Getting Hired: To Land a Job at LUNAR, Be Authentic, Ask Follow-Up Questions and ‘Add to the Organism’
Posted in: Getting Hired
For Switch, LUNAR helped develop a liquid-cooled LED bulb that casts a warm glow and draws only 13 watts.
This is the first post in our Getting Hired interview series. We’ll be publishing a new interview each weekday for the next two weeks.
Founded in 1984 by Jeff Smith and Gerard Furbershaw, LUNAR has since grown into a full-service creative agency with offices in San Francisco, Chicago, Hong Kong and Munich. Still in touch with its experimental, California roots, LUNAR’s 70 employees work on everything from high-concept cycle trainers to Koo, a combination bassinet and rocking chair designed for new parents. Jeff Salazar, who fell in love with LUNAR after a fortuitous meeting with Smith and Furbershaw while he was still in college, is now the vice president of design, leading the 15-person-strong industrial design team. Salazar’s 19 years at the firm have helped him understand how to grow an energized and balanced community of talent.
Can you walk us through your process for hiring a new designer?
First, it’s about really understanding the need. The need could be driven by any number of things: a vacancy, an emerging market we want to spend more time on, an emerging skill set that we feel we need in order to complement what we already do. Rather than just plugging in a body, we want to make sure it lines up with our long-term goals and isn’t just a near-term reaction—like, “Oh crap, we’re busy, let’s hire people.” People stay here, on average, for seven to eight years, and I think it’s because of how we thoughtfully identify needs and introduce new creative energy to the team.
Once we’ve identified a need, it may be that we already know someone—a freelancer, a contractor or a former intern—who could fill this role immediately. If not, we have to craft the right way to talk about it. Unfortunately, I don’t think people always read that stuff. I think they just see, “Oh, so-and-so is hiring,” and they send their portfolio. We have to then wade through an enormous queue of portfolios, and maybe one out of three are a fit.
In reviewing portfolios, I want to be moved by a point of view—because that’s what we then want to do out in the world. And as I’m combing through portfolios I’ll also be having conversations with the team about what we need. I have an idea for what we need in a creative director, for instance, but I’m interested in the team that’s here now. What are they looking for? What’s that persona like?
Jeff Salazar, LUNAR’s vice president of design
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