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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Because the screen has become the primary touchpoint between companies and their customers, more organizations are ratcheting up their spending on design and bolstering their design teams. Recent years have seen a flurry of design M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) activity, with companies such as Salesforce, Verizon, Capital One, and many major consulting firms making a land grab for design talent. IBM has hired thousands of designers in its quest to become the world’s largest design company and reduce its designer to developer ratio from 1:72 to 1:8. Perhaps most telling of all, UX design is now the fifth most in-demand hard skill, according to recent LinkedIn data.

As someone who has worked in the design industry for nearly 20 years, I welcome these incredibly positive developments. However, it’s critical for both companies and design leaders to keep in mind that increasing headcount is not the only way to advance one’s design prowess. Read More

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