Hiring, Onboarding design enthusiasts for my team...
My journey, my experiences during hiring, onboarding the awesome talents across the design departments. Taking design team from 3 to 10 people with my mentor support in just 3 months.
Sarvistha
Expanding the team, which is full of design enthusiasts, illustrators and creators. Is it a tough challenge? I know many questions have already entered your mind?
How to get the best team onboard?
What are all parameters does one take care of while taking an interview?
What is the strategy around hiring?
and millions of queries in mind...
I would like to share my hiring process at Rebel Foods depending upon the requirements, design departments, product domain, budgeting etc.
Great vision without great people is irrelevant
Some basic factors one keep in mind while making a decision for hiring:
- What type of culture one wants to build in the team?
- What all specialities one is looking forward in the candidates?
- How much budget company agrees upon?
- What all types of roles are required to build a very strong team?
- Match the no of hirings required with each quarter goal planning. It will help in deciding how many tasks to take up for the particular quarter. This will help the team to enjoy work and spread the learnings as well across.
Deciding upon the roles
As we know Digital Product Design is very fast. Starting from researchers to Interaction Designers lots of opportunities, lots of new learning and lots of new talent to interact with.
To establish an awesome design team, some roles which are the foundation of the user experience design team is:
- Researchers
- Design Program Manager
- Design System Manager
- Principal Product Designers
- User Experience Designers
- Interaction Designers
- Illustrators
and many more growing up in Indian industry according to the requirement and scalability.
Exciting Job Descriptions
Humorous and witty job descriptions. Always key benefits attract the candidate towards the company and increase the level of respect to work for that particular company. The job description is not only about explaining roles and responsibilities but it reflects the culture of the company.
Glimpse on some facts which can make your job descriptions unique:
- Company growth in next 5yrs
- Who all have invested in the company? This helps in deciding the stability of the company.
- Company culture, activities, leaves etc. This help in deciding how much comfort you will feel while working for a particular company.
- A glimpse of the products we are working on? This increase the candidates excitement.
- Crisp description of roles and responsibilities for the candidate.
Selection of the profiles
This is another tough task. Filtering the resumes with respect to the qualifications, college, background check vs budget given by the company. Fitting the roles in a certain budget with all responsibilities they can take up.
Interview Strategy
- Always make the candidate comfortable while taking an interview.
- Keep first ten minutes to introduce to each other. Set the context and the background.
- Start with the candidate experience.
- Observe and listen to her/his past work and experiences. This will help in knowing the person better and deciding which role he is the best fit for, what he enjoys doing etc.
- Ask them to showcase one-two project. Observe their communications skills and way of selling the idea.
- Some basic questions depend upon the role and responsibilities.
- Tell about a company, team size and growth from your end. It enlighten the interest in the candidate,
- Given the last 10 mins to them so that they can ask their queries.
So all these should happen approximately in 45mins to 1hr.
Depending upon the role, there will be more interviews and small assignments aligned after the initial interview. After going through these rounds, depending upon the candidate final fit for the role, his/her responsibilities and ownership, the further selection process depends.
The journey didn’t stop here...
Releasing the offer
It’s like the heart beating from both ends. HR conversation with a candidate, hote hai kuch see :)
Candidate: Mera selection hojayega na? Kab take results to announce Hoga?
Company: Isko kitna offer dai?
Candidate: Accha offer hona chahiye? Bhut mahnat ki hai.
Candidate: How will be the environment? Who will help me with onboarding?
Company: Itna tension maat lo. Sab hojayega. You will get an onboarding buddy and awesome induction from all departments.
Finally, the candidate is either convinced or look out for another option.
I really enjoy this journey. Get to know new talents, their thoughts, ideas and vision. It is very tricky to handle minor situations while taking the interviews.
You might be curious to know, what will happen during onboarding, after onboarding etc at Rebel Foods.
Will be sharing more in my another upcoming article. So please stay tuned and revisit the page again.
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Sarvistha
5+ years experience working as a User Experience Designer with a demonstrated history of working with different brands like Paytm, Bank of Baroda, Coca-Cola, Uber, Rebel Foods, etc. with a human-centred approach. Graduated from NID, Ahmedabad as a Product Designer. Recently completed the "Data-Driven Product Management" course from IIM Lucknow. Got an opportunity to add impactful experiences in B2B, B2B2C and B2C products portfolio like chatbot system, inventory management, partner collaborations, training platform, IOT(Hardware and software connections), content management, storage systems, finance, banking, sports, food ecosystem and more to go :) Skilled in hard skills like Researching, Whiteboarding, Sketching, Wire-framing, Prototyping, System Mapping, Instant product solutions. Coming to soft skills I like training and managing the product design team, got an auspicious opportunity of leadership. Love to explore tools like figma, Jira, confluence, Adobe, Lottie, Miro etc.

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