Doing my time in hiring the right UX/UI designers for the DCS, I was more focussed on the technicial skills where my colleaque Jakob Winkler was more for a lookout of the perfect cultural team fit.
First rule
"The lower the UX maturity in a team or company, the higher should the seniority of the designer be"
An experienced and more senior designer is stronger in pushing UX/UI related topics, improves awareness for UX more efficient and is good in various stakeholder management and negotiation compared to a more junior designer. This is important depending on the goal of the UX department and company.
Second rule
"The smaller the team, the more generalist should the designer be"
If your team is smaller than 3 designers, it is better hire generalists first to get the job done and to establish the operational UX/UI activities in the company before jumping into more strategic directions that need more specialist designers like UX researchers or UX writers.
Third rule
"The more specialized the area in which the UX/UI designer will be working, the more specialized the experience of the UX designer should be."
If you are looking for a position which is related to specific area of your product, like registration, pricing and payment or so, you should hiring a designer with experience in this field to make sure he efficiently solves these issues, knows how to craft the right questions for the user and which design patterns are important.
Conclusion
These rules especially applied to the situation back then when I was hired by the Digital Charging Solutions GmbH. In the mid-term, it was important to hire first more senior designers and later hiring juniors to also combine experiences of senior designers with fresh and more open eyes of junior designers. The combination makes the result.
