UX Hiring Insights: Sarah Doody’s Interview With Design Recruiter Jared Tredly from Shopify

Sarah Doody (00:01.486)

Hey, I’m Sarah Doody, a user researcher and product designer with 20 years of experience. In 2017, I noticed something a little ironic. UX and product people, despite being great at designing experiences for other people, often struggle to design their own careers. That’s why I created Career Strategy Lab and this podcast to help you navigate your UX job search, grow in your current role, and avoid skill and salary plateaus.

in a chill and BS free way. So whether you’re stuck in your job search or wondering what’s next in your UX career, you’re in the right place. Today we have Jared Treadley from Shopify where he is a design recruiter and Jared works on taking design talent to the next level.

Jared has a really awesome background in terms of building and scaling design teams and really being a go-to resource in the whole design world when it comes to recruitment. So Jared, you have just so many years of experiences and war stories, if you will, I’m sure. And on top of working at Shopify, you also have your own podcast, Design Unfiltered.

where you share a ton of valuable insights about the design space and recruiting. So like I said, today we really want to take this as an opportunity to almost do a user research interview on our user, Jared. So welcome Jared. Do you have anything else you want to add or highlight or interesting facts about yourself? Okay. Yeah. There you go. No, well, I’m Australian, but I in New York now and I really have just enjoyed working in the design community in New York in particular.

Yeah, it’s an amazing space. I love designers. love the community aspect of design. So I’m really grateful to be a recruiter specifically with a community like designers. Thanks for having me. There’s such a strong design community in New York City. And you I, you know, I lived there for a while and I really miss just being able to like hop on the subway at any given day of the week and know there’s going to be some cool event I can attend. So totally. Yeah.

Sarah Doody (02:17.642)

All right. So I want to just dive in here and first kind of look at your own career journey and get an understanding of like how you got to where you are today. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been in recruitment now for about 15 years working as a recruiter. I’d say the first few years, like say the first three-ish years, I really covered a lot more engineering software engineering and worked with computer programs. We’re on that side. And at that time,

design, especially in Australia, like product design, UX design. It was very early days in Australia for things like that. There wasn’t a lot of work in that space. I felt like these things were still newer, newer ways of designers working. So I didn’t do a lot of recruitment in it, but it gained steam. I started leaning more into it. I worked with a great group of recruiters in a small recruitment firm and we focused on tech. And within that,

I was the one that just seemed to understand design a little bit more. So I kept leaning into that while the other recruiters in my team didn’t. So they just leaned out and you know, very quickly I became just all in on design and design hiring. And from there, I’ve just really continued to build. And I’ve always found a value in being specific in that space, just focusing on design. Here in the U S I took a really hard line on like, just hired designers. Opportunities always come up in recruitment where someone might say, Hey,

We need a product manager. need an engineer. And I say, I just do designers. That’s my community. That’s my space. And I want to just be an expert in it. So I leaned in quite some time ago, probably a decade ago. And I just keep leaning in more and more. And I think that’s what really got me to look in at Shopify at the time and allowed me to join the crew here is that was a gap that they had in terms of having a design recruiter on their team. And that’s my bag. That’s all I do.

So I was able to plug into that and yeah, I’ve always found, think hiring designers to be really unique. So as a recruiter, I’ve worked with a lot of other recruiters over the years and I’ve had peers that work in product management, engineering, data science, and they have all agreed and told me many times like hiring for designers is the thing of its own. It’s something totally different. And that is one thing to be aware of, I think, as a designer, when you’re out there looking, sometimes it’s challenging. You might work with a recruiter or an internal.

Sarah Doody (04:40.386)

talent person at a company, hiring for designers is a little bit unique. And I don’t think everyone knows how to do it, or I don’t think it’s the same as hiring a different role type. And so you do encounter that a lot and you’ve got to be aware of that audience sometimes, that person you’re trying to cater to. So yeah, it’s a unique space. Following up on the uniqueness of hiring for designers, I mean, I’m sure there’s a very large list of things that stand out that make it different from hiring for other roles, but

Are there one or two things that just come to mind instantly when you think of what these unique things are that make it different from hiring for, you know, a product manager or, uh, you know, I don’t know, customer service or something, right? It’s the portfolio. Designers are one of the only role types, arguably the only role type where your portfolio is quite critical. There’s an expectation that you have one. Many of the, you know, these are the role types that you just mentioned and many others out there that have a resume.

They have maybe some sort of history as an engineer, maybe you have some code samples, but designers love it all. Although that you’ve got to have this portfolio. It’s one of the only things, one of the only role types where that’s necessary. And with that, think, you know, a general, a generalist recruiter might not have experience with navigating what a portfolio is, what it’s meant to do, what they’re meant to receive from it, what they’re looking for in it, how they get that signal. So you both got to have it.

And maybe the person on the receiving end doesn’t really understand what it is. Right, right. You know, going back to kind of the introduction when I said you are really the user of the portfolio of the resume, et cetera. And I think what you said is really important for people to understand in terms of the user of your portfolio may or may not have experience with user experience, right? You, because you’ve specialized in design, really have a knack for

not just finding people, but also understanding what they’re really going to do in their day-to-day job. But can you maybe speak to a recruiter who is more of a generalist recruiter, if you will, who has not recruited just for UX and might also be recruiting for customer service and these other roles? What do people have to keep in mind concerning that person in the process? Yeah, well, I think that, and look, I’m certainly not a…

Sarah Doody (07:05.442)

a UX practitioner myself. don’t have that skill necessarily, but if I were to try to convert it into some UX terms as well, we think about the persona of, call them the generalist recruiter. Nine times out of 10, they’ve received a brief from a design leader, arguably. There’s a head of design, someone like that that’s come to that internal talent person, whoever might be in said, Hey, I need a, I need a UX designer. Here’s what I want, what I need. Now that recruiter.

Might not necessarily fully understand the brief that they’re receiving, but they’re taking notes and they’re like, need someone that clearly is able to articulate their impact, convert growth. You know, can see clear metrics has an eye for design system. So they’re just kind of taking a brief. And then when they start to look at those portfolios and they’re trying to fill that brief, fill that role, it’s a bit of a checkbox sometimes they’re really looking for these things. And so as the designer.

that’s presenting your portfolio to maybe that more generalist recruiter. It’s got to be so clear. It’s got to be so concise. It’s got to be so intuitive in the way that that recruiter might navigate it, the way that they can get that information to try to satisfy these things that they know that they need to look for. And that’s where if you as the designer are burying that information, it’s not clear. It’s at the end of some, you know, sometimes this low hanging fruit in the portfolio in how you

put it together. If it’s not clear that recruiter misses it, no matter what, think all recruiters and all hiring managers are very time poor. these portfolios get a very short amount of time. And so even as the generalists, yeah, they’re moving really quickly and they’re just looking for that signal that maps back to that brief. And they’re trying to check it off just to get to some sort of threshold where they go, okay, seems to check a handful of these boxes that I need, but that hiring manager told me that they need in this designer. Let’s advance them.

let’s set up a call. So, yeah. Yeah. So that recruiter is really kind of that first line of defense, right? And they’re trying to check the boxes to then allow that hiring manager, design lead, et cetera, to then look for that next level of detail. if you think of the portfolio as kind of like peeling back the layers of an onion, you have to make sure that that portfolio is satisfying the needs of multiple people.

Sarah Doody (09:26.06)

Correct. Yeah. And we think about the mechanics of it, a bit of inside baseball, right? That recruiters could receive a hundred portfolios on a good day. These days, sometimes it’s a thousand, right? They get a hundred of them. They can’t really go to that head of design and give them the hundred. So, Hey, we got a hundred. Want to have a look? Instead, it’s kind of their role to whittle that down and try to think, all right, who are the 10 that I’ll show this head of design and we can look to advance to the next step.

So they’re looking to narrow the field down a bit. And again, they’re going to use those check boxes. You’ll start to see things like process of elimination as well. If your portfolio just has a quick instant signal that it misaligns with what they’ve got on their list, then very quickly that recruiter can say, okay, very quickly, this doesn’t line up. I’m going to process of elimination. I’m going to eliminate that person and move on to the next. yeah, I think with a lot of that, you’re not.

The recruiter isn’t thinking, this is the person for the job. We’re going to hire them. That’s it. Like it’s done. It’s perfect. Instead they’re thinking, I want to find a list here that I can present internally. And then we can start to interview people. want to get to the interview stage. So the portfolio is just, it’s so much more of a conversation starter than it is the decision on hiring. It doesn’t get you the job, but it gets you in the room to get the job. Right.

Yeah, similar to jobs where you don’t need a portfolio. often hear people say like the resume gets you the interview, but the interview gets you the job, right? And I think in this case, it’s not the same for every recruiter, but the portfolio gets you the interview and then the interview can get you the job sometimes. Right, right. You can’t make a hiring decision without meeting someone. But in today’s pace and volume,

You can’t meet everyone. So you’ve got to narrow it down and be a bit more selective. So who do you meet? And that’s where the portfolio helps determine like, should we meet for this? We can only spend X amount of time on it. Where are we going to put that time? We’re going to put it where we think it’s best served right now. And that’s based on the signal that that designer provides to the recruiter. you you mentioned this challenge of recruiters and the design lead, the hiring manager, whomever being strapped for time, right? Can you help?

Sarah Doody (11:43.37)

everyone understand a little bit more of how many roles might you be recruiting for at any given time. Of course it changes, but I think this starts to get to those kind of like complaints that you see on LinkedIn also about how, why can’t recruiters give me feedback? You know, they should in all this. And I think I have my own ideas of why you can’t, but I’m curious what’s your perspective on what you wish.

candidates could understand that they don’t have the context for. Yeah, it’s challenging. think majority of recruiters, especially the ones that I’ve kept in touch with and surround myself with, they’re so empathetic people. They’re passionate about this craft of hiring great designers. And all of us wish we could give feedback to every single person and review every single portfolio. know, for instance, right now I’m probably hiring about 30 design roles at Shopify at the moment specifically.

A variance of priority, some are much more higher priority than others, but there’s probably about 30 openings right now. Shopify famously doesn’t really do job postings or very specific applications on their site. They have more of a generalist intake, but every day, you know, 50 to a hundred might come in, you know, some weeks when there’s a bit more activity and economies of scale, right? Each of those portfolios only get so many minutes, even sometimes only so many seconds.

Before we have to make a quick snap decision, whether someone meets the bar that we’re hiring against or not. When I think back to prior to Shopify, I worked in agency. At any time I would often have ideally 15 to 20 roles open at a time. And that’s probably across at least 10 different companies. Some companies might have two roles open. So I’m working with 10 different companies. I’m fielding, you know, 20, 30 messages a day from people with, with their work. If I were to advertise a role, I would easily get.

I’d say 700 applicants a week, at least on most roles, and you’re doing your best to get through all of them. So with numbers like that, it’s really hard to both view every single person for an adequate amount of time to give every portfolio even 10 minutes would be impossible to then like take calls with every single person. It wouldn’t work. And then, you know, to give the feedback to everyone that asked, again, it’s another time thing. I think what’s a little bit unfortunate, and it’s a real bummer to kind of

Sarah Doody (14:04.716)

describe it this way, but it might help that recruiters for the most part, aren’t incentivized to look at every single person, to give feedback to every single person, to get on a call with people where there is no signal and no reason why to get on that call. There’s no incentive for me internally. Shopify, it’s my job to fill these roles, to find these great designers. If someone’s reaching out to me and saying, Hey, I’m a really great designer. can’t show you in my portfolio, but

We get on a phone call, I can tell you all about it, but that’s not enough of a signal for me. I’m just, I’m not incentivized to do that. I don’t have the time. When I worked in the agency space, no one paid me unless I was successfully hiring a designer for a company to deliver feedback to every single person that asked in the level of detail that both I would like and they would like. No one pays me to do that at all. I’m not paid by anyone. It’s a, it’s a completely charitable thing. And I think most great recruiters are doing their best to do that.

I would say we started that podcast design on filtered to find a way where we would often get the same questions from designers every day. And it’s like, we can’t answer these all one to one. How can we answer them one to many trying to find ways to get back and do that? But yeah, there is not enough time, unfortunately. And there’s no actual incentive. And especially as an agency recruiter, like I’m there to keep the money coming in, terms of my income.

I need to generate that income for myself. I do find it very similar to going to a designer and saying, can you do design work for me for free? And I don’t think that’s really fair. don’t think anyone should do their great profession for free necessarily. Not at that volume. No, it just, like you said, economies of scale. just, when you do the math and think you have, you know, 700 applicants, just, you’re, you’re spending three months giving feedback. And next week, another 700.

And in the same way that you’re hiring candidates to do a job on Teams at Shopify, Shopify has hired you to do a specific job, right? So at the end of the day, you need to deliver on why they hired you. And if you have 29 other roles you need to fill, you can’t provide feedback to the 699 other people from role one. just, the math doesn’t math as they say. Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah Doody (16:26.666)

Again, you know, and it’s such a bummer, but it’s not because we don’t want to, it’s not because we don’t care, it’s not because we don’t think it would help. It’s just really challenging. We’re trying to find other ways constantly where some value can be delivered back. It’s just really hard to do one-to-one all the time. So, okay, let’s imagine that it’s January 10th or something, you’re logging in, you’re recruiting, you have, I don’t know, 50, 100.

uh, candidates that you may, um, need to vet. I know the portfolio is an important part of it, but how do you start processing through that list of 50 or a hundred people? I know some companies use some form of an applicant tracking system and depending on the approach of each recruiter, that applicant tracking system might be ordering those candidates in an initial pass. How do you work?

And it’s totally okay if you say I’m not allowed to talk about it, but. No, no. You’re comfortable sharing. What is your vetting vetting process on that first step? Yeah. Personally, I still like to try and look at every single person. I can get a ton of signal across, across all three, think mediums portfolio resume, and even like a LinkedIn profile. They’re all going to give me some level of signal. The minute I feel like that signals not enough. I see, I see reasons like that person is not going to line up.

and I know that for certain, then I’m gonna move on. I’m gonna say, okay, that person’s not right, I’m gonna move on. In terms of the ATS, I can’t speak for every single ATS out there, but I do honestly feel that majority of it is bullshit. Like most don’t really know how it works. I see a lot of designers still talking about trying to tailor their CV, trying to tweak it, playing this ATS game. I personally find it to be not a great use of your time as a designer. I think you’re…

fighting potentially the wrong type of battle there. The ways an ATS Canon might work and specifically with Shopify, we do not use any type of ATS screening like that generally in our applicants. Everyone gets eyes on them and a decision is made by a human. The times when I’ve seen the ATS get utilized would be things like, is the role location specific? Do you have to in a specific city or even a specific country, right? Which might be a visa type issue.

Sarah Doody (18:49.856)

If you’re not in that country and your application comes through, that’s a way for the system to say, okay, this person doesn’t line up. We need someone based in this particular country or region. We’re going to eliminate them. So that’s a, that’s a pretty straight up way that that happens. I’m really not seeing any ATS is smart enough to scan, to scan portfolios, to scan a designer’s work in some way. That stuff’s really not going on certain systems. So.

Here’s some inside baseball too. Recently Shopify ran a design apprentice program and it was about doing a 12 month apprenticeship style program with Shopify. We’re only going to hire a handful of people. They could be very early career, either out of school, career change, something like that. Now specifically with that, there were quite a few fields within the application. Shopify asked for, and I didn’t run all this firsthand. This was just as I joined the company, but I watched, was part of, you know, seeing it through.

There are quite a few fields around your name, your work, recording a short video. Like there are a things that anyone that didn’t fill that out completely, that didn’t have a full and complete application. They were automatically eliminated too, because it was a signal to the crew that was hiring Shopify. That person wasn’t really putting in the effort. They, they weren’t really putting a strong application forward. And when there’s 800 of them coming in, in one week, it was like, well, again, we’ve got to find reasons or ways to narrow our field.

And if this designer couldn’t even put an application together, that doesn’t give us enough signal that we should give the effort back to whatever they’ve shared. So full and complete applications is certainly one way that things get looked at. I’m moving really quick when I’m reviewing those 50 to 100, I’m moving really quick. I’m looking at the work personally. If I land on a CV first, which is not all the time, but some ATSs are structured in a way that it’s going to give me the CV first and I’ve got to click through to the portfolio.

Personally, if it’s up to me, prefer to do it the other way first. I just want to see your work. don’t necessarily want to see, you know, your career or things like that yet. It’s like the work speaks really loudly. Let’s just go see the source. If I am seeing the CV first, if the CV shows no design whatsoever, it’s really hard for me to come back from that. And I’m not talking like fancy images or anything like that. I think that you could even do arguably a word doc, even though I dislike them as a designer.

Sarah Doody (21:08.566)

You arguably can still have a lot of design fundamentals in the way that you present yourself. And again, that’s the power of designers and the way that they think and the way they present information and convey even just hierarchy, your choice of typography, the way you’ve kind of laid it out, your use of space. Designers have more command over that than engineers, product managers, data scientists. So I don’t, I don’t really want to see whole block page of

Just, you one font, no hierarchy, no space. Like it just gives me this like, am I looking at a designer or not? see no signal here that this person’s a designer. I should just move on right now. Nine times out of 10. Okay. Benefit of the doubt. Let me go and check the portfolio. Oh, again, really not seeing this level of craft. So I just want to see it instantly that you have some command of design. And that’s where a lot of people drop off really quickly. CV, really poor layout, things like that. Jumping in the

Into the portfolio, I can move really quick through those. want instant quick signal that somewhat, that I’m in the right place. If I’m looking for a product designer and I want them to have a, you know, if a handful of types of skills, maybe it’s a design system role. Um, that, you know, and I’m advertising for that and that’s what I’m looking for. If I receive a portfolio and I land on there and it says, Hey, I’m Jared, the user researcher. go, Hmm, I think I’m in the wrong place. I don’t think this is who I need. Well.

I best move on, maybe I’ll try and click around a bit, but this is a design systems role. None of this lines up. This is not who I need. I need to get onto the next. So sometimes it’s as simple as that. I’m looking for quick signal. I think of them as hooks. I need a hook to stick around on this portfolio and look a bit longer. If I don’t get a hook, then I’m bouncing out and that’s usually like a, this is not the right person. Send them a, you know, reject email and move on. Yeah, it’s all about.

that first impression and making that first impression in a split second so that when you look at whatever that first entry point is, there is something telling you I’m in the right place, essentially. Yeah, both on the resume and the portfolio and the LinkedIn. There should be a kind of consistency through all of those. I could almost look at one or all three of them and know it’s the same person in some way. They have a consistent.

Sarah Doody (23:30.7)

sort of through line through them. And I love that phrasing of through line because I’m curious if you notice that a mistake candidates make is not having that through line. Like when you think of the last quarter or two, would that be on a list of mistakes that candidates are making from your perspective? Maybe spending so much time on the portfolio, for example, and then the resume and LinkedIn.

It sounds like it’s for a different person sometimes to be frank. Yeah. It’s, really hard to come back from that. You know, I don’t often believe in just a single signal that gives me like a yes, this is the person that lets me buy. I need to get a bit of signal from all those touch points because I want to package. I don’t mind adding those signals up. Sometimes people like, I can only look at the portfolio and I have to get all the signal from that. I’m like, no, I’m a detective. I’m a talent detective. I want to go find it. I want reasons why I can find someone.

And that’s where things like that consisting in that through line. gives me more to go off as a detective. don’t have to look so hard. don’t have to piece it all together. So yeah, I think if there are gaps between those three touch points, it doesn’t add up or if they’re really gapped out, they’re totally different. It can raise suspicion even. Wait, hold on. Who’s this? This isn’t making, I’m a bit confused here. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It reminds me.

You know, I have a background doing user research and I feel like every day I’m doing user research such as this right now. But one of the things that kind of my former research colleague would always say that stuck with me was, especially when we taught other people how to do research was the idea of we can’t just take one insight or a piece of feedback in a silo. We need to be triangulating. Right. And I think that really goes to what you were saying. It’s not just about

a glance at the resume, but we need to triangulate across resume portfolio, et cetera, to make sure that we’re in the right place and that story is consistent. Cause when you confuse people, you lose them just like you do on a homepage, for example. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I just, I think there’s an element that if you’re, if you’re really living and breathing design, you really love it. You’re really into it. You’re putting yourself out there as this designer. It comes through.

Sarah Doody (25:46.176)

in everything that you do it, know, I say like creativity is in the, the blood. Those designers that you meet over your career that are just ooze, taste or crap, whatever it might be, it’s just going to come out in every touch point. It just shows itself in everything that they do. Could even be in the way that they choose to dress and present themselves. And so when you see that consistency too, it can be this subtle signal of like, this person is just, that’s them.

That’s how they show up. That’s how they’re always putting themselves out there. They just show up that way. And that can give a level of confidence of like, I’m looking for that. Right. Right. I want to switch gears a little bit and think about your experience hiring for maybe more mid and senior level roles, because I’m curious to hear if you’ve experienced this, but one of the challenges that I see senior people have is trying to package all of that experience into something that

is consistent and concise enough to not overwhelm someone like you. And I’m curious, when you are looking, hiring for a senior level candidate, what are you looking for in terms of, know, traits, qualities, et cetera, beyond like using certain software and this and that, but what, what are you looking for that kind of tells you this person is a senior, for example? Yeah. What sets them apart from

someone more mid or junior level. Yeah, you’ll hopefully see it. It shows up instantly in the way that they usually present their work as well. Their layout, their use of the spacing on their site and how they’ve chosen to present the work in itself. There’s usually a feeling within that of like, okay, this is someone that’s been in the game for a moment. No matter what, I only really want to see a handful of projects anyway. If you are more senior, been in the game for quite a few more years, you could have.

10, 20 projects you could potentially put on your portfolio. But I’m pretty certain that project number 20 is not looking and feeling very current anymore. It’s maybe something, you know, feeling very dated and old. So I’m just looking at the most recent work. I want to see the most recent stuff within that anyone who’s more senior in their career. I expect that as you get more senior, you should be able to push more influence and you should be able to drive bigger decisions, maybe bigger bets, maybe.

Sarah Doody (28:14.658)

bolder plays in your work. That’s why more senior designers are often hired as you get to staff senior staff principle level. Those are designers that can wield a level of influence in their thinking and the ideas that they put forward. And they’re the kind of people you put on a project where it’s like, we don’t really know what this is yet, but we think that you can solve it. Or we’re not just looking to change this button. We’re looking to change the whole paradigm of how a user interacts with our product. These are.

These are like way bigger sort of projects, a lot more ambiguous. So when I’m seeing a more senior person’s work, I’m probably seeing like a bigger change or a bigger project that they’ve worked on that had a larger amount of complexity. If I see a project that, yeah, was, had a different type of simplicity. was maybe a two-step cart refinement in a checkout. So, okay, that’s good, but.

I’d probably expect something a bit more from someone more senior, more experienced. So the type of work, what you’re showing me, the level of complexity, what you solve for, the kind of influence that you might’ve had. I’m going to hopefully get some signal like that from someone much more senior. one observation I have is kind of this misconception that every case study in the portfolio must kind of show this mythical start to finish process of UX. And I think

in order to show that influence and bigger decisions, sometimes it makes sense to just focus on this one part of the user flow or the interface, even though you did redo the whole checkout experience, for example, maybe the revolutionary part of it was in terms of, I don’t know, the part where you like add a gift card or you send it to, you’re sending a gift, right? And the billing address is separate from the, the

from the recipient, because this literally happened to me yesterday and it was a disaster. It took me like three hours to send gifts yesterday. But like going micro is sometimes better than trying to show the macro in the project. Yeah, if we think about a project like that, I really experienced designer, I probably worked through a lot of things. There was to figure out how they might create that interaction for the user, how from an infrastructure standpoint, they can physically do that with engineering and

Sarah Doody (30:35.054)

And what they might show you in the end on their case study is a very simple, like, here was a problem. Now our users were struggling to send gift cards. And then it could even be jumping straight to this beautiful fidelity of this, this lovely interaction where the user says like, send to multiple. And the cards just kind of come up and I see this lovely little prototype and it shows me this. And I’m like, what a solve. That’s amazing. And that, that was so short. so that was like two, but we know.

So many things happen between those two steps to get there. I don’t need to see them all. And when I, when I do, when someone does pack them all in, it’s really hard to take them in. It’s really hard to read through them. If I send that to a director of product design, that head of design that’s hiring, definitely seen comments before like, there’s a lot in here. Or if it’s a deck, they’ll go, 75 slides. What are they trying to, what are they telling me? And it’s like.

It’s, it’s maybe too much. You could still show me your seniority and you can still show me how experienced and skilled you are because that solution was so well thought out and looks, and it’s so beautifully presented that final product. There’s my signal of like, that’s someone I want to speak to. I’m not making the hiring decision. That’s just someone we need to get in the room. So we’re talking about a few words that start with I, we’ve talked about influence. made me think of another I word, which is impact.

because one challenge that many people I talk to face is they believe recruiters, hiring managers want to hear the impact, the outcome. If I don’t have metrics, if I can’t say I made the company a million dollars, I can’t talk about this project in my portfolio. So can you speak to, number one, I guess, what is your perspective on including or not including projects that lack…

impact numbers, et cetera. Let’s start there. Maybe not sure where this is going to go, but I’m curious. Yeah. Now I got thoughts on this, think too. I think impact, I think of it sometimes as like death by numbers. Like if you’re hitting me with so many numbers, I don’t really know what they mean because I don’t know what your company might do. I don’t know what the baseline was before. I know you’re telling me there was an increase in this amount of money. I’m like, how’d you really quantify the impact? Okay. What I really want to know is like,

Sarah Doody (32:54.466)

Did you make a difference? Did what you worked on you as the designer, you were hired to make a difference. Things were here and you needed to get them here. And it was going to be a measurable difference. And that impact and articulating it that way is around, I think it was an actual positive difference. Like, okay, great. That’s a good signal. That’s what we want. That’s why we hire designers because they, improve things. But underneath that it’s like, why did it improve? Why didn’t it? And, and do you know?

Because if I’m just looking at metrics, okay, I don’t really know what they mean. I don’t know if you know what they mean. I don’t know if you know why you got there. I don’t know if you understand any of that. So I’ve certainly had feedback over the years of designers of like, you know, they’re saying this designer wasn’t able to articulate why they made decisions. And I think that’s more important than just being able to say a metric. yeah, so influence is greater than.

impact sometimes it sounds like. Sometimes. that’s where it’s like, let’s give space to those designers that don’t have metrics. Whatever reason they couldn’t access them, they don’t have them. That’s okay. It’s all right. There’s still hopefully a measurable difference in what you did or something. There was a reason why it was done. And for you as a designer, know, typical cases, you work in agency and you deliver back a design to your client. They implement it.

It was a positive difference. You don’t know what the numbers were because you don’t have access to that. But then my question is, well, why do you think it was better? Why do you think your design, your new solution, why was it better for that client? Why do you think it was going to be better? And what gave you any type of signal that it was better? If you can’t really tell me that, that’s hard. That’s like, that’s what, that’s what you’re going to get hired to do to tell me these differences. a lot of grace and a lot of space for people that don’t have metrics, but I want to know why.

decisions are made. And I think for me, I feel like that’s been the difference between a pure visual, a digital designer versus say a product or a UX designer, but visual designer that did, yep. It’s beautiful. Why does it look that way? I just, I love these colors. Cool. That’s great. But for a product designer, it looks this way because we had to structure the page in this way, because if we didn’t do that hierarchy, the user was getting lost at this point. weren’t converting beyond this step.

Sarah Doody (35:16.332)

And we were losing a business. So that designer knows these reasons why behind things. So I just want to know that signal. Yep. Yeah. Context is everything as the saying goes. Yeah. Yep. So don’t, don’t stress too much about the metrics. You can still give a lot of signal as to why you should be spoken to as a designer, as an applicant without having hard and fast numbers sometimes. Right. You have a lot of experience recruiting, you know, not just

correct me if I’m wrong, but not just within the United States. And so I’m often asked, and we have a lot of listeners from around the world, know, how is, what are the expectations for a resume or a portfolio in Australia versus London versus Singapore versus United States, et cetera? My stance is kind of, at the end of the day, everyone’s kind of looking for the same things, but I’m curious from your perspective in terms of.

what that recruiter is looking for. Are there any specifics that people should pay attention to or like what’s your take? So I think globally, the world moves faster than it has. There was a time where there would be gaps. know, the US was ahead of Australia in product design. The UK is ahead of these other regions when it comes to service design. You would hear these comments, but I mean, with internet and globalization, I feel like we’re all on a pretty similar page these days.

great product design, great UX design, it’s global. It’s kind of the similar standard around the world. So I think at the core of it, the expectations are about the same for any kind of resume or portfolio and the way that you present yourself. What’s valuable to any particular region is always local familiarity or local relevance. So if you live in Australia as a designer and you’re applying to Australian companies,

There’s a good chance you’ve worked somewhere that the company that you’re applying to, have familiarity with. They might know, you worked at that place. They have a great design team. We should definitely speak to someone. Now all of a sudden you’re that Australian designer and you’re applying to a job in New York. That company in New York, they don’t know that company that you work for. They never heard of it. doesn’t, it doesn’t give any type of signal. So you might have to work that little bit harder of like, let me show you what that work is. And let me show you that influence impact or

Sarah Doody (37:31.8)

the reasons why we did certain things. Let me show you the level of what I can do, regardless of whether you heard of this company or not, you’re going to see that it’s quality. sometimes globally, you don’t get to lean on that familiarity. And that can be a challenge, I think, for designers applying internationally. Yeah. Yeah. It kind of goes back to the idea of know your audience, right? mean, to your point, service design, especially you think of like the UK government, I forget the exact, what they call themselves over there, that team.

but they’re just such leaders in service design. Yeah. Yeah. One hot topic, hot take if you will, I’m asked this all the time, maybe you are as well, but as an actual person involved in hiring, what is your stance on whether UX portfolios must be websites or can they be a presentation? So, and we may disagree and that’s fine. Yeah. I don’t mind. I want to receive your work.

in the best possible format that you can show me with, with no bugs, with no annoying things that you get in the way of presenting your work. So for example, if you are more of a UX product designer and you’ve got this great deck with these, this work that you’ve done and you’re trying to build that website, you’re not a web expert. You’re struggling with this template. You plugging in your content and it’s skewing all the space in it. It’s just not getting there. I’d rather see your deck than see your messy website.

that you can’t, you can’t tweak that role. Maybe I’m not hiring someone to be a website design expert. So therefore if you just try to package it up into this site, when it’s not your natural medium, it’s not going to land for me. All I’m going to see is that the mess and it doesn’t give me an accurate signal. So to me, I’m like, use the medium that you feel most confident and where all your prowess lies to convey all your experience. think depending on the role that you’re going for also can depend on

what is a really effective medium. If you are that kind of web digital product designer, that’s great with site design and is going for a role like that, it’s not going to serve you as well to send me a PDF. Cause I’m, I’m, don’t see any emotional interaction. I don’t see your prowess with web. And if I’m hiring for that designer that has a bit more web expertise, you know, you might not have done the best job of conveying your experience in that medium.

Sarah Doody (39:52.502)

If you’re not showing it to me. the other day I encouraged designs to just use whatever works best for them. I need to access it really simply and easily. don’t want to. Passwords or, you know, I get Google drive sometimes and you got to go to it it’s just full of these folders and then I’m clicking into folders and each folder just has maybe a single UI component. And I’m like, I don’t know what any of this is. And I, I can’t look through any of this or piece it together. This doesn’t make any sense.

Like guide me, that’s like sending me to a website and expecting me to sign up and buy something when I can’t figure out how to even get to the item. So sites, sites or PDF or decks, I don’t really mind. The more we go into product design, the more we see that prototyping is bigger than ever. The tooling allows people to prototype. It allows a designer to use motion and interaction and micro animations.

All of that stuff, think is like within reach and closer than ever for a product designer than it’s ever been before. Right. And therefore if you can use it, use it because you’re showing that you’re up, you’re up with the latest date, you’re up with the times, you’re conveying your work at a certain fidelity. So yeah, it depends what you’re going for, but at the end of day, don’t mind. I just want that signal. I just want the work in best way you can send it to me. Right. Yeah. It goes back to the idea of like,

don’t sacrifice the message by choosing the wrong medium, right? Like the book, the medium is the message, right? If your website is hard to navigate and not responsive and all weird, then what message is that sending about you, right? Yeah, that’s definitely one of the war stories working on a site design role of just for a really, really kick ass company. And the amount of times the CEO stepped in at

the 11th hour when the team was generating an offer for someone and the CEO just dropped in and went to the source code on their portfolio and said, you know what? This is not, this person is not, you know, I can see they’ve made a couple of tweaks, know, done a couple of things here and now this is not our person. And it’s like, well, at end of the day, the role was to be a site designer for that particular company. That CEO has a very high bar, but that’s your medium. You should be a master at it. And so that’s the expectation. Like you’re an absolute pro there.

Sarah Doody (42:15.244)

Yeah, it can be fickle, but these are the times. Yeah. It goes back to what we spoke about at the beginning and just in terms of time, capacity, et cetera. You know, it’s, it’s not because recruiters are mean and are trying to feedback. It’s because at the end of the, like, everyone knows the jobs to be done framework and you have been hired to do a job or Shopify. Okay. I want to go into our lightning round because.

I’m sure we’ll learn a few interesting facts about you, so don’t overthink these. But I’m curious, what was your first real job, you know, like let’s say after high school and something that stuck around with you that you learned in that job? What comes to mind? Yeah, just out of high school, I toured a lot. played in bands and then I went on to study part-time at university while touring. And my part-time job at the time was also working in bars and I bartended.

for maybe five years and I really got into cocktails. I loved working at cocktail bars and making a great drink. And of course the things that stick with you around those types of jobs is just service. This was in Australia too. I think the hospitality scene in the US is amazing, yeah, giving great service first impressions. It’s your chance to give that customer that great first impression that they want to come back for a second drink. You know, all hands on deck, nothing is below you.

any of these things, like just really giving great service and just having such a care for attention to detail in a cocktail bar. Napkins under drinks, coasters on the bar, know, whatever it might be, it’s an experience and we’re there to make that for someone. And Australians make the best avocado toast, hands down. No one else. I think we invented it. If it arrives on soggy, sad bread, not good. Yes. Is it it Bluestone Lane in New York? I think it’s that place.

best, best, Aussie coffee shops. know, I know. I love it. done well. They’ve done well. Yeah. So, okay. If you could do any job where money and time didn’t matter, what would you do? I think I’d take photos. I really enjoy a bit of photography. I’d do that. I’m still in the drum space. I still play drums. I’m at the studio right now. I run a drum company as well. So I’d have a bit more time for that. I’d have this space to.

Sarah Doody (44:43.096)

just playing these like slightly more creative things that aren’t always kind of on the recruitment desk. I love it. I love the music equipment in the background too. It’s perfect. Okay. Let’s imagine you have an interview or think back to when you were interviewing at Shopify. What song or a musician is on your interview pump up?

playlist. Yeah. Anything Zeppelin, anything, know, good times, bad times, immigrant song, Ramblon, cover those slightly more upbeat Zeppelin numbers. give me a good little, little pump up. Okay. And then let’s imagine you get the job or maybe you did this after you got hired at Shopify. Like how are you going to celebrate? What is the first thing you’re going to do? These days I would often just go for a great meal somewhere. So

Before Shopify, I worked in that agency space and a time to celebrate is always when you hire a designer into a company. And I remember many times being in Brooklyn, in the Williamsburg office. And on a Friday, we had a flex schedule in there, but I went in every day. Often I’d be there by myself and someone might accept an offer. And I was like, great, celebrate. I’d go to like a local bar and I’d have a great meal at the counter. There was a time I’d have a martini with it, but those days have changed. But yeah, just a good.

Just a good meal. think an excuse to go out, eat a good meal somewhere. That’s a great celebration. But yes, I have a few go-to places here as well. And it’s such a… It’s a little self-love. Yeah. And it’s important to celebrate because I think so often we just run to the next thing in our to-do list and we don’t kind of marinate if we’re on food analogies in our success. Totally. Yeah. That’s a good one. Okay. And then, you know, if you could go back and give…

Jared from 15 to go, a little piece of advice, you know, what would you tell yourself? Always be nice. I tell it to myself now too, like just do your absolute best to be nice. Like maybe back to the bar thing, like good experiences, be nice to the best that you can, but just that niceness, that community, makes the world go round. Find reasons to be nice to people instead of the opposite. I think it’s too a part of the Aussie spirit and ethos because when I think of all the Australians I know, you know, it’s just…

Sarah Doody (46:58.062)

Well, similar to Canadians because we’re part of the Commonwealth. it could be that too, but yes, I love it. Yeah. Thank you so much. Any other parting words or things that come to mind before I wrap this up? Just big love to all the designers that are watching and listening to this. Going out there looking for work and on that journey and turning your skills into, you know,

paycheck into a profession. have so much respect and so much admiration for all those designers. I both know it to be really, really difficult and challenging, but I also, luckily for me, have met so many designers that have had so much success from what they do. I’ve met many designers that have created this life for themselves that they love, whether it’s having a home in a place that they want. I met a guy recently that had this insane car collection, you know, from, and he’s a great designer, like.

think that these things are feasible and I just love seeing successful designers turning this craft and this skill into something that you can be rewarded for that then maybe affords you other dreams and other things in life. I love that and there’s so much respect and we have the ability to do that. We have an industry, a space, lots of room to do that out there. Yeah. Yeah. is not taking our jobs, before we go… close.

I almost forgot you said Shopify is, you know, planning around 30, 30 goals to hire and you don’t necessarily publicize them on, on, let me start that over. You don’t necessarily publicize them online. So if, if anyone who is a part of my career strategy lab or who listens to this podcast later, like how do they get, get visibility with you? What would you recommend we do? Either connect with me on, on the old LinkedIn. I definitely spent a bit of time on there, but

Shopify does have a portal for applying as a designer. It’s more of a general kind of wider application. It’s not role specific, but definitely implore any designer that’s curious and interested to go through that, do a complete application, share as much information as you can, as it asks. And that gets seen by humans. We’ve got a small crew that just focuses on design and we’re all going to see it. We’re all going to run eyes on that. And that just gets you a look in not just for one role at Shopify, but any design role.

Sarah Doody (49:16.034)

We’re always looking at someone thinking, where could this person fit? So, right. Yeah. So if you’re listening, the takeaway is get into the Shopify pool essentially. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And then, know, potentially reach out to you, but, you’re not just going to see a job necessarily posted on LinkedIn. Not a specific one always. Yeah. All right. Jared, this was so great. Thank you for sharing your afternoon with us, taking time at this busy time of year.

I know people found this really helpful from the chat feedback I could just see briefly, but thanks again. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me and see you all online and yeah. Hey there. I just wanted to say thanks for listening to this episode all the way to the end. If you’re looking for links or resources mentioned, visit careersstrategylab.com slash podcast to find this episode details and the details of the hundreds of other episodes.

If you’re looking for help with your UX or product job search, you may want to consider checking out my program, Career Strategy Lab, where I help UX and product people just like you navigate unexpected challenges in their careers, whether that’s a layoff, trying to get promoted, or getting hired without applying to hundreds of jobs. To learn more about that, just go to careerstrategylab.com and click.

UX Career Coaching at the very top. That’s all for today and I’ll see you next time in another episode of the Career Strategy Podcast.