No matter how many portfolios you get, you still can’t figure out how to gauge which designer’s right for your company?
Each designer solves problems in different ways based on their type of vision and capabilities. A company needs to know what they need before they start looking. And they need to know how to see design talent.
It’s about knowing what you need before you start looking for it, and then knowing how to discern talent.
Looking for design talent.
There’s a big gap between what the clients tell us they want and what they truly need.
We once worked with a consulting firm saying: “We need an industrial designer, but he will not be doing any tangible thing. We need him to take our new product, reinvent it, then take it to the next level so we can put it on the web. And it’s not developing a website but customer centric engagement”
After our initial assessment of the company’s situation we found that the client shouldn’t be looking for a Senior Industrial Designer, but a User Experience Director.
These are the three most common mistakes we’ve identified:
1. Asking for the wrong skills.
Categorizing your challenges and defining your company’s goals should be done before you consider bringing somebody else to the team. The design industry is moving on such a fast pace that even the job titles are evolving quickly.
2. Asking for the wrong mix of skills in one person.
One of the most common requests we get from clients look like this:
“We are looking for: a brilliant strategic + client facing + big picture creative vision + project manager + who still rolls up his/her sleeves + and follows through to technical production"
Are you asking for different kinds of designers all wrapped up in one?
Don’t get us wrong, unicorns like this may exist, but they are difficult to find and expensive to recruit. We often find that hiring managers accidentally attempt to recruit unicorns because they don’t have clarity on what mix of skills & specialities they actually need.
3. Budgetary Lowballing.
Are your ads not attracting anyone good? Could it be because you’re asking for unicorn level talent and pricing it for a mid level title? You’re never going to attract the right talent if you’re asking for a guru and not willing to pay for it.
Most companies reach out to us only after they’ve spent several months exhausting their internal resources on the search.
Want to skip that painful and costly stage? Schedule a Strategy Call with us now and start gaining clarity and get it right from the beginning.