Setting it up for failure

“If I were to bring you in at that level, I think I’ll be setting it up for failure.”

A recruiter said that to me a few months back. The brief I had been sent was for a role that sat across design and build, the kind of work I do as a design engineer. On her side of the paperwork, it was filed as a designer role.

Then we got to salary. She opened with “someone with about six years of experience”, and I could do the maths from there. Six years meant mid-level, and my number belonged to a lead, someone who runs projects, runs teams and owns the client relationship.

So I told her. I had run my own studio, hired and managed a small team, and spent the last four years running projects with no head of design above me. The years on my CV had already decided the conversation, and that is when she said I would be set up for failure.

That line stung, mostly because the portfolio and the studio had already been on the table. To be fair to her, she was probably working within pay bands built for older roles, and six years is an easy number to price.

Here is what I think was going on. Design engineer is a young title. It took hold in the last few years, as tools made it possible for one person to design a thing and build it too. Before that, UX designer was the strange new title, and before that, web designer. Each of these roles existed in the work long before it existed on a form, and it took years for everyone to agree on what it was.

Hiring often begins with a form. The job is matching: take a person, find the closest box, check that the price fits the box. Design and build wasn’t a common role, so it became “designer”, and once it was “designer”, the usual ladder applied. Years set the level, the level set the pay, and anything that didn’t fit the ladder got left out.

Boxes exist for good reason. A team that needs a product designer should hire a product designer, and a clear role protects both sides from a bad fit. My issue is narrower. The brief I was sent asked for someone across design and build. The team had already drawn the box, and the screen swapped it for an older one.

That swap is where companies lose people. The ones who fit the old boxes are easy to find and easy to place. The ones doing newer work, across design, code and product, take longer to understand, and they are often exactly who the team asked for. I think hiring processes that can’t read these newer roles will keep filtering out the people teams want, and the team will never know, because those people never reach the shortlist.

I’ve since found a team that hired for exactly this mix.

New roles will keep arriving faster than the forms can keep up, and it will take time before everyone agrees on what they are. If you hire, how many of the people you were looking for never made it past the form?