If you are starting your UX team or scaling it up, it’s worth thinking about the UX profiles that would better match your current requirements. And I’m not talking about the UI designer and the UX researcher… There are many more profiles out there.

If you have a UX team established, chances are you know what you need help in. When recruiting new team members, people focus on the portfolio, which is understandable, but it doesn’t give us the whole picture. 

Personally I’ve changed my methods for hiring team members a lot since I've started. In the beginning I was trying to find someone like me. It made sense because that was what I knew. 

The first person I helped hire turned out to be someone competitive, with little patience for company politics and more of a solo player rather than a team player. That would have been alright in a different profession but not in UX. A UX person needs to work well in collaboration, seek out and receive feedback, and persuade others to see the user’s perspective. I realised that I hadn’t checked for that during the interviews, because I was obsessed with finding someone with the same skills I had. I hired someone who soon enough started to compete directly with me, instead of teaming up with me. We did work together but it felt forced and awkward. We ended up working on separate projects and exchanged little to no information between us. I used to be a “UX team of one” and I was excited and thriving, but after I had that colleague, I felt alone.

I had a few more miss hires after that, but it improved. I don’t think I realised right then, that the skills / portfolio are but a portion of what we should look at, and not the most important part, but it sure came to me later in my career.

UX Profiles out there

Something amazing happened while I was working in a digital agency in Singapore. It was common to admit interns at the time, and the first one I had was a young woman, finishing up her studies in literature and languages. I didn’t expect much of her and everything she did overwhelmingly surprised me. Her sensibility for design was uncommon, even though she had no concrete background in it, she was visually cult. What she was great at, however more expected, was copywriting and coming up with concepts. On top of that she was super responsible and reliable - a treasure I never counted on. But there she was, being good at initial stages of UX and saving my ass in many high pressure / tight deadlines moments. I don’t think I would have intentionally hired her, had she been a candidate in a regular recruitment process. This intern changed my mindset about what people can do without our preconceived requisites. 

It took me long enough to understand that in UX there isn’t a perfect recipe you have to follow to hire or get hired. There shouldn’t be. It depends on what your team and organisation need. Here are profiles that you should consider before you start hiring:

• The conversationalist - is someone who is able to convince colleagues and stakeholders of a particular UX matter. He or she is charming and eloquent as a speaker. A UX team needs one of these to evangelise and grow the teams’ credibility
• The analytical - a person who is good with the numbers and happy to spend a lot of their time analysing and reporting. This person will make sure you are measuring what’s needed in order to prove or disprove a point. This is a great profile to invest in if you want your team’s work to be more evidence-based
• The visualiser - the one who will prototype effortlessly and quickly, who’s sensibility for design is high. This profile is able to impress an audience with an appealing solution, whether UI or presentation‍
• The truth seeker - someone who is always ready to uncover the user’s needs and pain points. This person will find a way to answer the project’s pressing questions through research and tell a compelling story about the users‍
• The geek - the one who knows all software tricks, and is great with taking prototypes to the next level. This person is the one who best understands developers and a great teammate to have if you want to invest more in the relationship with the dev team, and the outputs delivered to them‍
• The entry-level - someone who would be keen on doing everything, getting their hands dirty and trying different parts of the work. This is a person that may not have lots of experience, but will likely be driven and eager to take on any work that comes their way‍
• The strategist - the one who envisions a plan and approach for a given project, and leads the discovery and concept phases with a clear purpose and focus. This person is the one guarding the projects’ overarching goals and direction, and may not be thrilled going into too much detail down the line‍
• The leader - someone who is able to understand the different profiles and use their contribution intelligently. Although not as technically skilled as their team members, this person is capable of holding them to high standards, constantly looking for ways to improve the team’s dynamics and productivity

It does not mean that we need all these profiles in a UX team, but it is important to consider what profile we need the most. If we have all the same, we may be missing out on a lot of growth potential. Different profiles will handle problems differently, as great minds do not think alike. Diversity is key to healthy teams.

The profiles to start with

In case you are starting your team from scratch, I would recommend someone with the entry level profile, because you will need to take on all kinds of UX work, and a conversationalist, since you have a lot of convincing to do and relationships to build. If you start with 1 element, you should try to find someone with both dimensions, someone who is eager to do all parts of the work, and at the same time eloquent, compelling and good at making friends. In essence, someone who gets the work done and is easy to talk and listen to.

I would say that the visualiser and truth seeker come next, but that may vary a lot depending on your organisations’ context, and what you feel is missing. Getting better at research & design is the logical next step.

When your team grows

It will come to a point where you don’t have to convince anymore - everyone recognises the value your UX team brings. That’s when you will need the other profiles, the strategist, the geek and the analytical, to take the work to the next level.

Before the team grows to a large number it will be good to have a leader. This person might be one of the members that has shown leadership skills and has stepped up to help everyone else, facilitate group sessions, or has been sought after for help. But there is a chance you have to hire the UX lead to join your pre-existing team. 

In case you hire a UX Lead to join your existing team, it’s important that she or he conquers the teams’ respect first, offering help, mentorship, and protecting them from organisational nonsense. It will take time before the team starts trusting her or him for problem resolution, feedback and guidance. Before that it’s hard for the leader to play her or his intended role. Don’t fall into the trap of not hiring a leader so that each one has their “ego” untouched and feel they are all at the same level. That’s a recipe for disaster. Although in a healthy UX team members ask one another’s feedback, there should be one person that can make the call in case there is a disagreement or diverging views. The decision may not please everyone but assuming the team trusts the leader, they will follow because they know she or he has their best interests at heart. 

There, you have it. There are many more UX profiles than we think, one of which should be right for your team. We need to put together the skills (hard and soft) that are relevant to achieve our goals. Hiring great portfolios is not the right move, all the time. Sometimes we need to open our filters, instead of narrowing them down. 

Good luck with building up your teams!

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