The hiring strategy is mostly based on business, team and skill need. This is why you can often not apply the same strategy for every company or team.
Collaboration with the HR team is key
Collaboration with the HR team is very important when it comes to hiring new designers, it was important to sit down with the HR team regularly, answer questions from candidates and discuss the process and status. The goal was that the candidates should always feel that they were being listened to and valued. Doing the full hiring process, we had over 300 application and I had to do around 45 interviews while I was reviewing around 120-150 portfolios of candidates doing that time. And all at the same time while full production, internalisation of our design systems and leading and guiding the external designers.
First generalist and then specialists
When I started to hire the first candidates, it was clear that we need to stick to generalist until we are at least 4 designers in the team before we can start hiring specialists like researchers, writers etc. The plan was that we need to internalise until December 2023 which means we need to replace 5 external designers with 3 internal one. If we would hire specialists then we would lose our current momentum we gained doing the internalisation of our processes and design systems.
A job title makes a good filter
When we started to look for condidates, it was important for me to define a job title that not only discribes thet role of the designer, but also where he/she will be located as well, this makes it easier for the candidates to apply for a job they really want to do, at this time, we where on the look to find 2 designers for our B2C and one designer for our B2B business lines. This information needed to be included to find the right candidates as anyone know what some people like it to work in B2B, but some don't like it.
