Hey there, I'll respond to each one separately. I didn't have enough characters for the last question so only answering the first 3. Q: How do you define design thinking in the context of hiring? A: Design thinking is essentially an obsessive curiosity an individual possesses about why people do what they do. Design thinker is someone who would naturally ask "Why would someone actually want this?" before building anything. They dig into the messy reasons and human behaviors instead of just solving for the surface problem they are given. Q: What interview questions, exercises, or assesments have you found effective for evaluating a candidate's design thinking skills? A: The questions change as per the individuals experience, but the base would remain the same. I'd ask them something like, "here's our client, and their cart abandonment rate is 55%. Users add items, they enter payment details, but vanish before confirmation. How can we fix this?" Then I just watch how they respond. Unfit candidates usually jump to solutions immediately. Good candidates always ask about user profiles, user-research, payment anxiety, social proof, user experience, and the buying journey, and some even ask for heatmaps to analyze. Some amazing folks I've interviewed in the past have requested if they can interview some actual customers who abandoned. Q: How do you distinguish genuine problem-solving ability from buzzwords or rehearsed answers? A: There are many things that I do, but the one that usually works with almost everyone is to ask them to walk me through their worst design failure. Buzzword people almost immediately have someone to blame, which is either the user itself or the stakeholder they were designing for. Real problem solvers are aware of what went south during their worst failures, and they're even aware of what I, as an interviewer, want to find. They dissect their own assumptions, confirmation biases and explain exactly where their empathy broke down. They're usually brutally honest and borderline excited to share what they learnt from screwing up.
We work in media production, and we've met countless talented shooters and editors who obsess over cinematic lighting, slow-motion, depth of field the "film school flex." But here's the hard truth: Cinematic doesn't equal conversion. We call them the "film dorks" the ones who can talk for hours about their lens choices but can't answer a simple question like, "What's the goal of this video?" Our job isn't just to make pretty pictures. It's to create content that makes our clients' customers take action to book, to buy, to show up. We once worked with a glow-in-the-dark mini golf center. When they spoke with a previous production company, that team pitched a testimonial video. A testimonial. For a children's entertainment venue? That's like trying to sell a rollercoaster with a PowerPoint. It wasn't just a bad idea it revealed a total disconnect from the target audience. In our hiring process for video creatives, we don't just ask "Can they shoot?" We ask: * Do they know who the content is for? * Do they understand the user journey? * Would their concept make a kid say 'Let's go!' We start interviews with questions that expose priorities quickly: * "What makes a video convert?" * "Would you rather create a viral edit with 2 million views or a video that drove $25K in sales for the client and why?" * "How would your approach differ between a real estate firm and a kids' trampoline park?" We'll hand a creative a fake brand scenario let's say a local trampoline park and ask them to pitch content for three specific outcomes: awareness, conversion, and follow-up. If their solution is just "Let's shoot a cinematic promo" across the board, we know they're focused on their own aesthetic, not the end user's experience. What we're looking for: Do they think about the client's client? Do they adjust the content to the user's mindset? Do they connect storytelling to action? What we're not looking for: "We'd do a cinematic hero piece to show the space and slow-mo punches with dramatic lighting." Design thinking, for us, means What does the viewer need to see to take the next step? The best creatives are flexible thinkers. They don't just pitch what they want to make they craft what the audience needs to see. That's the kind of design thinking that moves the needle for our clients.
SEO and SMO Specialist, Web Development, Founder & CEO at SEO Echelon
Answered 6 months ago
Good Day, 1. Design thinking is a way of solving problems which is in the realm of empathy, creativity and iteration that is centered around user needs and real also around what is practical in the real world. 2. I present a simple product issue and ask them to take me through their process from research to testing. What they put forth is a picture of how they think. 3. I ask in depth questions like, "What did you adjust based on the feedback you got? Real examples are what we are looking for. 4. We brought in a UX designer who improved onboarding based on what we found out from the users, what she did was to improve drop off rates which we saw reduce by 30%. That is the value of her design thinking process. If you decide to use this quote, I'd love to stay connected! Feel free to reach me at spencergarret_fernandez@seoechelon.com
By shifting the evaluation out of abstract definitions and into a practice based, scenario based exercise that requires a candidate to display his process in action, a professional can spot the difference between honest problem solving ability and buzzwords and rote responses. This is the opposite of what is done by posing a question to a candidate about what they understand by design thinking. A hiring manager can demonstrate a brief and unknown problem and request a candidate to explain his or her problem solving process, instead of a theoretical discussion. As an illustration, a situation of a typical user dissatisfaction with a fictional product may be provided to a candidate. The problem could be that 25 percent of user base abandons the checkout process on a new ecommerce application. The candidate would be then given 10 to 15 minutes to explain how he/she would go about this problem, including defining the needs of the user, brainstorming possible solutions. This is not aimed at getting the right solution but on how the candidate approaches the task. A strong candidate should ask clarifying questions on the data, propose a way of interviewing users, and propose a couple of low fidelity prototypes. A candidate who merely states that they want to empathize with the user, but does not provide a specific proposal as to how they will collect data and test concepts is probably merely parroting what they have studied. A design thinking specialist will automatically divide the problem into a smaller manageable stages. This is a basic, time limited test, which gives an honest and unbiased look into the inner workings of a candidate, and enables the hiring team to understand how a candidate works through a problem.
In evaluating the design thinking skills of a candidate, it is important to focus on problem-solving & creativity and one appropriate question to ask is: "Can you describe an occasion when you had to come up with more than one solution to a problem? How did you lead brainstorming and how did you decide which was the best idea?" This is to assess their ability to come up with ideas and refine them logically. Another great question to ask is "Have you experienced a creative block during ideation? And what did you do to get past it?" This demonstrates how they overcome challenges and stay productive even when creativity is not always present.