the more experience I have doing interviews and interviewing others the more I'm convinced it's a process with extremely little merit. I can gain 95% of what I need to know in order to hire someone based on their portfolio and an hour in person design review where they present to me and some coworkers and we ask a lot of questions. Whiteboard challenges have limited use and often the challenge is either loaded in a way where the interviewers presuppose way too much domain knowledge or assume the the interviewee has some baseline context that they may or may not have. I was once asked to whiteboard a series of harry potter apps (I've never read the books or watched any of the movies, so that was great...). Take home challenges are ridiculous and no one should do them. It shows an extreme lack of respect for peoples personal time and the expectation that someone should only spend a couple hours on a project is absurd. I was given a take home project on a Friday for an interview on Monday morning once where I was supposed to design a new dashboard for their enterprise product. This is absurd on many levels, but most of all because a dashboard at it's heart a summary of the entire product, a hierarchy of needs to for every single thing your product does and in many ways functions as navigation. Sure let me spend 3 hours on that for you...

I've seen people who've interviewed great end up being terrible employees and I've seen the opposite where I had low expectations and they crushed it. You can't know. So does their work seem intelligent? Do they seem sane and fairly socially adjusted? Yes? Ok, hire them.

Hi Taylor! Here's what we do. Two design challenges, less than an hour total. Done in the presence of one or two other co-workers (not just designers, but the people most likely to work the hire on a daily basis) who evaluate with a pre-created grading rubric (super important to avoid bias).

We have a few tests to choose from depending on the role, but here's my go-to default. Find a case study of an actual app design (e.g. any long-winded post on Medium lol) that spells out some random designer's process. The more obscure the better (this challenge is most effective if the candidates have never seen it before).

Give designers time to read the case study (e.g. 10-15 minutes) and take notes if they wish.

Then have the candidate present what they liked or disliked about the case study, and what they would've done differently. Finally, ask the candidate whether they would hire that designer at Lucid or not, and why.

I have to note we don't do any follow up questions except to clarify anything confusing the candidate said. We intentionally leave the like or dislike question open ended to let the candidate fill the space (and avoid poisoning the result with leading follow-ups).

This design challenge doesn't require a whiteboard, take home or any of that junk, but definitely will reveal how the candidate thinks on their feet, presents their case, and the type of designers they prefer to work with (or not). And this specific test takes 30 minutes.

Here's the important part, before you use the case study in interviews, have each of your designers take the test first! This will inform your grading rubric of things you should expect or not expect to hear, and help you see whether the case study is too hard or easy to evaluate.

Final note, the grading is done independently and alone. Only after grading do the co-workers share their opinions (again, to avoid influence and bias).

Whiteboard challenges

Oh! Look at this http://they.whiteboarded.me/

The closer you can test/replicate real working conditions, the better data you'll get if someone is right for the position. Something we started doing that gave us the most relevant data for our efforts was the white boarding challenge where its meant to be highly collaborative. Its not just the interviewee monologuing and asking questions. The interviewers are meant to engage equally as partners to complete the challenge. In a real work situation you're meant to collaborate. So it helps to see how they collaborate, think, take feedback, give or take direction, "yes and" ideas, etc.

In addition we make sure that they are fully prepared for the meeting. We tell them exactly who they will meet with, what will be discussed and what we are hoping to learn about them in that meeting. We include some tips as well. The first onsite meeting is "de-pressurize" and prep them. They meet with other designers, they talk about life, get setup, and give advice. Its meant to put them at ease which of course they are trying to impress us but I've found that it takes the edge off the presentation

Also super important to ensure everyone talking to the interviewee knows everything about them, their work, and what they are suppose to ask and prod for.

Good interview questions should be preset to remove bias and increase quality.

Have a debrief that same day if possible.

First and foremost, a lot of your "examples" are utter nonsense and very bias.

Hiring for UX/UI/Product all depends on the level of seniority that you're hiring for. I hope you don't think it's the same when hiring a junior vs a senior vs a director.

Portfolio reviews are to showcase if the person knows how to present themselves (branding) per se. Also, they don't tell you shit about the person. Ultimately, I want to know how they created their portfolio, if they developed it themselves, how did they go about selecting the projects on there? After that, I go ahead and ask them about their favorite project to see if the passion is there.

Whiteboard challenges? what? You want them to work for free with no sense of what the project and the politics it consists of?

Take-home challenges? Again, you're trying to get free work.

Design game? Why are you wasting people's time? Don't' you need someone to collaborate and enjoy working with the team?

"About me" presentation? Do you want another dog and pony show? Quickly answer this, is the person an asshole? Are they rude? Do they not know what they're talking about? Now they have to prove that their attitude aligns with your bias?

Personal interview...teach me something? You're getting creative for no reason. You can easily find a good working peer if you just stick to the basics. Is the portfolio good? Do they have a passion for the job? Are they assholes?

I hope your leadership team has a good amount of PoC, cause all of these screams red flags to me.

Here's my best interview ever and something I borrowed for whenever I have to interview someone.

I was a approached by a design manager for a bank. They wanted to build a whole new design studio, with designops and everything and they were looking for a UX lead. Rethink all of their interaction online and off. Sounded interesting so I said yes.

We met for coffee. Which I found nice, rather than sitting in a conference room. And we simply talked. He very carefully guided the discussion around the design sphere locally and internationally, asking for my opinion on various subjects, podcasts, instagram design influencers, politics, previous workplaces, ways of working etc. Everything that he needed to know was taken out of the conversation and my tonality and passion for some of the subjects.

For some of the subjects I even got my laptop out of the bag and showed how I approached things for some of the issues we were talking about and he showed me some of his.

More than this I really appreciated the transparency. I was told the budget range from the very start, how their organization was set right now and that it was a start of the road kind of engagement.

I know there are very mixed feelings about design challenges, but I have to find ways to understand if designers can think on their feet and if I can work together with them on a project.

Why not do that by just... y'know... hiring them? Let them show you how they work as a designer by letting them actually work as a designer.

Too often there are only two possible outcomes of a job application — You're either hired full time or you're not. Why not give them a "paid design challenge" by bringing them in for a small project on a freelance/contract basis, paying them for their time, and reevaluating after the project is finished?

Both parties actually benefit from this approach, no matter what the outcome is. If it's positive, then you've hired a designer, and the applicant gets hired. Win-win. If it's not meant to be, then at least you got some design work done during the hiring process, and the applicant got a bit of money in their pocket and some more experience under their belt. Win-win.

Hi! I started to find design jobs but don't find anything and decide to change job. When I shared thoughts with my friends they advise me to start trading and search for something on the Internet, because it's good to work and I can work at home. And I started to look for information on the Internet: read the article on the topic of trading, watch the video and then came across a site https://fx-list.com/blog/articles/profiting-from-currency-trading with information for brokers company. Now I have a lot of free time and have a positive, social impact.

I know this has sort of just turned into rants about whiteboard challenges, but hiring is hard. Interviewing and finding the right people is hard. Hiring the wrong people can destroy teams from the inside out. Hiring the wrong people, after salary and benefits and healthcare and equity and performance improvement plans, can be a million dollar mistake.

Thanks for the thoughts so far.

Very clear and informative.