If you're issuing take home tests, you're doing it wrong
It’s fitting that the first post in a series of planned blog entries is focusing on one of the more irritating areas of the job hunt process for designers.
Once in awhile, less so since I’ve been easing off of individual contributor work, I’m asked to do a take home project as part of the hiring process. I’ve acquiesced to this request once in my career and I felt dirty while doing it. Thanks Situation Interactive. What are you hoping to gain by putting designers through this?
As someone that's hired many a designer in the past, they could all tell you that I've never put any of them through something like this. And I never will.
Let’s analyze this a bit further.
Design, by its nature, is a team sport
I’ve always viewed design as this partner that builds bridges between teams and the mission/vision—through that inclusion, it has the potential to shatter silos. So why, to gauge the quality of a designer, are you issuing a project that creates silos by default? Am I ever going to work that way when on the team? I’d much rather come in and run exercises with the ‘greatest hits’ of the team to show what I can do in an environment not unlike where I’d find myself on a daily basis if I came to work for you. The days of throwing things over the wall to another team are dead and you’re not helping improve that for yourselves by investing in more of the same.
It’s not just about the candidate
Sure, a designer could kill that project by all subjective measures, but does that mean s/he’s a good fit for the team? How would you observe the ability to collaborate? How do they respond when requirements change, deadlines shift, executives ‘swoop and poop’ on the project, the business model shifts midway, etc.?
You should want authenticity in a candidate
When I’m hiring for one of my teams, I look for authenticity. What are they really going to bring to our family and how can I determine that? It’s not by putting a project in from of him or her that’s unlike anything they’d ever do for me or for the company. I want to see how they really react to strapped resources, existing infrastructure, fractured understanding of the challenge or the user. I want them to ask me questions and draw out the uncertain stuff with my and my group. I want them to have the opportunity to get the context they need and to show me their style while I’m learning how best to activate him or her and also what shuts that person down. It’s an environmental, ecosystemic consideration—hiring someone. It’s not giving them a grocery list and seeing if they got everything on it as requested.
Your ugly is showing
Take home tests tell a lot more about your insecurities of a business than they do about a designer’s capabilities to follow a brief. It also says a lot about how you look at the candidate/team experience that you’re unwilling to pay someone for their work by inviting them into the team to immerse and prove themselves. You’d rather seek out free work, you may even use that output maliciously to solve real problems you’re having without hiring that designer for the time spent (if you do this, you're a real asshole and don't deserve to have a team). Or, you're issuing something fake that is 100% subjective and then what's the point? Inviting subjectivity rule into the space isn't the way forward for a design team and it's opening the doors to all sorts of other ugly along the way.
You’ve invited deception
I’ve found most people are inherently good, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t outliers to that study. Especially when we’re examining a job hunt which, at times, can showcase notes of desperation. What’s to stop someone from just farming out all of that take home test work and just being a badass at selling it back to the team, just to get the job? How could you, unwitting hiring manager, know that this person worked on the project? Give it a tight deadline and you’re risking poor output, ask the ‘right’ questions and you might uncover any ill intent but you also might miss it entirely. I’ve been wooed by a great book and a great pitch before. More painful to correct down the road.
I guess where I want to leave this, for now, is that design is a maturing practice and one that facilitates collaboration and authenticity. If you're looking to mature your own design practice or to learn from those who have, don't embarrass yourselves or insult the candidate by giving a take home test that will tell you very little about what working together would actually be like. If I'm interviewing with 5 companies and one issues me a test? I'll give them the chance to consider my recommendations for an alternative approach that's more like what working together will actually comprise or I'm walking from the opportunity in favor of someone else that's going to take me and themselves seriously.
Do it right or pay the price.