Where Are Businesses Going Wrong When Hiring Designers?
Previously, I shared my perspective in “Investing in Design: If You’re Going to Do It, Do It Properly,” , focusing on the business value that design can create.
In this series, I want to take that discussion one step further: if design is an investment, how should a business build its design team, processes, and capabilities so that investment can actually deliver results?
Over more than 20 years in design—from graphic design and UI to Product Design and team leadership—I have noticed something interesting.
Many businesses have no shortage of budget to hire designers. They also have no shortage of capable candidates. What they lack is the right approach to building a design organization that fits their business strategy and stage of development.
The result is that some companies have dozens of designers, yet their products still lack consistency, their workflows are full of friction, and design is sometimes even perceived as something that slows product development down.
Throughout my experience at different companies, I have noticed a fairly consistent pattern. Whether working with in-house product teams or software development service companies, the design team assigned to each product is often relatively small.
At the MVP stage, a product may need only one designer. As the product grows and the team expands, that number often increases to two to four, depending on the complexity of the product.
Companies such as Notion, Linear, and Airbnb are widely respected in the design community for their product experiences. What they have in common is not enormous design teams, but an early commitment to design quality and a team structure that fits each stage of growth.
The difference rarely comes down to headcount or salary alone. In my view, it comes down to whether a business hires the right people, builds the right team, and invests at the right time.
That is why I am writing this four-part series.
Part 1 — Where Are Businesses Going Wrong When Hiring Designers?
Why do many businesses offer competitive salaries and still hire the wrong people?
Part 2 — Understand the Business Before Hiring Designers
Startup, growth-stage, or mature company only tells part of the story. In this article, I will explore how to look at a business through a strategic lens, and why business strategy is what ultimately determines the role of Design and the kind of designer a company needs.
Part 3 — How Should You Build a Design Team?
When should you hire a Generalist or a Specialist? A Junior or a Senior? And how do you build a design team that fits the company's scale, goals, and stage of development?
Part 4 — When Should You Start Thinking About Scale?
Not every business needs a Design System from day one. But there comes a point when investing in Design Systems, Accessibility, Review Processes, and other capabilities becomes essential for sustainable growth.
Part 1: Where Are Businesses Going Wrong When Hiring Designers?
If you asked me what the most common mistake businesses make when hiring designers is, my answer would not be:
“We couldn't find talented people.”
It would be:
They don't understand what kind of designer their business actually needs.
Without answering that question, a business can easily hire the wrong person—even when it offers a competitive salary and has a well-structured hiring process.
After years of directly hiring designers and building design teams, I have found that businesses tend to make three common mistakes.
Mistake #1: Hiring for Cost Instead of Fit
This is a common mistake among startups and small businesses. With limited resources, many companies prioritize engineering and feature development. Design is often seen as something that can be added later, or as a function that only requires a less experienced designer to “make the interface.”
This is an understandable choice.
But what many businesses underestimate is that users experience the design before they experience the technology.
Before they know how many features a product has, they have already formed an impression of its professionalism, credibility, and quality through its interface and initial experience.
A product with a strong idea but a poorly executed presentation can lose significant opportunities to convince users from the very first interaction.
The issue is not that a business hires a Junior Designer.
The issue is hiring someone whose capabilities do not match the goals of the current stage.
Some startups need only one designer. But that person needs to be capable of growing alongside the product and balancing development speed with experience quality.
Mistake #2: Believing a Senior Hire Will Solve Everything
At the other end of the spectrum, some businesses assume that hiring a Senior Designer at a high salary will automatically improve product quality.
In reality, it is rarely that simple.
In design, experience creates value when it is relevant to the context.
A Product Designer with years of experience building dashboards, ERP systems, or enterprise management platforms may not be the right choice for a business developing an application for a broad consumer audience.
Conversely, a designer who is highly experienced in mobile applications or e-commerce may struggle when faced with problems involving complex systems, workflows, or data.
They may all have the title Product Designer. But their domains, ways of thinking, and problem-solving experience can be entirely different.
And that is before we even consider designers whose strengths lie in graphic design or branding.
They may also be Senior Designers, but placing them in a web or digital product design role can present significant challenges.
What a business needs is not the most experienced person. It is the person with the most relevant experience.
Mistake #3: Not Understanding the Design Profession—and Misjudging Candidates
This is the root cause of the two mistakes above.
Businesses often understand their customers, markets, and products very well. But not every business understands the design profession equally well.
Today, there are many types of designers, each with different strengths:
Graphic Design
Branding
UI Design
UX Design
Product Design
Motion Design
UX Research
Design Systems
Even among people with the same title—Product Designer—individuals may specialize in very different types of products and problem spaces.
As a result, many businesses evaluate candidates primarily through their portfolios.
A portfolio is an important source of information, but it mainly reflects the final outcome. It does not necessarily reveal how a candidate analyzes problems, collaborates with Product Managers and Engineering teams, works within technical constraints, or makes design decisions.
Nor does it always reveal something equally important: the ability to negotiate and defend a design solution with stakeholders.
More importantly, a beautiful portfolio does not necessarily mean the candidate is a good fit for the problem the business needs to solve.
What businesses need to evaluate is not only:
“How good is this candidate?”
But also:
“Is this candidate a good fit for our product, our team, and the problems we need to solve?”
Conclusion
After years of hiring and building design teams, I have come to realize that businesses do not hire the wrong designers because the market lacks talented people.
They hire the wrong people because they have not clearly understood what value design needs to create for their business—and therefore have not identified what kind of designer is right for the problem at hand.
Some startups need a Generalist who can work alongside the product from day one.
Some larger businesses may only need to add the right Specialist to solve a very specific problem.
There is no single hiring formula that works for every business.
There is only the right person for the right problem, at the right time.
But before answering the question:
“Who should we hire?”
A business needs to answer a more important question:
“How does our business compete, and what role should Design play in that strategy?”
That will be the focus of Part 2 — Understand the Business Before Hiring Designers.
