With more and more of our clients realising the need for a UX specialism within their teams, and others growing their existing teams; it’s unlikely there has ever been more businesses recruiting for this skill-set within the UK.
With such an opportunity for practitioners to freelance, demand outweighs supply significantly on the permanent side of the market, and identifying the best candidate for the job is really only half of the battle.
You still have to get candidates into your office for an interview and through your hiring process before making an offer.
Many candidates will get several interview requests early on, and this piece offers some pointers on how to secure your candidate of choice, whether in UX or another in-demand skills area.
1. Have an Efficient Hiring Process
HR and hiring managers must be singing from the same hymn sheet to ensure CVs are reviewed in a timely fashion, interview cancellations are avoided, and candidates (whether successful or not) are left with a positive impression.
This also means keeping your process simple – online recruitment tools might seem like a time-saver, but they’re perceived as outdated and bureaucratic (not ideal in the progressive digital sphere).
The startup community is tightly knit, and word of unsatisfactory candidate experiences can travel quickly and impact future applications. Any delays within the process simply give your competitors an advantage.
It’s also key to be flexible about when and where you meet candidates – the market moves quickly, and having after-hours interviews can give you a competitive edge.
2. Be Open-Minded
Being open to candidates that will need some guidance in certain areas but have the potential to pick things up quickly and have a solid core skill-set can unveil some real gems, and it’s rare to find a candidate that fits a job specification exactly… if they can already do everything within the role perfectly, then where is the opportunity for them to grow, and to learn?
3. Write relevant & honest job specifications
This is an opportunity to differentiate your opportunity from that of your competitors, rather than simply listing a series of expectancies or using the same spec that you used in 2008.
What are the opportunities within the role? What makes your company special? What are the biggest challenges likely to be? How does the team approach projects?
It is extremely important that the job specification and the way in which the job is described at interview are accurate, too. Dishonesty ultimately leads to unhappy employees, and can have a number of unpleasant consequences.
4. Benchmark your salaries
There are many companies hiring their first or second full-time UX candidate, and it can be difficult to gain a true understanding of what the industry is paying, and what is fair.
Salary levels within the UX industry vary quite significantly, and it is quite a dangerous strategy to simply look at what another business is paying. We advise consulting professional salary surveys from a trusted recruiting partner, or perhaps the UXPA.
Ultimately, there is no perfect formula to securing the perfect candidate, but being organised, flexible, and honest will go a long way toward helping you get there. You can also see my tips on how to adapt your interview technique with permanent candidates here.