Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Peter Berrecloth

How to make it profitable for everyone

I can say with confidence that in the past seven years I have never been offered a design job without some kind of “dry run” by the employer. Every single time I have done well in the interview, that alone has not been enough to secure a job.

My partner and I were both applying for jobs this month. We worked out it took her 8 hours work to successfully land a job (she’s an accountant). For me, it has taken me 160+ hours. That’s 2,000% longer to get a design job than an accountant.

Gone are the days when employers simply reviewed your portfolio and had a quick chat. Design has become a high value job, and with that comes high risk, so it has become normal to have up to four rounds of screenings—the problem is these tests are seemingly arbitrary.

I don’t want to complain too much about whether design tests are ethical or not. I believe design tests can be a good thing if done well—they are a measure of trust for both parties. But I wanted to outline an approach to them so that a design exercise becomes profitable for everyone, and feels less like unpaid work.

I write from the perspective of a candidate, but I am also someone who has interviewed designers too.

What a design test is actually for

✏️ 📒

It is not about their work. You should ascertain if a candidate’s work is good enough from their portfolio. If it is not good enough you should simply not hire them. In fact, you probably shouldn’t even interview them.

💁🏽 💡

It’s about the person in practice. Through a test you should be to grasp exactly how that person performs in a work environment including: time management, communication, collaboration, their process and thinking.

How to spot a bogus design test

Here are some warning signs I watch out for:

🚫 The test focuses on the deliverables

🚫 They expect you to do the test at home or at weekends

🚫 They are unwilling to pay you for a full day’s work

🚫 Unwilling to negotiate on the brief

🚫 Don’t provide you with feedback

I am highly skeptical of a company that is unwilling to negotiate on these points. Usually this is an indicator they are entirely incompatible with my values. But do give them the benefit of the doubt… question their thinking.

Question their thinking

It is quite possible they haven’t screened a designer before. Like you, they probably just Googled a blog post on medium.

The first question is: What criteria are you testing me against?

If they don’t know what they are testing against, i.e. core competencies, then they probably have have a hole in their recruitment process.

Remember, as a designer your natural ability is to look for problems and propose solutions. You can help fill that hole—if you sense they are open to discussing ideas try talking about how you can make this assessment process work best.

I suggest employers stay open to ideas. Treating a designer as a business partner rather an employee will get you vastly better results.

How to shape a healthy design test

What would a healthy design test look like?

✅ An unpaid design test should be no more than 1 hour

✅ If it’s a full day’s work you should be paid as a freelancer

✅ It should be hands on and collaborative

✅ It is a two-way conversation

Remember, both parties are gauging if they want to work together. Most interviewers actually don’t have a clue how to interview and forget they need to impress good candidates too.

If you are a novice interviewer, be honest:

“We really appreciated meeting you, your portfolio and experience appears to be a good fit (give feedback at every stage). We’d like to do an exercise to see how you work. We admit we’ve never hired a designer before and finding a good collaborator is important to us. We want to fit in with your schedule and it will be structured in the following way … It will be no more than an hour and completed here. Please tell us what you think.”

If you are a candidate, reach out:

“I am happy to do the test, but we may not get much out of it using this structure. It could be better to do a freelance day to see how we work together, where we focus on a real task: something that’s useful and collaborative. For instance, designing a single feature or a page. I think this would be a better test so that you can gauge my skills and see if we have a good fit. You also get some good work out of it—so I would want to be paid as a freelancer, but at a reduced rate.”

Either party can take the lead on this approach. It’s business.

A gauge of trust

After I learn that an interviewer wants to do an exercise I quickly check they intend to do a fair test. I gently question why they are doing it, how long it will take and what criteria they are testing for. The above is an illustration of a decent business conversation, not interview technique.

What I have found

In my three week job sprint many employers were not up front about the fact they had never run a test before. The structure was not well thought out, nor was it a fair test with real assessment criteria. The lack of process meant they lost out on a good candidate as a result — I turned all those offers down.

If they don’t know how to hire fairly it means they probably don’t know how to run a good business.

Generally, paying good candidates for a day’s work is simply good business practice. It is how both parties can gauge trust and show they are serious.

If they don’t want to pay you because there is no budget, then remind them that recruiting is expensive — a recruiter can charge a fee that is upto 15–20% of your salary. A charge of £300 for a day’s work may mean you can put bread on the table that month, and is not a great expense for a business. At the least, they should pay travel expenses.

At the end of the day, finding good staff and retaining them is an investment. It is unreasonable to expect anyone to take a whole day out of work to do an arbitrary test with no real value—that will simply leave a bad taste in their mouth.

My ground rule:

🚫 If they are not open to even try collaborating, then it says a lot about their seriousness and I don’t go for it.

✅ If they are keen to try something out, then it says they are keen and are willing to invest.

Are design tests unfair?

From experience, I believe that design tests are totally unequal. Especially when it requires unpaid labour. Other roles do not have such rigorous expectations. Other roles do not require portfolios, let alone carry out arbitrary tests, nor are judgements made on such high levels of subjectivity.

However, as a designer you should also recognise that this role is extremely privileged: You are well paid and you have to opportunity to shape an entire company’s experience. It is natural this role comes with some hoops to jump through.

Go for it, pup. ⭕️ 🐶

Looking for a Senior Product Designer in London?

I am available immediately. Get in touch: www.peterberrecloth.com

The Design Interview Exercise was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Design Interview Exercise

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