Did you know that 75% of a website’s credibility depends on its overall aesthetics? It’s no wonder that every company with an app or website takes its UI/UX design seriously.
But in a fiercely competitive market where every business is vying for a UI/UX designer, how do you stand out and hire the best one for your business?
In this comprehensive guide, we examine how you can hire the best UI/UX designer for your business.
How to hire a UI/UX designer?
Identify your business requirements.
Before hiring a designer, you need to understand why your business needs one in the first place. Most companies rush into hiring a UI/UX designer without creating a proper business plan.
For example, are you launching a new website/app for your business? Or do you plan to redesign an existing product?
And if so, why do you need to create/redesign your website/app? Is it to have a competitive edge over your competitors? Or are you planning to reduce the bounce rate and improve conversions?
Lastly, it’s also important to understand the current stage of your product’s development process.
1. Is your business building a product from scratch? Do you want to build wireframes/prototypes to create an MVP for your product?
2. Do you have a readymade wireframe and brand guidelines that are waiting to be fleshed out into a final design?
3. Do you want to enhance an existing product based on the feedback you received and improve the user experience?
Having absolute clarity about the what and why of your business goals will not only help you understand why you need a UI/UX designer, but it’ll also help you communicate your business requirements with your hire effectively.
Create a unique job description
One of the biggest mistakes business owners make while they create a job description is that they copy-paste the same from various sources and make it their own.
Do you know what’s the end result?
You attract the wrong talent.
Why?
Because an experienced UI/UX designer who’s looking to get hired wants to know what’s in it for them and will have a certain idea in mind as to what kind of company and profile they want to work with.
If you’re copy-pasting the same job description, chances are they would have already encountered the same across various job listings and disregarded them.
Hence it’s essential that you create a job description suited to your business needs and requirements so that you stand out from the crowd and are able to attract the right talent.
Spend some time thinking about why your business needs a UI/UX designer (based on the previous step) and then put to paper some of the requirements and responsibilities for your new hire.
A typical set of UI/UX designer responsibilities involve the following:
- Evaluate user requirements in collaboration with product managers and engineers
- Create user-centric designs by understanding business requirements
- Create user flows, wireframes and prototypes
- Design UI elements like menus, tabs and widgets
- Create unique graphic designs like images, sketches and tables
- Troubleshoot UX problems such as responsiveness
- Adhere to font, colour and image guidelines
- Enhance UX by incorporating customer feedback, usage metric and usability findings
Apart from responsibilities, you also need a UI/UX designer who has the skills relevant to your business needs. To ensure the same, you must mention both the hard and soft skills your candidate must have in the job description.
For a UI/UX designer, having hard skills is not enough. You must place a special emphasis on soft skills as well because it is what differentiates a great designer from a good one.
Some soft skills you may consider are:
- Communication: a UI/UX designer needs to constantly communicate through their questions/ideas/findings
- Teamwork: essential as your UI/UX designer will be working with multiple stakeholders
- Time management: key, especially if you have a launch date for your product
- Attention to detail: defining the flow and process behind a design requires attention to detail
- Accountability: your designer needs to take complete ownership of the project
- Critical thinking: without this, your designer won’t be able to translate your business requirements to your desired product.
Hard skills for a UI/UX designer typically involve an understanding of the latest tools and software. Some hard skills you can consider are:
- [X] years of experience as a UI/UX designer
- Knowledge of wireframe and prototyping tools like Wireframe.cc, Sketch and InVision
- Knowledge of design tools like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Figma
- Basic knowledge of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript
Set aside a budget
The cost of a UI/UX designer depends mainly on geographical location, the experience of the designer and the type of hiring.
Depending on your business preferences and needs, you have three options for hiring a UI/UX designer: freelancer, in-house and agency.
Let’s have a look at each of these options and analyse their costs so that you can make an informed decision:
Freelancers
You can hire freelancers from platforms like Upwork/Fiverr/Toptal. The benefit of hiring a freelancer is that they’re cost-effective and you can hire them from any part of the world.
The median rate of UI/UX designers on Upwork is $25-$39 per hour and approximately $78 per hour on Toptal.
The only drawback of hiring freelancers is that they may not be fully immersed in your project since they’ll be working with other clients also.
Agencies
You can also hire a dedicated UI/UX agency and outsource your project to them. A dedicated UI/UX agency may be a better option than hiring a freelancer as they’ll be more involved in your project and there is better organization of your work.
Much like freelancers, the amount of money you pay depends on where the agency is based. For example, design agencies in the US charge $30-$125 per hour while in Eastern European countries, it ranges between $30-$45 per hour.
However, do keep in mind that design agencies cost much more than hiring freelancers.
In-house designers
If you’re looking to hire a UI/UX designer for the long term, hiring an in-house designer will make sense. With an in-house designer, you’ll be in control of the entire design process and your designer will fully integrate into your company culture.
However, do note that hiring an in-house designer takes time as you need to find the perfect fit according to your business requirements. Moreover, it is much more costly than hiring a freelancer or an agency as you’ll also need to take care of their bonuses, taxes, equipment, workspace, etc.
The salary for an in-house designer can range between $95K-145K per year in the USA, depending on experience.
Alternatively, you can build a fully remote UI/UX designing team at a 40% lesser cost with InCommon, a headhunter agency in India that helps you source, vet and hire talents according to your needs.
Platforms for UI/UX talent
Once you know whom you want to hire, the next step is to identify where you can hire them from. The following are some options from where you can hire UI/UX designers:
Job platforms
You can create a job listing on platforms like Linkedin for hiring an in-house UI/UX designer. Do note that scouting through talent on these platforms takes time and effort as you’ll be going through various job applications.
Portfolio websites
Behance and Dribble are great platforms that are specifically meant for designers of all kinds. Here, you’ll also find UI/UX designers showcasing their portfolios and you can hire them as freelancers.
While you can see their portfolio, you may not be able to see their case studies which are crucial when hiring a UI/UX designer.
Freelance websites
Unlike Behance and Dribble, Upwork and Fiverr are platforms where you’ll find freelancers of all kinds including UI/UX designers. You can hire them on the basis of their previous work and testimonials on these platforms.
While you can find UI/UX designers of various skill levels on these platforms, they may not always have the best communication skills.
Referrals
One of the best ways of getting an in-house designer, a freelancer or an agency is to ask your fellow entrepreneurs and employees for recommendations.
For example, Reddit is an online community where you may get some great suggestions for the same.
The only caveat is that you may struggle to find a UI/UX designer if you don’t have a strong network of like-minded people.
If you’re looking to hire a design agency, you can check them out on Google. Go through the agency’s previous work, case studies and testimonials to get an idea of what you can achieve with them.
However, hiring an agency can be an expensive affair, especially if you want to work with the best ones.
Hire remote talent from InCommon
Build a fully remote UI/UX designing team at a 40% lesser cost with InCommon, a headhunter agency in India that helps you source, vet and hire talents according to your needs.
With InCommon, you get the following benefits:
1. InCommon sources from its existing pool of pre-vetted UI/UX designers so you don’t have to.
2. Accelerate your hiring cycle by shortlisting 3 content writers in 3 days as per your needs.
3. Ensure smooth delivery of your work with talents that are well-versed in English.
4. End-to-end compliance (EOR) and payroll management
5. Talent replacement guarantee
Review the portfolios
Whether you’re hiring a freelancer, an agency, or an in-house designer, it’s important to review their portfolios to understand the kind of work they’ve done and whether it aligns with what you’re looking for.
A mistake businesses often make while reviewing a portfolio is ignoring the case studies behind them.
Remember that, unlike a graphic designer, a UI/UX designer must have critical thinking and problem-solving skills in addition to good design sense.
Hence, when you review each portfolio, try to understand the designer’s challenges, the steps they took to solve them, and their learnings from the project. This will give you a wholesome perspective of their capability rather than just the design aesthetic.
Interview the shortlisted candidates
After shortlisting a few candidates based on their portfolios, it’s time to interview them to fully understand their capabilities and see if they’re the right fit for your business.
If you don’t have a design background, it’s essential that you have a design specialist for this round so that you can make accurately assess your candidates.
The questions you ask in this round will revolve around their portfolio, soft skills and their fit for the job.
The following are some questions you may ask while interviewing your candidates:
1. Tell us about the toughest design problem you experienced and how you solved it.
2. Do you prefer working alone or in a team and why?
3. Which analytics tools and KPIs do you use to measure your products?
4. Which tools and software do you use for wireframes and prototypes?
5. Where do you find inspiration for your designs and the latest industry developments?
Testing your shortlists
After interviewing candidates, the last step is to test your candidates for their practical ability. The goal here is to understand if they’re able to translate your problem statement into a product and see if they’re the right fit.
For example, you can ask your candidates to design a webpage similar to your website. Provide clear instructions and a timeline for delivery.
Once they’re done with it, have another meeting with them and discuss how they approached the entire task.
For example, you can ask them about the tools they used, their thought process behind the user research and how the design relates to the business goals.
Do remember that having a functional design is more important than an aesthetic design. Give special emphasis to their attention to detail and analytical thinking.
Finalize your hire by signing a contract which entails their role, scope of work and compensation.
Conclusion
A UI/UX designer can do wonders for your business by maintaining a fine balance between an aesthetic and a functional design. However, the challenge remains in hiring a UI/UX designer suited to your business requirements.
If you follow the steps we’ve discussed in this article, we’re confident you’ll be able to hire the right UI/UX designer for your business.
At the same time, avoid some of the mistakes that businesses make (as we’ve mentioned above) to ensure that you have a smooth hiring experience.
Alternatively, you can hire us if you want to save time and money and focus on your business growth instead. As a headhunter agency, we help you build a fully remote UI/UX designing team at a 40% lesser cost.
