Hasta La Ideas

Images from (clockwise from top left) LUNAR, IDEO, Google X and frog

Yesterday, we ran the last of our nine Getting Hired interviews, in which we solicited job-seeking advice from key hiring personnel at LUNAR, IDEO, Philips, BMW Group Designworks USA, Smart Design, frog, Google X, Ziba and Teague (whew!). To wrap up the series, we asked our intrepid interviewer, Bryn Smith, to distill those conversations into a shortlist of essential strategies for landing your next design job. Did we miss something? By all means, share your own I.D.-employment wisdom in the comments.

1. Be proactive
Have you always dreamed of working at IDEO? Or perhaps Philips or frog seems like the perfect fit? Don’t wait for an invitation. Many of the firms I spoke to welcome unsolicited applications, so it makes sense to apply even if you don’t see a job opening. “As a consultancy, it’s important to keep a pipeline of candidates,” explains frog’s Kerstin Feix. Perhaps even more important than submitting an application, however, is doing whatever you can to connect with someone inside the firm, via your alma mater or good old-fashioned networking at conferences and other industry events. When something does open up, firms often start with people they already know, so having that foot in the door is a huge advantage. “It’s getting to know people and starting a conversation,” notes Paul Backett of Ziba. “So when the right place, right time comes along, the discussion can be our focus.”

2. Tell a compelling story
“A lot of designers have beautiful portfolios, but it’s really important for us to have an understanding of how they got there,” says Smart Design’s Sarah Szeflinski. Think about your portfolio as an exercise in storytelling, and be sure to highlight all the ups and downs along the way to the final product. “We love to hear about the challenges that people come across—failures even,” says Ziba’s Paul Backett. “We want to hear what they’ve learned,” adds Sean Hughes of Philips. Pacing is also important when laying out your book (or PDF or website)—don’t get too template-happy; instead, use different projects to showcase different skills. And then edit. “If you have weak work in your in your book it can bring down the whole portfolio,” says Lisa Olivia at Designworks USA.

3. Master the basics
Sometimes the most obvious step is the easiest to overlook. Before an interview, do background research on the firm so you have a solid understanding of the kind of work they do (as well as the kind they don’t). Practice walking through your portfolio with a friend, or on your own out loud. Then practice it again. Lisa Olivia recommends asking how much time you’ll have before the interview even begins. That way you can adjust your pace, and you won’t end up in a situation where there isn’t time to present your favorite piece. Once the interview begins, “stay in control of the dialogue,” advises LUNAR’s Jeff Salazar. Asking questions and being engaged in the interview as a conversation demonstrates your interest in the position, as well as your respect for the interviewer’s time. And don’t forget to make eye contact! As Teague’s Alysha Naples points out, those basic social skills are extremely important—the firm wants to know that it can feel confident putting you in front of a client, and that you can handle curveball questions with dignity and charm.

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In 2001, Ziba redesigned the Heinz ketchup packaging.

Editor’s note: We interviewed Paul Backett late last year, and since then he has moved on from Ziba. We decided to still include his thoughts in this Getting Hired series, as they reflect more than eight years of working at Ziba, and are generally applicable to interviewing at any design firm.

Ziba, which means “beautiful” in Farsi, was founded 29 years ago by the Iranian Sohrab Vossoughi as an industrial design firm. One of the first consultancies to create an in-house consumer insights and trends group, Ziba prides itself on understanding people first and foremost. Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, the company has evolved to offer product, communication, environment and packaging design, plus brand strategy and consumer research. Paul Backett, who until recently led Ziba’s industrial design team, was responsible for assembling, leading and driving the I.D. team to create. Though Backett is no longer at Ziba, his opinions reflect working at the company for over eight years.

Can you walk us through your process for hiring a new designer?

This is probably pretty common, but we get a lot of applications. What we like to do is split our applications across teams. The principal industrial designer and I will look at all the senior portfolios that come in. Then a few of our senior designers look at all of the junior and intern applications. Every few weeks we get together and ask if there’s anything interesting that’s come though. If there’s something that’s really wonderful, we forward it on to each other and have a look pretty quickly. It really is a team effort. If we see someone that we like, even if we don’t have an opening, we like to talk to that person. One of the important things about finding talent is building relationships. It’s getting to know people and starting a conversation for when the right working opportunity comes along.

We like to talk to candidates over Skype (unless they’re local), because so much of what we do is about having a personality, caring about what you do and being able to talk passionately about your work. And if there are people we are considering for a position, then we absolutely bring them to our “house.” It’s important for us to get to know them, but also for them to get to know us in a lot more detail.

At that point, we also make sure that the whole team meets the person who’s applying for the position. It’s a bit of a rite of passage. Everyone that has a job here has come to visit Ziba for a day-long interview. It can be quite daunting, but I think it’s a great thing to do. A little bit of pressure is sometimes good. It’s very important the whole team meets the candidate. That’s everyone that we have from juniors through seniors, principals, and myself.

What makes good candidates stand out?

I also teach at the University of Oregon, and I’m always giving my students advice on how to get into good design firms. My number one thing is, it’s all about your body of work. I don’t, in a way, care where you’re from, where you studied, or what grades you got. Your work really speaks for you. Having great ideas is just a base; everyone can come up with great ideas. What we love to see in a portfolio is really that you can showcase your skills. We’re a very visually based company and we’re immersed in making as much as possible. So we love to see great sketching and modeling skills. We’re less excited by glossy renderings and CAD work. It’s old-fashioned in a sense, but I love to see the core skills of an industrial designer.

In a portfolio, it’s really important to think about pace. This goes for anyone, not just recent graduates. Don’t take a cookie-cutter approach to sharing your work, like “Here’s my research, here’s my inspiration, here’s my refinement, here’s my solution.” Use different projects to showcase different skills. Some projects might be focused on killer sketching; some might be more about visualization. Process is really important at Ziba. It’s not about the final solution, but how you got there. We love to hear about the challenges that people come across as part of that story. Failures even. Things that pushed you to the next level are key. That’s really what we do here. We’re approaching difficult problems, and we don’t always get it right the first time. We have to go down lots of paths and make difficult decisions along the way.

Ziba did the design and engineering of Wacom’s Cintiq 24HD graphics tablet.

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The Urchin, a pebble-shaped “ready for anything” Bluetooth speaker designed by frog and home audio manufacturer Sound United

This is the sixth post in our Getting Hired series. Last week we talked to key HR personnel at LUNAR, IDEO, Philips, BMW Group Designworks USA and Smart Design.

In a twist on the more famous dictum, frog design‘s founder, Harmut Esslinger, once stated that “form follows emotion.” With an emphasis on designing products and experiences that connect beyond mere functionality, frog has stayed true to this ethos over its 44 years in business. The company’s 600 employees are loosely divided into three informal categories: designers, technologists and strategists. Kerstin Feix, frog’s AVP, Head of Global Human Resources, oversees the HR team in the company’s nine studios worldwide. James Cortese, frog’s Director of Marketing, also contributed to this interview.

Can you walk us through your process for hiring a new industrial designer?

Kerstin Feix: For every discipline we have a special process. Every job opening is always on the website—but it makes sense to apply even if there’s not a job opening. As a consultancy, it’s important that we maintain a pipeline of candidates.

It’s most important for us to see your portfolio. We prefer either a PDF or a link to your website. I would say it’s less about your school degree and more about your skill set, your personality and your past experience. In the best case scenario, you know somebody within frog, because referrals get handled with extra care.

If we think the portfolio is strong enough, we invite the candidate to an initial screening call handled by the recruiter. After that, we invite candidates into our studio, and we start the interview process with a portfolio presentation. Here they have a chance to meet different levels of employees, not only managers but designers as well. They also get a look and feel—who are the people that they might work with in the future? The portfolio presentations gives candidates a chance to tell a story, to showcase their own personal experience and to convince the people in the room that they are the right fit.

What makes good candidates stand out?

KF: When you look at the portfolio, ideally it blows you away. That’s basic. At frog it’s the culture fit that’s so important, because we know that even if a candidate has the perfect technical skill-set, they can create much more damage than benefit if they’re not a cultural match. It’s important for the morale and the team in general to find people who fit.

James Cortese: I’m trying to qualify what makes a frog. It’s a combination of someone who has an original point of view, but they’re also very democratic and open to new ideas. There’s a willingness to challenge their own assumptions based on what they’ve learned from the people around them and the people that they work with. A sense of irreverence tempered by a sense of professionalism.

KF: I sometimes even used the word rebel. You need to be a rebel in your heart, which means that you like to challenge and question things—but you are also able to play on a team. We work in a consultancy, so it’s important to understand that we are passionate about changing the world, but we’re also a business.

Kerstin Feix, frog’s AVP, Head of Global Human Resources, and James Cortese, Director of Marketing

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Designworks USA provided engineering and design expertise for the 2014 U.S. Olympic bobsled

This is the fourth post in our Getting Hired series. Yesterday, we talked to the chief design officer for Philips’s healthcare division.

Built by Charles W. Pelly and Ray Carter in the early 1970s, DesignworksUSA has been a creative consultancy for over 40 years. The firm was acquired by BMW Group in 1995, but its portfolio extends far beyond the automotive industry with projects in consumer electronics, medical equipment and transit—including planes, trains and yachts. Lisa Olivia is responsible for global talent management for the firm’s three studios, in Los Angeles, Munich and Shanghai, which together employ about 130 people. Before joining DesignworksUSA, Olivia was the director of global design recruitment at Nike for 12 years.

Can you walk us through your process for hiring a new industrial designer?

Generically, we identify a designer we’re interested in either through an advertisement or through networking. Then we would request a resume and a portfolio. The portfolio is obviously very important in the review process because there needs to be a certain talent and skill level evidenced through the work, the sketching and the rendering. And the designer’s previous experience needs to be relative and applicable to our current opening. Sometimes it’s hard to articulate—you see a strong portfolio and you just know.

After reviewing resumes and portfolios, we invite viable candidates in for an interview if they’re local. If they’re not local, we might start with a phone interview or a WebEx conference. If they pass that first test, then they’d come in for interviews with our design directors and some other team members who can meet with them, ask questions and make an assessment of their talent and skills. When designers come on-site here with their portfolios, part of the process is walking us verbally through the portfolio to articulate their design process and their design thinking, and how they came up with solutions to different projects. Then, depending on the situation, they could come back a second or even a third time before we make a selection and extend an offer to the best candidate.

What makes good candidates stand out?

The portfolio is the critical piece in the process. We’re looking for designers who can articulate their process well in their portfolio. It also depends on what kind of designer we’re looking for—we have visual interaction designers, graphic designers, industrial designers, transportation designers, et cetera. In the case of industrial designers, we’re looking for strong sketching and rendering skills, fresh thinking—and it can be a plus if someone can also demonstrate strong 3D skills. Ideally, a portfolio demonstrates a lot of different solutions, so we can see that you can think of different ways of solving a problem.

Because designers don’t always have the chance to walk us through their portfolios, they really need to make sure that their work can speak for itself. They need to think of someone paging through or clicking through on their own. Can someone else follow it? Does it make sense? Is their thought process well articulated?

Lisa Olivia, DesignworksUSA’s global director of collaboration and knowledge management. Right: packaging design for hello, a “seriously friendly” oral care brand

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Designers prototyping concepts for Brand New IDEO, the company’s recent brand exploration

This is the second post in our Getting Hired interview series. Yesterday, we talked to the VP of design at Lunar.

IDEO‘s 600 employees don’t fit neatly into categories because the firm famously works across disciplines, and encourages its employees (and by extension its clients) to unlock their potential in creative ways. This has led to many firsts, including Apple’s original mouse and the Treo, to name just two. Founded by David Kelley in 1991, IDEO is a design consultancy focused on helping its clients innovate and grow, and on bringing new companies and brands to life. As IDEO’s global head of talent, partner Duane Bray handles anything that involves the company’s people and culture—how people find out about the company, how they join IDEO and develop their careers, how they build their internal and external networks, and even what it looks like when people transition out of the firm.

Can you walk us through your process for hiring a new designer?

At a certain point in the year, we’ll start to identify what our needs are for any of our locations. This is basically aligning what the market is telling us in relation to our portfolio and the skills that are necessary, and asking, Where are our gaps? When we start doing that, there are three places where we look to fill those needs. The first is looking internally; we encourage people to move around the firm a lot, so often we’ll start there. Then we’ll also reach out to our network, because we often have folks at IDEO who already have an ideal person in mind. And, finally, we’ll post the position. You’ll see activity from us on LinkedIn or on our website, doing a broader outreach to the world.

There’s always an evaluation process before bringing someone in. It starts with their portfolio, their work and what we understand about their work. Any recruiter at IDEO will tell you the resume is the last thing you look at; the work is always the first. Once we do that and identify candidates, particularly if it’s someone we want to hire who doesn’t work at IDEO, we’ll start arranging a series of conversations with them. There are usually multiple conversations. It’s rare that someone comes in for one interview and they’re done.

Then we’ll start to look at what kind of the conversations we need to have at IDEO. We’ll arrange deliberate conversations that cut across boundaries, and sometimes we’ll put people through activities. We’ve done everything from throwing cocktail parties where people come in and we mingle, to putting them through an actual working session where we’ll have them join a team. We’ll do things to try them on for size, from both a cultural and a professional perspective.

What makes good candidates stand out?

Once we reach out to someone, we’ve usually seen their work and now we want to talk to them. We’re looking for people who are great storytellers. What got them here? How do they solve problems? What inspires them? We often see people who have followed rich and diverse paths to get to where they are. So sometimes that story is really interesting to us, and we look for that. Storytelling is number one.

We also want to know that they’re passionate about the role. Sometimes there’s a distinction between being passionate about working at IDEO and being passionate about the role we’re hiring for. Do they truly love the idea of this job, whether it’s at IDEO or somewhere else?

We also look for people who embody our values in some way. Just simple things like being collaborative and being comfortable with ambiguity. Development at IDEO is not a rigid structure; it’s much more of a negotiation. Therefore, ambiguity and how you deal with that is important. Then there’s the notion of making others successful. We look for people who, when talking about their work or projects, talk about how they were part of a team. It’s not just “I did this” or “I had the good idea.” Finally, curiosity: We love for them to be curious, to ask us questions.

Duane Bray, IDEO’s global head of talent, and a team-building exercise outside IDEO’s New York City office

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