Hiring a designer

Filed in Thoughts on January 09, 2009



We (Vitabase) have been through many designers over the years.  A few have been good and most have been bad.  Some got tired of us and we got tired of the others. 

Design is critical to what we do.  Our websites are our window to the world and they need to look very good.  So, I am picky about who we use.  I am not a designer and do not claim to know design, but I know good web design when I see it.  When you spend as much time online as I do, that becomes a bit instinctive.

We need a new designer right now so I recently published an ad on a job board where the designers hang out.  A week later, I have 340 resumes.   It took me a few hours yesterday but I went through them all.  I divided them into three groups and the final count looks like this:

Rejects: 304
Possibles: 29
Strong candidates: 7

I am pretty thrilled that I found 7 candidates because that is a bit unusual.  The vast majority of designers are incredibly bad.  It should be a crime for most of them to lie by calling themselves designers.

I know that sounds harsh, but I am going to demonstrate what I mean below.  At the same time, I am going to give those of you looking for work a bit of insight into how job applicants are viewed.

I tried to spend about 30 seconds on each job applicant.  Thirty seconds was more than enough time to find plenty to move almost 90% of them to the reject pile.  The only things I really looked at was their email and the home page of their website.  If I saw anything of interest, I then looked at their online portfolio.

Here are some of the things that disqualified them.

1) No website of their own.  How can a web designer not have their own website? 

2) Website under construction.  I bet that I saw references to "under construction" in close to fifty of those applications.  Give me a break...  It is not hard to build a website and keep it up to date.  Any designer that works for us will have to build websites within hours, not days or weeks.  If you are a designer that has parts of your website "under construction", finish your website before lunch.  If you cannot, you are not fast enough to charge by the hour.



Another applicant uses the excuse that she is moving her site to a new server.  Come on--it takes no more than a few minutes to do that.  Don't bother sending me a resume until it is done.

3) Obvious grammar/spelling problems.  I have learned to accept a typo here or there and even a run-on sentence because apparently, no school teaches that those are bad any more.  I just read a Grisham novel and even it was full of run on sentences.  But emails like the one below are just too much.



4) Mixed fonts in the email.  Some of you are going to think I am too picky here, but I do not think so.  If a designer does not care about little things like keeping fonts consistent, they are not a good designer.  Little things are important.   So emails like the one below hit the reject pile. 



5) Horrible site design.  This speaks for itself.  A designer should have a site that looks like it was designed rather than vomited into existence.  Here are some samples of actual designer sites that I had the misfortune of viewing yesterday.  I cut out some identifying info but you still get the idea.







6) Non-intuitive sites.  Sites are not about the designer or the owner.  Sites exist for users.  If your design gets in the way of usability, it is a bad design.  I know most designers do not know anything about usability, and I do even mind teaching them a bit (if they will listen), but I quickly reject potential designers if I cannot easily navigate through their site.

7) Text that is hard to read on sites.  Check out the site below.  Any designer that does this kind of thing needs a remedial class in basic usability.



8) Corporate jargon in emails.  Some applicants wrote long flowery emails with a bunch of boiler-plate corporate jargon.  I am so over that kind of thing.  It is all the same stuff that means nothing.  Actions speak louder than words--just let me look at your website.  When I see a long email, I start worrying if the designer talks too much.  I do not want to spend a lot of time on the phone with a designer trading corporate jargon. 

9) Bad links in emails.  I am amazed at how many designers do not know how to insert a simple link into an email.  Amazed...

10) Cannot follow simple directions.  In my ad, I asked applicants to submit a resume and a portfolio.  Amazingly, some applicants could not follow those simple directions.  Those hit the reject pile immediately. 

So, here is my advice to job hunters.  Pay attention to details and understand that you have about 30 seconds to make an impression. 

 



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Brian Gordon
1/10/2009 12:56:09 AM

Hilarious. Thanks for the laughs.

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