What the perfect design team and cookies have in common
Tasty advice for team builders trying to hire the right designer and for designers trying to join the right team.
Creativity, like baking, is messy. There is nothing cookie-cutter about it.
The process of making a cookie taste good enough to be memorable and crave-worthy is a real challenge. It typically involves a flour-covered kitchen, fingernails filled with dough, and the occasionally dropped egg on the floor. Smooth edges and colorful toppings are merely the finishing touches.
If your goal is simply to make beautiful- looking cookies, then you can buy pre-made dough at the supermarket and skip the part of the true difficulty — the creation.
More important than shapes and sprinkles, is the chemistry of the ingredients inside the dough. The magic happens during the period of trial and error, experimentation, and bake & taste tests. A pinch more salt. A splash of vanilla. Coconut? Why not!
Only after you’ve decided you’ve got the perfect mix — a decision based on part intuition and part raw cookie-dough sampling — can the cookie-cutting and decorating commence.
When it comes to cookies, we are only tempted to eat more than one or to share our new recipe with others, if the end result tastes irresistible.
Appearance doesn’t matter, especially before they went in the oven.
To team builders:
First of all…news flash: perfect designers don’t exist.
We’re all a little bit raw until we find the right team and support to help us grow into the best version of who we can be.
If you are trying to build a diverse team of people who challenge each other, approach problem-solving with an open mind, and embrace all the imperfections of the creative and design-thinking process, why would you consider hiring cookie-cutter talent?
You probably want a team that is brave, curious, unique, and compassionate, so you should seek out team members that share those same values — Ones who make mistakes, don’t follow the norm, and aren’t afraid to throw in some coconut once in a while.
As a leader of a highly creative and progressive design team, I can confidently say that each and every one of us took an “untraditional” path to get here and therefore, come with untraditional experiences. As our agency grows and I begin building my next venture, I find myself scouring LinkedIn for future team members and collaborators with this same untraditional approach to their craft.
In my 16 years of experience in leading, building, and working alongside teams, I’ve learned first-hand that different is better.
An alternative set of interview questions
A solid portfolio and LinkedIn recommendations are 100% necessary when hiring, but they’re not everything. Here are some interview questions that can help you understand what kind of person is behind the designs and processes they show online:
- Who or what influences your career decisions?
- What languages do you speak?
- What communities do you belong to?
- What projects are you proud of and why?
- How are you demonstrating compassion for humanity, effecting change via design, and living by your values through design?
- What would your past team members say about you?
To designers:
3 pieces of LinkedIn advice to help you stand out to the right design teams
- Think of your profile as part of your personal and professional brand. Your LinkedIn profile is just as important as your portfolio so brand it with intention and consistency. Move your accomplishments, unique traits, and community contributions up to the top.
- Research and be inspired by others. Find other designers whose profiles really stand out and deconstruct their personal brand image to understand what they’re doing right.
- Express yourself. Start posting thought pieces, sharing work publically, or writing articles on Medium to showcase who you really are and what kind of perspective you bring.
Your story and personal brand should be uniquely you and your individual experiences are what shaped the tremendous value you bring. No organization worth contributing to would want to see anything less.
Originally published on our Gallardo Labs blog on February 12, 2019.
