As User Experience matures as a discipline and the mainstream gets and values UX this has made us think harder about recruiting User Experience talent. I look back at my CV of old and remember my previous job applications, and now that I’m looking from the inside out and recruiting for our UX team, it seems that things have got a whole load harder. Is this a good time to mention that we’re recruiting?
Why is recruiting getting harder?
It’s hard to describe the core skills we’re looking for in a User Experience Consultant. Why? Because it depends on a mix of factors such as complimentary team skills, emerging techniques, current work, business pipeline, and a vision of where we want to take the team. Many User Experience Consultants have crafted a rich toolkit of User Experience techniques. At times such a broad skillset is preferable, and other times more in-depth specialist skills are a better fit. That isn’t to say, that I’ve no idea what type of individual we need to recruit, but ask me in 3 weeks or 3 months and my response will be different. At any moment in time a multitude of factors can change my recruitment needs.
What skills does the team need?
To help inform this decision I’ve compiled a list that describes the core skills of our user Experience Team. This list was created by looking at the skills of our User Experience team and brainstorming,, and then grouping these skills. The skills were then weighted based on the demand for them. So hopefully providing I keep this document up to speed, at any one time I can get a pretty darn good snapshot of where we’re at and what we need. It enables me to quickly assess the current team’s skills versus our needs, and to identify those gaps which we need to recruit in to maintain a successful UX team.
Core skills of a User Experience team
Below is the first draft of the core skills of a User Experience team that I’m working from. Like any lists there are bound to be surprise inclusions and shock exclusions, so please let me know what you think and identify any gaps?
The UX skills were grouped under the following 6 labels:
- User Research
- Information Architecture
- Information/ Experience Design
- Interaction Design
- User Testing
- General
The core skills in each group are as follows:
Research
- Competitive Review
- Ethnography
- Field research
- Heuristic Review
- Eye tracking
- User interviews & contextual enquiry
- Mental models
Information Architecture
- Taxonomies
- Folksonomies
- Ontologies
- Card Sorting
- Affinity diagrams
- Site Map
- Navigation patterns
Information/ Experience Design
- Experience Architecture
- Experience Principles
- Persona design
- Scenario design
- User Journey development
- Scamping ideas
- Visual storytelling
- Wireframe production
Interaction Design
- Interaction/ behaviour definition
- Experience prototyping
- Design Patterns
Testing
- User testing scripts
- Conduct user testing
- Usability test analysis
- Concept testing
General
- Customer requirements gathering
- Stakeholder interviews
- Facilitation of workshops
- Brainstorming
- Client presentation skills
- In-depth knowledge of UCD process
- Estimation
Oh, in case you don’t already know, we’re recruiting User Experience Architects or Senior User Experience Consultants.
Comments