We have quickly become an industry that relies on ‘types’ and ‘skills’ to meet job descriptions, but some of the most absurdly brilliant talent I’ve seen has been found in people that don’t fit the stormtrooper mould.

7. Keep it open to the misfits and wildcards.

A follow up to my last point.

Make sure your opening allows the left of centre thinker to apply.

The person who hasn’t had the predictable journey through the industry. The person who changed profession half way through their career. The person who does have a specific qualification. We are not surgeons who require people to be suitable trained to be good at their job. We don’t require years of specific industry experience for someone to be curious or adventurous.

We start meetings by saying “No idea is a bad idea” yet require people to be of an expected recipe when we hire them.

There’s a difference between disruptive and complementary. You need people who can work alongside your stormtroopers but differently. You need people to understand the common goal and answer the client brief, but HOW they do it and the route they take to get there can be as different as you are comfortable with.

I’m not suggesting that everyone I’ve ever hired has been a misfit, but there’s always been something about them that has been a bit left of centre or unpredictable, and I’ve missed out on countless brilliant wildcards by not heeding the advice I now know to be true. I’ve also lost out on retaining brilliant misfits because of the ‘culture’ of the business I was working for or the expectations of the industry.

8. Consider polymorphs.

You will have noticed that the creative industry has changed a great deal in the last 5 years alone.

Titles and definitions are relatively meaningless.

An ‘industrial designer’ of 10 years ago bears no relation to the ‘industrial designer’ of today, bar maybe a few core hang ups. Skill sets have had to adapt if you want to stay relevant and solve problems relevant to society. It’s less about form and engineering and more about morality and storytelling (although form and engineering of course play a huge part in this). Products can be entirely digital or service led.

The core ‘industrial design’ island is shrinking and if you want to survive, you either have to be the biggest ape or start to grow some gills and swim in the ocean. The ability to morph both your approach and your skill set is critical if your team is to survive, so maybe look a little further ahead to the types of skills that you may require of your team as the tectonic plates of society and industry shift.

It might be that you recruit now for people that are less about Solidworks and KeyShot and more about systems thinking, material science or facilitated collaboration. It’s not about hiring experts with those skills per se, but hiring people who have a greater capacity to adapt and morph their creative weaponry to suit the challenges of the time.

9. Deviate from design language.

A modern, successful, experienced designer working in an agency environment or a creative in-house team has to be as adept at understanding profitability as lighting environments, as versed in marketing as Photoshop filters, as literate in negotiation as navigating a Soldworks history tree.

In fact, I would argue that those designers that master some of the skills not normally or typically associated with ‘design’ more often go further and travel faster than those that simply hone their ‘design craft’.

Maybe stitch some alternative ambitions and horizons into your job description. Maybe suggest that it is as important to be a key negotiator than it is to be a CAD ninja (I acknowledge the absurdity of that phrase BTW…particularly given point 5!).

I’ve met loads of students who have no pre-disposed desire to work specifically as an ‘industrial designer’ but simply want to make a difference or improve society. Harnessing that ambition and fluidity can only be a good thing surely? Mix it up. Find savvy thinkers rather than simply trained ‘designers’.

10. What’s the point of ‘mid weight’?

This is a personal beef of mine.

I’ve always hated the term ‘mid weight’ designer. It conjures up all sorts of mediocrity. You are neither young enough to be a junior, nor experienced enough to be a senior, so you sit in the no-man’s land of design hierarchy, waiting to shuffle up the micro-dissected ladder of opportunity.

Stop putting in place systems that ask people to place themselves on a spectrum. Yes, a senior or principal (or wherever title system you adopt) indicates some level of leadership and team management. You have earned the responsibility to make key decisions and steer certain ships, but anything ‘less’ than that should be about value and real experience.

The ‘mid weight’ term simply causes more anxiety in potential hires, worrying about whether they should apply if they are a bit inexperienced or thinking they are aiming too low if they have a bit of experience under their belt. I appreciate this may be specific to me, but I needed to get it off my chest!

11. Number of years’ experience.

Another one that gets the anxiety juices well and truly flowing.

If I had a pound for every graduate or young designer that said they felt they couldn’t apply for a role because of the “number of years’ experience required”, I’d be a rich man.

I completely understand that you need to find a means to define the level of ‘usefulness’ that a potential new recruit might require, but ‘years in industry’ is a bit of a misnomer. The saying that “For many people ‘twenty years experience’ is really one year of experience repeated twenty times” could not be more apt.

A designer who learned a specific set of skills and becomes good and known for that can easily repeat that formula countless times over and avoid any form of personal growth, development or collaboration. But they would be deemed an ‘experienced’ designer with 5-10 years of ‘industry experience’. Conversely, a huge swathe of genuine talent might be dissuaded from expressing an interest as they may only have 3 years working in industry but have regularly evolved, adapted, developed and matured to a level far beyond people many years their apparent senior.

I would suggest finding an alternative way to define ‘usefulness’ or ‘value’ to the business….if you have to include it at all in a job listing.

I’m going to stop there as I can think of many, many more, but I’m in danger of this article becoming unreadably long.

I’d love to hear what people think of the above points and would wholeheartedly welcome additional nuggets of insight and experience. It’s all useful stuff, and the ultimate aim is to ensure that talent enters the industry and the industry benefits from it. Nothing is wasted.

Until next time.

Russell