Business: Hiring UX Professionals

In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss what skills are essential and desirable for a UX Designer.

Each month in Ask UXmatters, our panel of UX experts answers our readers’ questions about a broad range of user experience matters. To get answers to your own questions about UX strategy, design, user research, or any other topic of interest to UX professionals in an upcoming edition of Ask UXmatters, please send your question to us at: [email protected].

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Recently, I scaled a content-strategy team from three to eight people. In the process of conducting dozens upon dozens of interviews, while involving various internal stakeholders, I quickly learned how to avoid some common pitfalls of hiring for strategic roles.

It’s challenging to hire for strategic roles—neither as easy nor as straightforward as hiring for other skill-based positions. Ultimately, you’re looking for a strategic thinker who understands UX principles and best practices. If you’re not asking the right questions, it’s all too easy for candidates to bluff their way into a content-strategy role by saying what superficially seem to be the right things, without providing enough substance to show their strategic thought process.

In sharing my tips for hiring content strategists in this article, I hope to help you avoid these common pitfalls so you can hire talented strategists who can hit the ground running. Read More

In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our experts consider what it takes to stand out in the growing field of User Experience. As more and more companies realize the importance of good UX design and hire more designers, many people outside the field of User Experience are attracted to the opportunities this field offers and becoming UX designers. While some have the necessary education and talent to become good UX designers, others do not. Unfortunately, the field of UX design is becoming commoditized because some weak UX designers are willing to work for ridiculously low wages, and companies that aren’t able to discriminate between great, good, and poor designers just go with the least expensive option.

Our expert panel explores how to make yourself stand out in the current competitive environment, making specific recommendations for how and what you should communicate about not only your skills, but also about how your design work can fit within a company’s goals. Because it is important to balance business goals and design goals in our work, we need to consider how our work will affect a company—and maybe society at large—over the long term. Our panelists also encourage designers who are working for companies that do not value them to look for other opportunities. Of course, this discussion could be applied to many fields. Read More