Issue 10: Four qualities of great hires
How craft, drive, adaptability, and storytelling separate good candidates from great ones
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I keep returning to the same principle when it comes to hiring: it's like building a championship team. You need the right players in the right roles, ready to make an impact after a reasonable ramp-up period.
Active involvement in hiring isn't just helpful—it's essential. You need to review portfolios, guide your recruiter on the right standards, and ask the right questions. Ultimately, no one understands your team's needs better than you do.
One common pitfall in hiring I've seen is rushing the process due to understaffing and high workloads. While decisiveness is essential, hiring without considering relevant skills, business needs, and team dynamics can lead to chronic challenges.
Let's be honest—a mismatched hire is expensive in ways that go far beyond salary. The productivity hit, the team morale issues, the management overhead, and potentially the cost of starting over all add up quickly. Because of this, I've seen and been a part of teams set back by months.
Over years of managing and hiring across organizations, I've found that four qualities drive some of the highest performers I've managed: craft, drive, adaptability, and storytelling. Hiring based on just one of these pillars alone usually isn't enough; it's critical to see how they balance each other out.
In the sections ahead, I'll explain how these qualities show up in interviews, what to look for, and a few follow-up questions you can use to dig deeper. Of course, these aren't foolproof, but they can give you a strong hunch that you're moving in the right direction.
Craft
I believe craft is a non-negotiable aspect of hiring product designers. Design tools and systems are commodities, and it is expected that a designer operates at a high level of comprehension and execution, including interaction and visual design. The ability to articulate design decisions is crucial, as it demonstrates clarity, comprehension, and reasoning (I’ll touch on that more later).
Designers likely won't have the time to be learning the tools on the job; rather, they should come prepared with foundational knowledge and examples of how they apply them.
Think of craft as the baseline qualification for playing the game—if you haven't mastered the fundamentals, you can't effectively participate in higher-level play.
Beyond mastering design tools, designers must have experience collaborating with engineers to ensure that the final output aligns with initial expectations. High-quality design work does not happen in isolation—it requires an understanding of organizational, process, and team dynamics. Designers who exhibit a high level of craft have likely had to influence or advocate for organizations to prioritize this work.
Drive
Drive is a foundational trait, deeply tied to a growth mindset. It manifests as a sense of purpose and pride in one's work and catalyzes impact. I always like to frame it in "How did this person leave their last organization better than when they started?" This could be demonstrated through mentoring other designers, contributing to a design system, improving product quality, or collaborating with product managers to understand and leverage data.
Drive is the quality that pushes someone toward goals rather than away from challenges and risks. In high-performing organizations, everyone around you has demonstrated a drive to reach their position—those who lack it often get left behind.
“Tell me a challenge you’ve faced and how did you respond to it?”
Conversely, a lack of drive is equally telling. If someone has been in a role for some time and has identified problems without taking action, that can be a red flag. Individual contributors have a unique vantage point to recognize challenges and opportunities, even if they aren't in leadership roles. At the very least, they should communicate blockers to their managers. The worst-case scenario for any leader is a team full of contributors who have opinions but take no action, quickly leading to a toxic culture.
Adaptability
Adaptability and drive are closely related but serve different functions. While the drive is necessary for long-term growth, adaptability determines how someone navigates changing environments and ambiguous situations. Ideally, there is some self-reflection that the candidate can speak to in terms of identifying growth opportunities.
Potential hires must show examples of how they've adjusted their game to meet the moment. Some examples include.
Adjusting to shifting priorities and organizational changes.
Taking feedback constructively and applying it thoughtfully.
Using problem-solving skills to navigate through ambiguous problem spaces
Adaptability is a two-way street. Sometimes, poor adaptability results from unclear goals, poor feedback, or a lack of organizational structure. Clear communication and defined expectations help maximize an individual's adaptability. When interviewing, it's essential to ask targeted questions to uncover how candidates have demonstrated adaptability in the past and also understand what their support structure looks like.
Storytelling
Storytelling is a more critical quality than ever, especially as organizations aim to do more with fewer resources and move faster. Designers are uniquely positioned to craft compelling narratives using data, research, and craft expertise. However, effective storytelling depends on understanding the audience.
For example:
Executives are less concerned with design details and more about business impact and shipping timelines.
Product managers might focus more on how design investments drive user engagement and retention.
They want to know how designers will collaborate to hand off assets efficiently, share feedback, to meet committed timelines.
The ability to tailor narratives to different stakeholders is a key marker of a strong designer. Storytelling is not just about presenting a case study; it's about strategically using design artifacts to influence the product development lifecycle.
Designers who excel at communication often see faster career growth because they convey their thinking and rally support around their ideas.
Conclusion
These four qualities—craft, drive, adaptability, and storytelling—don't exist in isolation. They form an interconnected system that enables designers to thrive in dynamic organizations:
Craft provides the foundation upon which everything else is built — it’s the core competency
Drive supplies the energy and momentum for improvement and impact
Adaptability allows navigation through changing conditions and requirements
Storytelling connects design work to broader organizational goals and stakeholders
When evaluating candidates, consider how these qualities complement each other. A designer with exceptional craft but poor adaptability may struggle in fast-changing environments. Someone with great storytelling skills but mediocre craft might win initial support but fail to deliver quality work.
Hiring the right person for the need of your organization goes beyond just checking boxes for skills. Craft, drive, adaptability, and storytelling are foundational traits that separate good designers from great ones.
By focusing on these qualities, managers can build teams that deliver exceptional work and contribute to a thriving and evolving design culture and, ultimately, better design outcomes for your users and organization.
Of course, it's up to you to determine your negotiables and non-negotiables and ideally evaluate focus areas for your hires to develop once they're on your team.