Thread
We've hired 54 designers & researchers in the last 4 months at Kraken. I know companies are finding it hard to hire great designers right now, so here are some tips that may help. Let’s get more designers and researchers into the best jobs we can. (Thread 🧵)
1. Speed wins. We lopped off large chunks of our process and got it down to the bare minimum we need to determine if you're right for the team. In most cases, this is under three hours of a candidate's time... total. Get signal quickly. 🧵
We know we can beat anyone on speed, but when we know a company like [BigCo1] or [BigCo2] is one of the other horses, it's not even close. Our goal is to waste as little of your time and ours, and we don't put artificial gates in place just to produce Interview Theater. 🧵
2. We prefer portfolio presentations to design exercises. Design exercises have their advantages, but I've always preferred candidates walk through their actual work as opposed to rushing through made-up work in an environment that doesn't match what they'd run into here. 🧵
Sometimes candidates won't have portfolios ready, but in those cases, we just give them 45 minutes to present themselves however they'd like. I'm Head of Design and I didn't have one ready either. However, I took a few days and produced something I was proud of. You can too. 🧵
3. Pay your designers and researchers like you pay your engineers. This isn't 1990 anymore. We aren't slicing up GIFs and making business cards over here. If you *still* don't value your designers and researchers like you value your engineers, I have no sympathy for you. 👋 🧵
You’re also going to be more successful if you offer geographic flexibility (we employ people in dozens of countries) and multi-year stock grants. There has been a small movement of powerful companies moving to one-year stock grants, and it’s awful for employees. Don’t do it. 🧵
4. Know your company’s strengths in the eyes of candidates. We have a lot of tailwinds at Kraken now because so many people are interested in crypto, but you may be in a field that’s lower profile. What are the sorts of things you can offer that most other companies can’t? 🧵
Maybe you’re working on something of utmost nobility like climate change or health care. Maybe you’re a big company with a large design org that candidates can easily grow within. Maybe you’re a small company that moves fast. Lean into what’s great about you. 🧵
5. Also know the weakness of the companies you compete against. We've hired L7+ people from places like Google, FB/IG & Twitter. Each of these companies has their own weaknesses. For example, at Google, people spend a demoralizing amount of their year on performance reviews. 🧵
I have a friend at Amazon who has been doing creative work his whole life and three months into the job he told me he is *literally* just reading and writing documents all day, every day. F that S. Look for these situations and save people from their predicaments! 🧵
6. Treat the hiring process as a mutual courting. Less than 1% of our applicants end up making it to interview stage, so when they do, we already assume they are amazing, and it’s then our job to show them that we are too. 🧵
We have people on our team who have worked on films like Wonder Woman and The Avengers, built outdoor exhibitions, and even tour in bands. We want our personalities to come through so candidates know they are joining hands with people they can learn from and have fun with. 🧵
7. Care more *about* your candidates than you care about hiring your candidates. We've only had a few offers declined, but in most cases, things never seemed right from the start. Convos were too hard or there was a feeling the candidate was making a sacrifice to work here. 🧵
If you really care about people, you want them to be in the best job they can possibly be in at all times. It's your job to explain all of the great things about your company, but as soon as that crosses the line into convincing, stop. Let people get comfortable on their own. 🧵
8. Hire from your network, but be careful about bias. I'm lucky enough to have hired several of the best humans I've ever worked with into Kraken, but we've all heard stories about leaders bringing in a bunch of ineffective cronies they are comfortable with. Don't do this. 🧵
Make all referrals go through the interview process, and also be sure to look outside your default pipeline to build a diverse team. I won't lie: the plurality of candidates who seem most interested in crypto look a certain way. We want our company to look like the world. 🧵
9. If your company has a "standard hiring process" across all departments, it's almost unfathomable that it is optimized well for design & research hiring. Get permission to break any parts of that process that aren't working for you. 🧵
Be respectful about this and don't change the process any more than you need to, but sometimes a few strategic changes can go a long way. There is no way we would be at 50+ hires in 4 months if we didn't modify a few things. 🧵
10. One thing we've messed up on several times is leaving candidates in the dark for too long. After some digging, I discovered this was usually because interviewers weren't getting their feedback into the system quickly. Sometimes they (and I!) would take several days. 🧵
Make sure interviewers get at least a rough score recorded within a few hours. If necessary, they can fill out the rest of the review later. If you get scores in the system quickly, you should always be able to follow up with candidates within 24 hours of their interview. 🧵
11. Be humble about your process. Even when you think it's dialed, you're still failing at some things. I am 100% sure we have missed or declined some amazing people, and it’s possible we have hired one or two who may not end up working out. Your error rate will never be zero. 🧵
We also need to do our best to make sure the next generation of colleagues to join our industry represent all of the people we wish to serve: all races, religions, sexual orientations, geographies, income levels, political ideologies, and a whole lot more. 🧵
12. And finally: Hire nice people and run a fun team! Life is too short to be miserable at work. We are lucky enough to be in an industry where we get to create new experiences for people out of thin air. If we can't have fun doing that, we're doing something very very wrong. 🧵
Thanks for reading. I hope these tips help you. If they don't — perhaps because you're stuck somewhere that won't change — you might be Kraken material. We have great roles to fill from Research Leadership to UX Writing to a Deck Hand⚓️ to help with presentations. DM me! 🧵🔚
