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Alex Jones

I lead teams at the intersection of strategy and design. Autodidact. Polymath. Barbecue acolyte. I start fires (the good kind).

careers

“You Don’t Have the Experience for this Role…Let’s Talk!”

Embracing Junior Designers Who Apply for Roles that Require Experience

Hiring designers (or developers) here in Austin is a paradoxical combo of too many and not enough. If you’re looking for people new to the field, you can spend days going through applicant portfolios. If you’re looking for someone with experience, you’ll spend that time weeding out those same portfolios to find people who have the experience you’re seeking. Now, I personally feel that too many companies miss out on the opportunity of hiring talented folks as they only hire experienced designers. Their unwillingness to invest in the people new to our field is a disservice to the candidates and the team.

Lucky for me, that also means I have more opportunities to hire new designers with huge potential.

So, back to the quandary — designers without experience applying for a role that requires experience. Yes, sometimes we need someone who’s worked as a designer before (or developer or writer etc.), but there can be an opportunity to bring in someone new to the field — so long as a couple of key aspects are covered with them upfront.

Level Set With Them, They’ll Appreciate It

I’ve had this conversation countless times now. During my initial phone interview, before I start diving into my questions, but after I’ve given them a chance to ask theirs, I lay out our career path and levels. I explain that people new to the field start as Associates and I walk through the role, explaining the responsibilities and expectations, noting what is not expected of someone new to the field. I then explain that more senior designers have a very real responsibility to mentor those with less experience. We talk about the day-to-day and our team practices like our weekly design feedback sessions so I can explain that the title doesn’t indicate hierarchy — everyone shares work and is everyone open to feedback from each person on the team, including from a brand new Associate Designer.

99 times out of 100 the response is something like “This is exactly what I need! I haven’t heard of any other companies doing this…” This is both gratifying and disheartening. I love that they’re excited, but frustrated that it isn’t common practice.

Once this is explained to them, the candidate’s energy level immediately shifts and the way they participate, answer and asks questions is noticeably more comfortable and confident. You can tell that they are more open and willing to ask what may seem like a “basic” question. They’re more comfortable sharing what they’re excited about and where they’re challenged, prompting new conversation threads.

Structure Your Team Properly, They’ll Appreciate It Too

It’s all well and good to have that conversation, but then you need to back it up. This is where your more senior folk come in. They must be approachable and available to help the new designer beyond the initial week or two (think months and years — it’s ongoing). This is a critical part of their job, and they need to know that. They also need to be afforded the time and protection to do it, so timelines or project loads may shift accordingly. A new designer needs to be paired with an experienced one, even if they’re working on different aspects of a feature or different projects altogether.

This might seem like a non-starter if you’re slammed, but the investment up front pays off huge in the long run. Your new people gain experience and learn from the team’s best, building loyalty. Your experienced people get to build and flex those mentoring muscles which is highly rewarding.

And it all starts with a simple conversation that may seem hard at first, but will be appreciated by the people you want on your team.

Photo by Willian Justen de Vasconcellos on Unsplash

What it Means to be “Senior”

Hikers climbing up a steep mountain. - Photo by Mathias Jensen on Unsplash

Bear with me as this is the first time I’ve put my thoughts on this topic in writing. I expect I’ll iterate the content of this post many times over as I get feedback. If you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

Senior job titles are awarded too easily in the high tech space. No matter the field, we’ve all encountered colleagues who hold a senior position but don’t act senior embody the values and responsibilities that their team needs them to live up to. This happens for a variety of reasons. It can be easier to provide a title bump in lieu of additional salary. Or it’s used to keep a specialized contributor around. Worst of all are those times when managers believe that seniority directly correlates to the time in a role.

If you watch team sports, you’ve seen how coaches interact with their veteran players compared to the rookies. Vets are held to a high bar, and those expectations include actively helping the new players level up. The same expectations must be set in the business context (don’t worry, that’s the last sports example).

A “Senior” title is a leadership role indicating that the person is not just experienced, but team-oriented.

Leaders owe it to their team to set clear expectations for what it means to hold a “senior” title. These standards must be challenging, yet achievable and require that people work at that level for a time before the title is given. While some details may change between career paths (design, development, product management etc.), these are my baseline expectations.

Proactive Mentorship & Participation

Senior team members proactively help others on the team, especially those who are junior, while still delivering top-notch work. It’s the only way for a good team to become a great one. These senior folks actively shape a positive team culture. They are an example for the others — their work is beautiful, but not untouchable and they take feedback as well as they give it.

Empathy

This really boils down to a “no jerks allowed” standard. IF you’re a senior member of the team should embody the very essence of empathy for those who are going through the lessons that you learned and you should strive to help accelerate them through those times.

Thoughtful Solutions

Senior people transform broad ideas into thoughtful solutions that can be implemented. They execute at a higher level. In some cases, they may define the initial solution and define the tasks for more junior teammates.

Team Representation

Senior people represent their team to the rest of the business. They’re prepared. They know what’s important to defend and when it makes sense to be flexible for the greater good. They know how to best achieve those goals with different stakeholders. Their team feels confident that they are well represented.

Business Empathy

Senior folks understand the business and the “why” that drives each decision. They dig in, learning and thinking about the long-term goals for the team and company. They are pulled into larger business planning discussions because their feedback is valued by other teams. They take what they’ve learned back to the team to spread the context.

Years of Experience

Senior people may have been in the role for a while, but that’s nowhere near as important as the aspects above. Doing the same job for seven years doesn’t mean that a person serves their team and the company well. The converse is often true — developing these skills does take time, but the amount varies between individuals. Some people show a natural aptitude and earn that title earlier than others.

This leads us to an uncomfortable conversation for many leaders — telling someone who has many years of experience but doesn’t embody these skills that they haven’t earned the title. It’s /hard/. But, it’s the right thing to do for your team and that particular individual, to do otherwise is a disservice to everyone.

The New Normal

When someone embodies these skills they are ready for that “Senior” prefix, though they must understand that these are the new table stakes.

Photo by Mathias Jensen on Unsplash

The Branching Career Path

Too many great designers and developers become mediocre (if not terrible) managers as there’s no other visible path forward. It’s an inexcusable failure of our industry and those of us charged with building teams.

We, as leaders must ensure that great people can continue to build their skills and receive the recognition and compensation they deserve, whether they wish to focus on their craft or on building teams. Here’s how I do it.serve, whether they wish to focus on their craft or on building teams. Here’s how I do it.

An outline of the branching career path

Start With the Craft

Everyone starts on the same path, learning about our industry and the tools available and applying them with more and more skill over time. It requires tremendous effort to be good at this job, much less amazing at it. And while some people will quickly give out inflated titles, once you’ve worked with and been mentored by a great Senior Designer, you can spot what true craft leadership means. (If your Senior Designer doesn’t actively mentor, they aren’t truly senior, in my book).

Leadership Paths

It is critical to recognize that leaders don’t always want to manage other humans. In fact, in many cases, they shouldn’t manage people. People leadership is hard and requires a very different set of skills, which must be learned over time, taking precedence over design skills. Craft leadership is equally complex, requiring constant improvement and awareness of changing technologies and practices while broadening one’s technical capabilities.

This is the central thesis of this branching path — craft leadership and people leadership require different skills and perspectives. Each requires a tremendous amount of focus in order to “level up”. We need to recognize this as an industry and provide a structure that allows everyone to be successful and contribute.

Within the Craft path, the split shows that there is room to be a generalist, covering several different skills or to focus on an area of specialization (design ops, research, copy, animation etc.). Both are valuable and the need for each is highly dependent on the overall team structure.

The Top of the Map

When you view this structure, keep in mind that it should take a long time to reach the top. Setting small startups aside, where teams are too small for this structure to be applicable, in a team with great leadership and growth, we’re looking at a couple of decades to reach those heights. That sounds like forever, but truly excellent leaders need time and experience to execute at those levels.

Are These Paths Truly Equal?

Yes, they should be. A Lead Designer and a Design Team Lead should be compensated in the same band and afforded the same respect. A Principal Designer may be the highest paid person on the team, earning more than the Manager or Director that they report to.

There is one caveat though…

“Head of Design”

Yup, this is the one spot where the People Leadership path extends a bit further. Ultimately someone needs to lead all of the people in the design organization, represent their interests to the business and provide the business context in return. The person in this role needs to be someone who has built the critical relationship and business skills that take years to master. They’re the ones who bear the responsibility for the team’s failures. They’re the ones who make and communicate the hard decisions, and you don’t want to leave that to someone who hasn’t had the opportunity to develop those skills.

Jumping Between and Away

Sometimes the current path isn’t the right one. I say this as someone who’s been a developer and product manager in addition to my design roles. Sometimes you want to explore. Sometimes the current path doesn’t make sense. Sometimes, there’s a different path altogether that beckons. Sometimes you just don’t know if you want to manage people or not. This structure fully supports those eventualities. The interconnecting and side paths shown are representative, but by no means comprehensive. Go! Explore! Find what’s right for you, no matter which direction.

Darker lines indicate what I view as the more common paths. For example, the dashed lines between “Lead” and “Design Team Lead” cover the somewhat common case where many people aren’t sure if they want to be People Leaders or Craft Leaders, so they’re more likely to shift at that stage than they are later. The same holds true for leaving this path altogether — it happens, but it isn’t nearly as common.

What’s Expected at Each Step

I haven’t written up descriptions for each role in a shareable format yet, but luckily Peter Merholz has built out an impressively comprehensive Design Team Levels spreadsheet, which is a tremendous resource. I’ve been using a modified version of that work as a way to provide a “Zoomed in” view of each step of my diagram. They aren’t a one-to-one match, but between the two, you should have a great starting point and can modify it to match your team and outlook.

The Steps Between

Those little steps between the major circles reflect the reality that there are often several points subdividing the path between title changes. Many companies have multiple points where an employee has clearly demonstrated growth that should be recognized and compensated, but which may not warrant a title change. So, while it may take a number of years to earn a “Senior” title, their effort is still recognized.

Thoughts or Feedback?

I’d love to hear them. Feel free to leave a comment, drop me a line, message me on LinkedIn, or hit me up on Twitter (@BaldMan).

Usage & Attribution

Feel free to make use of this framework, and even the graphic. If you do, please credit me, keeping the attribution in the graphic, and if you share your work publicly, please link to this post. If you’re up for sharing, I’d be excited to hear about your modifications.

T-Triple-C

When I’m hiring, no matter the role and no matter the seniority of the position, there are four traits that matter above all else.

Transparency: Are they open about what they’re doing, what they know and what they don’t?

Curiosity: Are they driven to learn, frustrated when they don’t know what caused an issue and excited to share their newfound knowledge?

Collaboration: Will they naturally jump in to solve a challenge, will they shift into different roles depending on the need (leader vs. follower) and will they promote the best solution over their solution?

Communication: Will they raise a flag when they need help, or when they can help; will they let others know what to expect?

This collection, which I think of as T-Triple-C (or ’T-Trip-C’), is critical for any team functioning at a high level. Three of the four (Transparency, Collaboration & Communication) actively counteract one of the most hated aspects of professional life – office politics. While we cannot escape politics altogether (yay humans), we can mitigate them and nudge what remains toward a positive, open path.

T-Trip-C is just as critical when I’m looking for my next challenge and interviewing my potential team and boss. As I’ve learned over the years, being on a team that embodies T-Trip-C is the only way that I can consistently execute at a high level while maintaining my wellbeing.

Because at the end of the day, products and companies are powered by people, not code.