Why Hiring a Designer Can Be Frightening
Job-seeking is a stressful task, but especially so for designers: not only must we make the right connections and have the right combination of training and experience, we're also judged - sometimes quite coldly - on the merits of work that we've poured our sweat and soul into. It could be argued that the most useful thing design school teaches is how to take rejection and criticism gracefully.
But did you ever consider the job search from the perspective of the ones doing the hiring?
Creative hiring is unique from the employer's perspective as well. The past two months have had me interviewing and conversing with a broad range of recruiters, directors and senior designers, and one subtle theme of those talks that caught me off guard is how hard the hiring process is for them as well, and how daunting. It's easy to lose sight of this fact when you're a recent grad or newly unemployed, scraping for something, anything, in what feels like a completely skewed and unfair system; but as with many design problems, sympathy for the client can be a powerful tool.
Consider what you are telling an employer when you inquire about a job. "I want you to pay me a considerable sum of money," you are, in essence, demanding, "for a long, long time. In return, I will come up with fantastic ideas that you can use to improve your business. These ideas will be appropriate to your projects, fit in with your established process, and be realistic enough to reach the market. They'll also be astonishingly creative - stuff you've never seen before, nor even imagined. And I'll work seamlessly with the rest of your team, challenging and pushing them, but also listening to and working with them. I won't be a diva, and I won't be an asshole. I'll make you money." That's a lot to propose, but when you get down to it, that's the reality, and the consequences for for not fulfilling all of those needs are severe.
A poor creative hire is a fucking nightmare. Anyone who employs designers expects to pile a big stack of money and effort on top of their designs, and if they're ill-conceived or poorly realized, that money and effort goes down a hole: the campaign falls flat, the product doesn't sell, the building stays vacant, the publication ends up in the trash. It's bad for the designer, of course, who probably takes a lot of pride in delivering a great solution, but it's even worse for the company at large: an ineffective design team eventually means a failing company. And while the hiring process can be laborious and expensive, the firing process can cost even more. One reason more and more firms are hiring on contract rather than salary is that it reduces the costs of a bad fit.
Good firms and studios are cautious in their hiring. Taking six months to hire someone sounds interminable from the applicant's point of view, but it's just as excruciating for the employer. Time is money, after all, and if they could find a guaranteed perfect designer in one day, they'd have them on salary the following morning. The reality is more complicated. "Taking a chance" on an unknown applicant means taking a chance with the company's livelihood, and successful firms don't do that. They make sure.
So when you're updating your portfolio, building your networking, setting up informational interviews, and sending out contact letters...have pity. Make it easy on the poor recruiters and team leaders. Find out what they need - not what you want them to need - and explain to them in clear detail how you'll deliver that. Make it easy for them. You can do that. You're a designer.
Note: This article was originally written by Carl Alviani