I've been the first design-hire in multiple companies. Last few years, I've helped companies that didn't have any in-house designers. This is my advice for founders/leaders considering hiring their first designer.
November 12, 2024
Design at Startups
As a startup founder or a tech/product leader, it’s always daunting to hire someone for your young company. Skills, vision, attitude, vibe, money, fit, and location – are just some of the factors that you have to consider. The problem becomes much more complex when you have to hire the first person for a department. As a former first designer–hire for multiple teams, I have some thoughts on the subject.
Of course, as a founder you must have a vision for the company, but what about the individual departments? While you must be busy thinking big and for the future, your first hire comes with many valid apprehensions. What is design’s role in the company’s future? How are you planning to build the design team? How will they grow as a designer? What kind of mentorship and guidance can you provide, as a non-designer? These are just some of the questions you should have an answer to.
There’s nothing’s worse for an IC to join a company as the first person in their department, and find out there’s no pipeline or roadmap built for them. You must allocate some time to think about the design function’s roadmap, even if you’re not a designer. As a founder/design department owner, you must learn what a designer’s day-to-day responsibilities are, besides churning out pixels. Make a plan to keep them productive in between release cycles. It will be much easier if you involve them in building this plan, so you cover your blind spots as well.
As a founder, there are two major problems you’re actively working on – business and people. When it comes to people, design is no different than other departments. Junior designers need mentorship, mid-level designers need ways to grow into leadership positions and senior designers need major business challenges to satisfy their hunger for growth. Even if you don’t have the resources at the time of hiring, plan for and discuss with them how you’re hoping to change this, so they can have clarity on how they will grow. Failing to do so may get you a designer hired in short term, but it won’t work for long.
If you’re using the services of a freelance designer or an agency, you will often get similar or higher quality work at the same cost, or even less. This is because, with in-house hires, you don’t just have to pay for their work, but their employee benefits as well. Also, the fact that you can pause the freelancer/agency’s contract when you don’t have work for them, makes it much more lucrative if you’re still figuring out your design pipeline.
Do you have people in your team who actively advocate for the user’s experience? Is your current design setup delivery focused because of a lack of functional ownership? Do you see long-term challenges like process, culture, and team morale that just can’t be solved by an outsourced freelancer/agency? If you’re finding that there are deeper problems in the way design is handled in your company, it may be a cue for you to start thinking about building an in-house design team. Any successful digital business must have people who’re continuously thinking about the user’s expectations, learning about their motivations, and working to create a cohesive and clear experience that goes beyond features and functions. It’s unreasonable to think of an external person or team to support the growth of your company in this way, and is a very difficult, if not impossible, state to achieve.
Of course, all of this is not to say that outsourcing is never an option. If you’re still figuring out the direction, and need some support but not constantly, it will be much easier, less hectic, and probably cost-effective to hire an agency or a freelancer to work with you. If this is something you'd like to pursue, please contact us.
