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Here's what I am serving up today:

1. How designers can stand out - an interview with Lena Kul.

2. LinkedIn comment of the week - Centralised/Decentralised teams

3. Quote - From Aaron Walter

Recruitment has never been more important. If we’re going to ensure design gets integrated effectively, we need to ensure we’re hiring the right people at the right time.

Today I am speaking with Lena Kul who is an experienced design recruiting leader, based in Berlin. She’s scaled two major design teams in the EU markets at N26 and currently Miro.

Lena has worked through 2 hyper growths and got to hire for every creative role on the market from mid-level to executive levels. She’s very active in helping the design community prepare for the interviews through her continuous posts and 1:1 coaching sessions.

How Designers can stand out in the hiring process

1. How do you review IC Product Designers’ applications? What makes you think “Yes, I need to speak to this person”

First I check a CV, then I check my portfolio. Unless you are a software engineer and applying for a senior product design role, I will always check both.

What truly excites me about someone's docs they sent are:

• They are clean and easy to read. If either seems to be hard to build for a designer, I would question their design skills on the spot.

• I like when designers add personality to their application documents. Maybe there is a certain colour pallet for your or anything else on your CV that speaks more about you and your personal brand. In my portfolio, when I see a creative design (even if irrelevant to a role you apply for) I want to know who stands behind those great designs.

• Make sure I can access it.

2. How should a Designer prepare for a recruiter screening call?

Tom: This is a very misunderstood step. Lots don’t think to take it seriously and expect to walk past the round. Internal partners have a lot of choices in this market and carry weight in the process, so designers need to take it seriously. What do you think?

I could not agree more. I do not know how many times I have read the feedback after rejecting candidates that they "just spoke to a recruiter and got rejected for nothing". Quite often when I go into the call, the candidates simply are not prepared to share their experiences, answer with just a few words, and ask when they could speak to someone from the team. Once it got so bad, that I even made a post on this, knowing that many candidates check my LinkedIn profile before our call.

The best way that anyone can prep before meeting with a recruiter is to think about major projects and achievements, what you expect from the next step, and why you are looking around. As simple as that. Many recruiters suggest using the STAR method to answer questions. As long as I think it is a good one, I would also say: just share what you think would be important for you to find out if you were to hire someone and be yourself!

3. What are the top questions do you think designers should be asking?

Tom: Quality questions make people take you seriously, right?

I like when candidates ask questions that are important to them, rather than asking questions just to seem interested.

Often, I get meaningful questions about the design team and its place in the organisation. I’m being asked about the environment and why I’ve stayed with the company for a while.

I love when designers are curious about ways of working and collaborating with other XFN disciplines, this is a green flag because they seek similar work environments to what we have.

Of course, it’s always good when someone asks questions and explains why it’s important to them rather than just shooting in the air.

4. How can designers approach negotiating salary?

Tom: This question is even more important for candidates not going through an external recruiter, as they need to handle this conversation themselves.

Stop going into the interviews and saying "I do not know the salary bands for your company".

Designers are capable of coming up with products and features that change the world, yet some fail to research salary bands.

There is not much information online but remember, your community is the best info pool you can find.

Ask friends for the bands if they work for similar businesses in similar locations, reach out to communities, and ask for the right recruiters to talk to. There are plenty of people who treat this information as a publicly available one.

If we want to have fair salaries and close the painful yet present topics like the gender pay gap, we all should start asking and sharing.

But as important as it is to know what you want, it is also important to know what the company offers. I always find that the candidates move themselves into a stronger negotiation position when they say that they have a range in mind, but would like to hear me first.

5. Bonus question for people hiring designers. How should companies structure their interview process to ensure they can hire top designers ensuring quality?

A good process is a short and clear one.

Sometimes it seems you can not skip that particular interviewer, but once they are out sick or on PTO you see that the show must and can go on. So IMO good recruitment processes should fit into 2 weeks time frame or 3 restaurant sittings of 2 hours each.

At Miro, we try to limit the process to 35 days timeframe (Time To Hire). It's proven that the faster you are, the more chances for success you have.

Of course, in reality, things are not so easy. We all have lives going on, emergencies, holidays and etc.

But for as long as every call brings a new perspective to the company why this candidate is a yes/no based on competencies assigned to the calls and to a candidate why this company is yes/ no based on people they meet and questions they receive/ask, we are good to go.

If we are speaking about specific examples, I believe a healthy process can access hard and soft skills as well as candidates' potential.

If a company is hiring e2e product designers (like Miro does), the competencies could be UX design, UI design, UXR, product thinking, and planning skills. We are also looking for critical thinking - can you prioritize and be strategic with your designs?

On the soft skills side, we need to make sure that a candidate has leadership skills, hence can unblock themselves or push back if needed. We want to see how collaborative a candidate is, are they resilient to change?

In terms of potential, it's not so easy to make it tangible. I would recommend candidates be ready to explain why they may have not done something that is expected of them in this specific company and how they would approach it if they were to start.

Thank you, Lena!

Here’s a link to Miro’s design roles - https://miro.com/careers/open-positions/

LinkedIn comment of the week:

It has to be from Doug Powell, former VP of Design at Expedia and IBM discussing why the recent rise in design teams moving from centralised to decentralised.

Incredible insight here:

Quote:

This quote from Aarron Walter got me thinking. It’s obvious how Design, Product and Engineering are all part of the puzzle, but it’s eye-opening a few companies don’t see this.

That’s a wrap, thank you for reading.

Quick note - If you’re looking for a new design role please consider signing up for our invite-only talent network. This is where we talk to designers about live roles, as well as more community features coming soon - https://itsverified.typeform.com/apply

You can also reply to this email if you have any questions, thoughts, concerns, or challenges with finding a new role or figuring out your next career move. I am here to help.

See you next Sunday 👋 

Tom