Ethical Designer’s Recruiting process
🎩 Role / Design Lead
✅ Task/ Define and create a recruiting process for hiring product designers
♥️ Client / Internal
💡 Keywords/ Design Leadership, Design test, Recruiting, Teamwork
Context
As product designers, we've all faced unpredictable interviews, some surreal like being asked what my parents do or why a color feels a certain way. My most nerve-wracking moment? An unexpected whiteboard challenge I was completely unprepared for.
I laugh now, but in that moment, creating nonsensical flows and seeing the interviewers' faces, I chose honesty (Admitting my nerves and doing my best) I didn’t get the job, but I warned a friend who later secured the role and has thrived there for five years.
When I started hiring, I focused on making the process structured, transparent, and humane—ensuring candidates felt informed and comfortable. I didn’t know the perfect test, but I knew what not to replicate.
Success metrics & HMW
There were a series of questions that were very useful to ask myself at the beginning of the process, about how I would know that we were making the right decisions and above all, how we would measure the success of the process and learn the lessons to continue improving and iterating it.
And the most important: How will I validate that it has been an appropriate process?
Interview complete process
First stage
An initial simple filter to align profile needs and candidate expectations. At this stage, an average of 60/80m people usually applied who easily moved on to the second interview around 30 approximately. In this phase things like:
Confirm that it is understood that it is a hybrid position
Small personal interaction and current job situation
Salary expectations
Level of English
Second stage
From the first to the second interview I tried not to spend more than two weeks, despite this, many candidates were already in other processes so a smaller number of candidates usually arrived. For this phase the entire design team collaborated in the design of the questions that were going to be asked to the candidates, mixing part of technical questions and others more personal (Without understanding this as of their personal life, but more focused on their way of thinking and vision)
Techical Test
One of the bases that my team and I had clear was not to take advantage of the talent and time of the people who had applied for the position, at the same time, we needed to be able to evaluate their abilities and the possible fit in our team. Over time we designed several tests, we started by offering three types of exercise to choose from (Two more oriented to the part of user study and research, another towards the interaction of the platform with the user and the last one very focused on the interface and the solution. All the exercises presented were part of problems we had faced in the past, so we were very interested in knowing how they would solve them in their case.
One of the best examples was an exercise in which the design of screens or the solution was not strictly necessary. The position offered was "User experience researcher" so many profiles were filtered that both in their previous career or studies or in their design portfolio showed an emphasis towards the analysis of problems and study of the solution and not so much towards careful interfaces with good visual balance and interaction.
One of the last challenges proposed talked about how to focus on onboarding for users who do not have unlimited time and whose industry is emergency services.
Final interpretation of the technical test
The readings of the proposed solutions were blind, we did not know which candidate they belonged to and they were warned that we were going to interpret it in this way to avoid personal mentions. The score was 1-3. We selected a maximum of four people and did not make the final reveal until everyone had finished reading.
Last phase and final interview
To all the candidates (We tried to make it the smallest number possible) who had reached the phase of taking the technical test regardless of their result these series of things were offered:
Technical feedback of their test "Glows and Grows"
Permission to publish the test in their portfolio
Availability to resolve doubts personally
The candidates who had been selected for the final test, were invited to meet our team and to present and defend their test along with other stakeholders in the company (CEO, CTO and PM) I made sure that all those present had read their CV, the questions that were asked of them and the test, to avoid duplicating questions.
Finally, within one week, we usually answered the final candidates, and for feedback, this time we provided it personally through a video call.
Candidate feedback
We validated that it had been a good selection process thanks to the feedback from the candidates, I have summarized some comments that came to us when making the final decision:
"...I also appreciate the treatment you have given to the candidates, truly it is a pleasure to find professionals like you and your team." S.S.C Applying for the position of Product Designer in 2021.
"Thank you very much for your response, I must say that I have enjoyed a lot the selection process and I give you a 10 for the personal treatment. I have to admit that although I screwed up with the challenge, I do not regret having done it because I have learned a lot about myself in the process" Y.Z. applying for the position of UX Researcher in 2023.
Lessons learned
Personal call for candidates who have reached the last phase to resolve doubts and give good feedback. It's a little extra time but it's well worth it.
Ask for permission to keep their profiles in a database for future opportunities or to recommend to colleagues in the sector.