[website] Revise the Lead Designer role job ad

[danilo-leal]

• I have followed (at least) the PR section of the contributing guide.

These changes come in after a discussion I had with @gerdadesign, where we went over some potential improvements to the current Lead Designer job description page. Aside from small copy changes, here's an overview of the main things ⎯ aimed at improving the candidate pool:

• Particularly for the lead role, having design system experience ⎯ especially to work at MUI ⎯ as "not required" sounded a bit counter-intuitive. It'd be very hard for a person to thrive here without any DS chops whatsoever, and even more to manage a team of designers doing just that.
  • Therefore, as a "not required", added "open-source experience" which seems to suit a bit better. If the person has had it, it'd definitely be a huge advantage though it's ok if not as it doesn't absurdly impact day-to-day work.
• Tweaked the way we were talking about "development skills", highlighting the three main skills to have (CSS-in-JS, JSX, and Git).
• Sometimes, we still refer to "MUI" wanting to say "Material UI", which ends up contributing to the frequent confusion we often talk about! I've tweaked the parts where we were doing that.

Preview: https://deploy-preview-35912--material-ui.netlify.app/careers/lead-designer/

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[gerdadesign]

Overall, love the updates! Just added some small phrasing & grammar edits.

[oliviertassinari]

@danilo-leal If you want to prioritize it, feel free to add the interview steps on the role page.

[danilo-leal]

@oliviertassinari just added the interview steps there ⎯ those seem to do for a comprehensive interview process which @gerdadesign and I have designed together!

Step 3 is basically the same as we've done for the previous designer role (not a general portfolio review but rather a focused walkthrough of selected pieces that showcase comparable experience). And, step 4 is basically phrased as a conversation with you instead of a pure "cultural interview" convo, parting from the understanding that "cultural assessment/fit" is something that happens throughout the whole process, with every interviewer being somewhat responsible for being sensible for that (and calling it out, whenever, if there seems to not be a match).

Curious to see if these resonate with you!

[danilo-leal]

@oliviertassinari additionally, I remember we've discussed a potential step being in written form. The one that seems to fit the most for that is step 2 but I'm still, personally, not 100% sure I'd substitute it fully from a conversation. @gerdadesign I'm curious to hear what you think about maybe having a part of it written (quick intro about each role with some template info to add) and a part being narrated, in the call, with the opportunity for follow-up questions...

[oliviertassinari]

I have never been able to fit it in less than 45 minutes. To be on the safe side:

Suggested change

	- **Conversation with the CEO** (30 min): A quick call so you get to know each other, and talk about vision, future, history, etc.
	- **Conversation with the CEO** (60 min): A call so you get to know each other, and talk about vision, future, history, etc. The primary goal of this step is to explore the cultural fit.

As we scale, I won't do it, but I think that we should still have the cultural fit as the main objective. It's about moving from: this person will be great fit, to we can build something impactful long-term.

[danilo-leal]

I agree but also think that if the candidate got to the last stage of the interview, it's because other team members resonated with them, on a cultural level. It's something you kinda assess organically throughout the various steps. Of course you can ask tailored questions for that, but I'm concerned people interpret like "cultural fit and call with CEO... that's basically if he likes me or not".

[gerdadesign]

The one that seems to fit the most for that is step 2 but I'm still, personally, not 100% sure I'd substitute it fully from a conversation. @gerdadesign I'm curious to hear what you think about maybe having a part of it written (quick intro about each role with some template info to add) and a part being narrated, in the call, with the opportunity for follow-up questions...

I'm not sold on the written Who interview. Looking at one that we received, I think we could tease out more information in a live conversation.

[oliviertassinari]

A possible option, a split in two:

1. Who Interview, 20-30 minutes, async
2. Career deel dive, 20-30 minutes, sync, to dive deeper.

It would allow to test written skills, save a bit of interview time, and have more specific conversations.

[oliviertassinari]

I'm not sold on the written Who interview. Looking at one that we received, I think we could tease out more information in a live conversation.

@gerdadesign a proposal that could solve this: #35912 (comment)

---

Ideas, reading/adding a few benchmark from the last time we interviewed designers https://www.notion.so/mui-org/Lead-Designer-00c329b745784424a3ba01062499ea6d#76f647607f494bef864469fa1b664dc7, I wondered about:

1. Should we have a design critique step? I used the following question for the hiring process of the first design role: "Tell me about a couple of apps or sites that you enjoy using and some others you don’t. Why don’t you like them?" with the same goal: How much clarity does the person have about what makes a great design and what is wrong? The core idea is: it's impossible to improve what you can't see. I think that it's important to get a glimpse of this from the candidate. If it duplicates with another step of the process, then fine, we don't need it.

2. We talked about not doing design exercises in the past, with the idea that previous portfolios are enough. Is this still how we think about it? The value I see with a design exercise is double: a. It gives a shared baseline between candidates to compare apple to apple b. It gives a sense of the design cultural fit with the team, I mean, among the range of all the design options that are possible, do we believe in the same tradeoffs? But I have no strong point of view on this.

[oliviertassinari]

I have extracted the changes that I could into #36068, and merged it on HEAD. I have rebased this PR on top of it. This way, we have time to iterate on the hiring steps, while not losing any of the work done so far here.

[danilo-leal]

@gerdadesign & @oliviertassinari about the written step: I do like the idea and intention behind it but am also genuinely lacking a good way to assess it. I wish I could use the application message as a leading indicator of that but recognize that it might be a weak signal. I'm pushing hard to not add any more steps to the hiring process, though ⎯ I feel like 4 is a sweetspot. One possible way to address it could be sort of demanding a preparation material for the comparable experience call.

I have a somewhat strong preference not to have an exercise/take-home assignment per se, but I think that requesting a "write us a short paragraph about what you'll be presenting" sounds reasonable to both allow us to research beforehand and do some upfront judging & assess how well it's written. Curious to hear what y'all think about it...

[oliviertassinari]

"write us a short paragraph about what you'll be presenting" sounds reasonable to both allow us to research beforehand and do some upfront judging & assess how well it's written.

👌 as long as it's long enough.

[danilo-leal]

@oliviertassinari & @gerdadesign let me know when y'all think this is ready to go by giving this PR approval 😬 I'd love to get it out on this week's release, if possible!

[gerdadesign]

I think these new changes are a great improvement! Great job all around. 👏

I have a somewhat strong preference not to have an exercise/take-home assignment per se, but I think that requesting a "write us a short paragraph about what you'll be presenting" sounds reasonable to both allow us to research beforehand and do some upfront judging & assess how well it's written.

I agree. A design take-home assignment:

• is commonly interpreted as free labor
• tends to give the company a bad reputation
• is less relevant for higher levels

The skills you're looking for are more about thought process, leadership, and tying design to business needs. Thirdly, we already have the comparable experience review, which evaluates the aforementioned more relevant skills as well as execution and communication. The quality of design work would already be answered through the portfolio (which is actually also something that you tend to see less of as the focus shifts to higher manager/leadership roles).

If we still feel like we need something beforehand, a short description seems like a much more reasonable ask, but the bulk of information will likely still be in the comparable experience review.

---

As we've continued to iterate upon the job description, I want to be sure we keep our expectations aligned and at a reasonable level — I wouldn't want us to collectively have added so much that we are now searching for a unicorn. There seems to be 3 big themes:

• Strong IC-level design skills from the detailed (kerning, consistent border-radii, etc) to the macro (clear research & understanding of a problem and the process for how to address that effectively)
• Leadership skills: managing a team, directing large-scale design/product decisions, clear communication
• Engineering skills: we expect them to be able to both communicate with engineers as well as implement code themselves

I think nobody will fulfill ALL of these wishes, but we should expect a strong candidate to hit around 60% of them, keeping in mind that different people may weight more heavily in different areas.

[oliviertassinari]

So for the design exercise, we still agree that the value of having a common baseline to compare candidates (e.g. some portfolio are for 24 months projects, where 6 designers where involved vs. 4 months project and individual work) and for seeing what designers prioritize would be valuable, but the judgment call is that we will already have enough. Personally, I would support that we do them, but happy not to, let's burry the idea.

I think nobody will fulfill ALL of these wishes

Agree. I think that we can focus on strong IC, and the rest will follow as long as the person 1. is driven by the joy of the impact of the work and not the joy of the craft itself and 2. enjoy/effective at working with other people. The engineering aspect is covered by strong IC, I don't think that it's possible in this role to be one without.

[danilo-leal]

Cool! This has been an enlightening PR thread, great points have been raised all across the board ⎯ @gerdadesign excellent points you've raised there ⎯ and I think we're on the same page👌. As this didn't make the cut for this week's release, can I ask for a last look before merging? Just so we get the tiny little details out. Then, it'll be out the door by early next week.

[oliviertassinari]

Is there any blocker to merge? :)