UX Hiring Insights: Marc Aquino, Senior Product Design Manager at Deel

Sarah (00:00)

today I am excited to chat with Mark Aquino, who is the senior product design manager at Deel. and Deel is a global HR and compliance platform that lets companies be able to hire and pay and manage international employees as well as independent contractors in 150 countries. Actually, a few more than 150.

And Mark is a design leader with 15 years in the industry, including seven building and scaling, leading high-performing teams. And he’s worked with companies kind of at all stages: startups, scale-ups, global companies, where he’s been growing design organizations from scratch, overhauling complex products, and partnered with product and engineering to deliver measurable.

Business impact. And I’m excited to chat with Mark today because Mark recently posted on LinkedIn about burnout in design. And it really caught my eye. And he said that burnout isn’t because of the hours worked, but it really instead of us not or us getting attached to our work with work that we don’t actually own. So we’re going to dive into that and a lot more.

And with so much talk of burnout in design and product, leading to people sometimes wanting to switch companies or even leave it the industry altogether, I thought this was just a really timely conversation. So, Mark, welcome. And did I leave anything out that you

Marc Aquino (01:35)

Thank you.

Sarah (01:35)

want to highlight?

Marc Aquino (01:36)

no, nothing left out. I think you covered it pretty, pretty well. yeah, excited to kind of dive into it and talk about it a little bit. I have some hot takes on burnout. I think I have some some takes that hopefully those listening in can can take away and kind of apply in their own lives. And yeah, let’s get into it and see where the conversation takes us.

Sarah (01:55)

Awesome. Yeah, I am all about helping people take action. So any kind of actionable, practical stuff you can mention, I’m sure will be very much appreciated. But I want to start with this post that you did on LinkedIn and I’ll link it in the show notes for people. But it was in response to Nielsen Norman Group’s article around this idea of psychological ownership and the relationship that it has to burnout. So

Knowing that not everyone has read that article yet, I’m curious to hear more about your hot take because part of it was that people, really designers, are carrying a lot of responsibility for things that no one gave them authority to decide. So say more about this disconnect between the responsibility.

Marc Aquino (02:43)

Yeah, so just kind of like a little bit of context, because anyone that goes and reads that article, they’re gonna read through it and say, like, this thing doesn’t mention burnout anywhere. Like, you know, what are talking about? And so the article was written based on some work done by Lynn Van Dyne and John Pierce. And they essentially released this research study that was saying psychological ownership develops through three kind of main things. controlling something, knowing it super, super deeply.

And investing your time and effort into it. And then Norman Nielsen goes and breaks that down into they call out like some strong emotions that are assigned to it. they kind of give their own definition of psychological ownership. But really, what they’re doing is they’re talking about how when you own something deeply, how you respond to kind of not actually having the authority.

even though you have the ownership of it. And so as I was reading through this article, I started kind of overlaying it with some of the things I’ve been seeing happening in my team, in other teams, from you know, other managers that I’m close with, and then I talk to. And it really made me realize that, you know, outside of like the actual psychological ownership problem that designers either stereotypically or tend to have more in our early career, it does

compound

into this issue of burnout and and the way that kind of manifests itself is especially when you’re working in these high-pace, fast-paced environments where you’re you’re expected to design and develop multiple products a week, even sometimes, right? deal’s kind of known for this of having one-week turnovers on certain projects and features.

W what you go through is you go through this kind of psychological ownership of the product. And then as you start developing it, stakeholders get involved and you start hearing, no, you need to change this. you know what? Actually, this is going to be out of scope. And and you get excited for this work. you do deep research into it, you get an idea of what you know, what the best kind of in-class solution for it would be. And after you deliver the work, at the end it gets scoped down.

To this thing that’s kind of almost unrecognizable. And for anyone watching, I’m sure you’ve been through this before in your career where you get really excited about a project, it goes live, and suddenly you’re not so excited for it anymore, or you’re not as proud of it as you were when you were originally presenting it. And

As I was reading through this article from Nielsen Norman and I started reading through the research from Lynn Van Dyne and John Pierce, I realized that this constant cycle of getting excited for something, putting it out there, having it kind of shrunk down to its base, maybe never approaching it again, or, you know, any of the other four big emotions that Nielsen Norman mentioned in their article, relief about like being the only one that ever has to make decisions and then

launching it and having

Sarah (05:26)

Mm.

Marc Aquino (05:27)

kind of that authority stripped away from you, right? pride about presenting your work and then seeing that work live and it not being what you designed.

Defensiveness when you’re talking with those stakeholders and they want to shrink it down. Anger, you know, when when your project gets derailed or the designs have been executed poorly, that over a long period of time begins to compound and it’s multiplied by the speed at which you have to work. And so I had this theory. I I read through the article, I started talking with some design friends, other managers, some of the designers on my team, and I realized, yeah, it’s this constant cycle of like highs and lows that I think actually contributes more to bring.

burn out than than the expectations put on a designer.

Sarah (06:06)

I love how you describe that, Mark, because I think that visual of this cycle of these highs and lows, which are starting with, you know, like you said, that excitement of an idea or a feature and how it’s going to make the product better, and then the excitement of making it, right? Because I think as designers, like we do get a lot of

pleasure and fulfillment just from the literal act of making that thing. And then just that come down of that was nice, but we’re gonna cut it down to 10% of what you gave us. It’s it just chips away at so many emotions. And I I love the phrasing that you used. I think it was just the compounding impact of this cycle spanned out over months and years.

On a team or at a company.

Marc Aquino (06:57)

Yeah, definitely. And like I wanna be clear that like the psychological ownership aspect of it is really important, right? There’s a lot of benefits to feeling that psychological ownership, right? Like you’re gonna be more motivated, you’re gonna be probably taking the initiative more often, you’re gonna get greater satisfaction out of your work. And so it’s important to kind of stay in that mind space of psychological ownership, but not letting it kind of get into that negative space where it starts.

impacting you negatively and and that’s really the challenge that I think a lot of us struggle with.

Sarah (07:29)

And I I really appreciate that after you read this article, you did some research, it sounds like, you know, going and having conversations with peers, whether that maybe was ideal or elsewhere, and recognizing this pattern. And I’m curious, like, are there any examples maybe from your own career or anecdotally from these discussions you had with other people about what you’ve done to try and

mitigate kind of the end result of a lot of this, which can sometimes be this career burnout.

Marc Aquino (08:04)

Definitely. So like I’ll use myself as an example just so I don’t put anyone else on blast. But

Sarah (08:10)

Yeah.

Marc Aquino (08:10)

throughout my career, especially as a manager, I’ve kind of I’ve always kind of tried to have this dual track approach to design, right? I’ve never been a subscriber to the fact that designers should only be this delivery team. And so the dual track is basically one track is setting the vision for your product or area or

You know, whatever your scope entails as a team, and just always trying to think ahead, you know, how do we make this the best in class product? How do we create a new product that’s maybe unlocking an opportunity that we know we have, but that we don’t have time to put on the roadmap or whatever? Just having something that’s design-led and driven. and then the other track is obviously doing the things that you know, product and engineering are reliant on you and that the business is reliant on you for. and so.

It’s very easy to get put in the box, especially as designers, of just, hey, do what’s on the roadmap. You know, don’t go too far outside of that. If you get excited about a particular project that’s on the roadmap, sure, you know, like explore the horizons a little bit, but you know, stay inside this box. and so

I

think when I was more junior in my career, and especially like when I first got into management, I would come with these big ideas about like, you know, and well-researched ideas. Hey, if we did this thing, you know, we could increase conversion by X amount. Or hey, you know, like our onboarding flow, there’s a huge drop-off in in signups. And if we did it this way, you know, we could we could fix that. And you get super excited about these things, you research them really thoroughly.

And maybe at the beginning, even you get the excitement from the product or the stakeholders and they say, Yeah, you know, go ahead, you know, take one or two designers with you, explore it. but what I was finding, especially early in my career, was that I would go and explore it and I would come back with that vision. And that vision would always just kind of put on a back burner. So it was like, yeah, you know, at first there’s all the excitement, and then you know, that excitement starts tapering off. And I could never just get to a point where

That thing that I was excited about, I can make everybody else excited about as well. And looking back on it now, like I I can definitely see that cycle getting me to a place where I was like, you know, what’s even the point of creating visions? Right. Like what’s the point of doing this dual track thing? Maybe it’s maybe it is better.

For me to just do what it’s expected of me and, you know, stay within that box. And I think that’s a mindset I I really struggled with for a long time, because I know I was good at doing what was expected of me and delivering within my box, right? That’s what got me to that place. But I I also know design can be so much more. And so I kept at it. and I think, you know, what really

kind of pays off on it is when you do join that team or that company or that group of individuals that lets you explore and and when you come up with something that is potentially game changing, they’ll bet they’ll put their bets on you and say, like, yeah, let’s go build it and see what happens. Right. So I got the chance to do that at a company called Intellex, which is a company based in Toronto. we built this I don’t know the

Best way to ex describe it now. Back in the day, we said it was like a social media platform for companies that cared about health and safety and quality. Right now that’s probably not a great way to describe it anymore, but like it was revolutionary

Sarah (11:12)

Ha ha.

Marc Aquino (11:12)

at the time. because these types of companies were just, you know, very stiff enterprise companies that just cared about data and grids and things like that. So was really cool to have the company bet on me and say, like, yeah, let’s go do it and see what happens.

And you know, like in that particular situation, it wasn’t a super successful product, but like I got to see that vision manifest itself and it was just such a relief coming off me and saying, like, hey, I got to do something. That was my idea. I got everybody bought into it, and we all went and executed this thing together. and throughout my career I’ve seen like a lot of that type of pattern happen. And I I I think that’s what keeps us engaged and coming back as designers when you do get

to

kind of realize that creative freedom, that that creative excitement that we get when we discover a problem. so to answer the second part, like how would I how would I tell others, like, you know, to keep at it? I would say like if you don’t feel like you’re in an organization that lets you explore that creative freedom in that way, then like do it, do it in your own personal life, right? Like it it sounds so cliche, I know, but

Something and not a lot of people know about me is I’m I’m very big into writing, especially short stories, nonfiction, fantasy. I’m I’m really big into all of that. And I created my own product to like help me organize my writing and my notes and and everything like this. And it was just like, you know, you have carte blanche, you’re your own stakeholder. and so that’s been a great way to kind of release that creative energy and get that same feeling of excitement.

Sarah (12:40)

I I couldn’t agree more about encouraging people to pursue their own side quests that they will have total ownership with. I’ve done that multiple times in in my own career and now with my own business. And it’s it’s so fulfilling to be able to just have an idea and and run with it. and I have a I have a writing tool I’m gonna send you after.

that I’m curious if you’ve heard of, which helped me. I’ve written a couple of books. They’re not out yet, but I’m gonna send you those. But

I wanna go back to a follow-up with that company you were at in Toronto because

Marc Aquino (13:16)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah (13:16)

you had this visionary idea and it was not turned down. It got a yes. And I’m curious, was there anything you

Did in kind of communicating and getting buy-in for that idea? Because I know you wrote this article all about business fluency. And as you were describing this, I was thinking, okay, was this a scenario where you were not as junior anymore? And you had developed maybe more business fluency, which allowed you to maybe position this idea in a way that.

got buy in where maybe earlier in your career you didn’t have the skills or the language to do so.

Marc Aquino (13:58)

Definitely. So I I would definitely say that there was kind of that part of it. and then also like I was very lucky to have a leadership team that that I that believed in me. And I had a kind of direct manager to whom till today’s day like I consider a good friend and he kind of bet on me as well, which was kind of the unlocking factor. But I think for people

That

are just looking to understand that business fluency aspect of things and have these great ideas and want to be able to push them in their teams or in their organizations. There’s a framework I like to recommend to people. And it’s called Kotter’s K-O-T-T-E-R-S, Kotter’s Eight Steps to Change Management. and it it was obviously a framework built around change management. However, you can use the exact same framework for going and getting stakeholders to be on your side.

if I have to do the steps off the top of my head, I’m gonna completely butcher it. But the the

Sarah (14:53)

Yeah.

Marc Aquino (14:53)

first one is kind of building a coalition of people that believe in your idea, right? So it’s not coming up with this whole idea and then going and pitching it. It’s it’s the private conversations you have with people, with your stakeholders, with your peers, and saying, like, hey, you know, like I was doing some research and I found that, you know, it

If you do A, like B would be the output. And I’m thinking, like, we have an interesting opportunity here. What do you think? Right. And start getting other people to feed into the idea and kind of build the idea with you. And this has been a tactic I’ve used now for for years. And the more people you have kind of contributing to your idea and building it with you, when eventually you do get in that room.

Because you will, when so many people are on your side and pushing in the same direction, you will eventually get in that room in front of that stakeholder that’s gonna say yes or no. you not only have the backing of all these people you’ve already talked to, but you have some of their ideas as well. And you know, you can kind of say, you know, Sarah recommended I do this, you know, such and such recommended I do this. And I think if we put all these things together, you know, we can really execute on you know, whatever the mission is. And

Instead of having to convince an entire room, you’ve already got most of the room convinced. And so you’re gonna have people speaking up in your favor. And it just makes it so much easier. highly recommend going and reading through those steps. And you know, for anybody that’s live right now, if you’re reading through the steps and have questions, like I’m happy to answer them from my experience afterwards. but yeah, build that coalition of people that believe in it. Definitely like make sure you can articulate and generate.

an urgency around what it is that you want to do. And if you get those two things right, the rest of it’s very, very simple.

Sarah (16:28)

Yeah, I I will definitely link to that article in the show notes. And when I post this in my community for people who are watching live, I’ll make sure to link to it as well. I I love that step of coalition though. I think it’s such also just such a perfect word for that, right? So that you have these people behind you you’ve already vetted the idea by, who’ve maybe even poked holes in it. you’ve iterated it a bit so that by the time you’re in that meeting.

you’ve already anticipated some questions and objections that that may come up and you’ve

kind of maybe

Marc Aquino (17:01)

Definitely.

Sarah (17:02)

pressure tested them with that coalition.

Marc Aquino (17:04)

100%. yeah, it’s a super powerful tool. And it it’s one that like it it’s really changed how I approach trying to get buy-in for things. and even just understanding like what motivates people, right? ‘Cause part of forming a coalition or any kind of group of people that support a cause is you need to understand what is currently motivating them, right? So

know, Sarah, if you’re my product counterpart and I have this great idea and I want to get you bought into my idea, I have to understand what you’re trying to do and what you’re trying to achieve. And I have to be able to connect my idea to that and say like, hey, if we do this thing, you know, it’s win-win. How do we how do we get on the same page about this? And that’s going to build like your interpersonal skills. It’s going to build your negotiation skills. It’s going to build your social skills. Like it’s just such a great tool.

Sarah (17:51)

Yeah, yeah. okay, I want to ask one more question about your kind of hot take on that article. And then I want to pivot into your perspective on hiring and the job market. And I think there are a lot of kind of parallels between what we’ve been talking about and things people can do to stand out as candidates, but back to that article.

So in your kind of hot take post on LinkedIn, you said, I’m just gonna read it, the designers I have watched last the longest hold the shipped thing loosely and their own judgment tightly. And I thought that was just such a beautifully written phrase, first of all. And I’m curious,

Marc Aquino (18:35)

Thank you.

Sarah (18:35)

are there any examples of this, maybe with people on your team or even yourself?

that could help people listening see how they could apply this, you know, to their own situation if maybe they feel like right now, they’re in the middle of this cycle that we talked about earlier.

Marc Aquino (18:52)

Yeah, definitely. So kind of as we mentioned earlier in this call, like sometimes what ships isn’t what you designed or isn’t what you were excited about or isn’t, you know, necessarily the thing you envisioned it to be. And and that’s okay. Kind of that’s the nature of business, that’s the nature of working in in fast-paced environments, or you know, having to make trade-offs for clients or or whatever your situation might be. And that’s okay. And this is what I meant by like how

holding like shipped things very loosely because ultimately what what gets shipped isn’t a direct reflection of what you did as a designer, right? And we kind of have to separate our ego from from the reality of business, right? Business doesn’t really care about your ego. Business doesn’t care about your intentions. It just kind of cares about what it can get out the door to make money the quickest, right? and so like I said, the designers that

I

see thriving and and surviving the longest without that kind of monster of burnout chasing at their at their coattails, are the ones that take pride in the work that they do and that they were excited about and the work that they present and the ideas that they can come up with. And that is what they what they nurture. That’s what they that’s what they kind of feed their emotions into and what they find peace and and fulfillment in is that kind of their output.

at the end of the day, like that’s what you can control, right? You can control the effort you put into something, you can put control kind of how well you’ve thought about it, how well it would solve the problem. And if the business or the team or or whatever decides to go in a different direction, you can kind of still

For lack of better phrasing, like sleep peacefully, knowing that you did everything you could as a designer. You brought all of your skills to that project, you made the recommendations that you believed in the most, and you didn’t kind of sacrifice it for whatever, you know, whatever was needed in the moment. That being said, I think if I was gonna put a caveat, not a caveat, but if I was gonna extend that quote a little bit, I would say that the best of the designers I’ve worked with.

kind of keep a list of all of those things and they know when to reapproach that list and say, like, hey, remember when we cut scope from X project, like the roadmap’s a little bit light this quarter. Like why don’t we see what else we can pull into it? And they’re constantly driving that original vision that they had because

If it’s something that you believed so deeply about that you had that strong emotional connection with and maybe you felt that anger or frustration about it being scoped down, it doesn’t mean give up on it, right? It just means that wasn’t the right solution for that time.

Sarah (21:22)

Yep. I as you were as you were saying that, this phrase came into my mind, like sometimes it’s not no, it’s no right now, right? And so by proactively keeping check of those things and then going back to them, I think number one, your manager is gonna notice that. and number two, it can also make the product better.

And number three, it allows you to kind of follow through on that initial vision, idea, et cetera. I love that.

Marc Aquino (21:56)

Yeah. Yeah, it’s it’s a healthy way to keep hold of that psychological ownership that we were talking about, right? And say, like, hey, you know, this is

Sarah (22:02)

Yeah.

Marc Aquino (22:03)

still the thing I wanted to build, let’s let’s reapproach it, right? and you know, I I’ve heard this before in interviews or talking with designers where they’ve told me, it’s so frustrating because I I had this great idea and you you know, we only built a sliver of it and now I don’t have my project portfolio piece that I wanted, right? Or

You know, things like this. And it’s like, well, you still do, right? Like you you designed this thing or you you constructed this idea in your head. Like go out there and build it. you know, no one’s no one’s gonna ring me up and say, hey Mark, you know, I have designer X from your team and they told me they built this product. Is that true? Like no one’s gonna come and check in on that. so if you have this great idea and you feel like you could sell that idea, like it’s still yours, that you still have that ownership.

Sarah (22:45)

That is a great segue, I think, into a little bit more around what you look for in candidates, because I know so many people listening want to hear directly from someone who is involved in building teams. And I think this topic of someone made something on their team.

And maybe it didn’t launch or it didn’t launch in its entirety and features got cut and things like that. There is this really deep belief amongst candidates that if something didn’t launch, if it didn’t go as planned, that they cannot talk about that in interviews, include it in their portfolio, because based on what I’m hearing, they think it’s going to make them

look bad. can you speak more to that? I know we covered it a little bit more or a little bit earlier, but I’m curious if you have a hot take on, you know, thou shalt not include something because it didn’t launch. Like what it what do you say to that, Mark?

Marc Aquino (23:49)

No way, like include it. you know, if if you want to give me the caveat that it didn’t launch, that’s totally fine. Like I’m not gonna I’m not gonna hold that against you. But like I think it shows a certain level of maturity to say, hey, you know, here’s all the work I did for this project. I was super excited about it. You know, this is how this is how I knew it would impact whatever the metrics were that were important to us at the time. And I built this whole thing out, and you know what, at the end of the day we shipped 10% of it or we didn’t ship it at all or whatever.

It’s still a problem that you went out and solved and that I would love to see. Sure, you might not have actual real data and and real metrics about how it moved things, but tell me about like what you hypothesized it would do, right? Especially if you’re at the junior level, like that type of thinking, or even the intermediate level, I would say that type of thinking is so important. you know, that you that you you saw an initiative from beginning to end, you knew what metrics it should have moved.

And you know what? Sometimes, you know, business happens and and you didn’t get to launch the thing you were excited about, but that’s okay.

Sarah (24:46)

really appreciate that you kind of mentioned metrics in that answer because one thing I hear and and maybe you hear it also is candidates are also very I was going to say hesitant but maybe I’ll use the word slightly paranoid to not talk about things that they don’t have a solid metric for, such as

I did X and it made the company a million dollars or something. And somewhere along the line, at least from my perspective, I think the idea of showing metrics in your in your interviews and on your resume and such has been equated to like some fantastic wild outcome. my perspective, and I’m curious what yours is, is that it not everything we worked on ends in some fantastic number at the end, right? And so

What is helpful for someone hiring is to understand the scope of what you did, the scale of what you did, whether it was user research or a design system, was it like some little design system or did it have 300 components or something, right? So what would you say to people who are very nervous about not including things because it didn’t make the company a million dollars?

Marc Aquino (26:01)

I would say like, you know, if it had any kind of material impact, mention it, right? Like it depending on the company scale, a 1% improvement can be massive, right? A 1% improvement at a company like Amazon is gigantic, right? That’s easily into the millions. So you don’t have to give the specific dollar amount. Tell me, tell me a percentage, right? and if you don’t have that percentage or or

know maybe maybe you’re not super proud of that percentage or whatever the case may be, then I think the most important thing you can do is talk about why that particular project was prioritized to begin with. Like what was the problem that you were looking to solve? Right. What was the what was the baseline of it? What were you looking to solve? Why did you make the decisions you made along the way? And how did they relate back to that original problem?

If you can tell me a great story there, and then we get to the end and you say, you know, like we did all these great work, and you know what, the metrics don’t really didn’t really move that much. That’s fine. That’s still great storytelling that still shows me your design thinking skills. anecdotally and and kind of the reverse of this is I get a lot of people that apply to deal that I talk to, and they love to show me, you know, we increase this metric by

190% and it made billions of dollars for this organization and things like that. And my first question is always, and and do you believe design was the only role that made an impact on that? And it’s not, right? Like we play, we play an important role, but engineers play a big role, sales play a big role, customer success plays a big role. So like don’t feel like the the metrics are a direct reflection of the effort you put into a project.

Sarah (27:40)

I really appreciate that kind of other end of the perspective because it reminds me, I think it was last week I was on LinkedIn and I saw someone’s profile and it said something along the lines of like responsible for it was lots of millions of dollars in revenue. And to your

Marc Aquino (27:57)

Yeah.

Sarah (27:57)

point, it’s like

Y there’s an and there, right? I mean, yes,

Marc Aquino (27:59)

Where are you? Yeah, yeah.

Sarah (28:02)

it it it almost can it almost can be a turnoff, to be honest, because it could

Marc Aquino (28:07)

For sure.

Sarah (28:08)

it’s like, well, where was the we in this? Are you a team player,

Marc Aquino (28:12)

Yeah.

Sarah (28:13)

right?

Marc Aquino (28:13)

For sure. I I it’s immediate red flags. If you’re a senior designer and you tell me, yeah, I built this product and you know it made the company tens of millions of dollars, I I listen, I have no doubt that you built that product, but was it only you that made the company tens of millions of dollars? It like I’ve been on some pretty pretty game changing projects in my time and I don’t think I would ever say that like my work alone.

was worth $10 million to this company, right? so it definitely, I think there’s there’s that level of of humility that needs to be observed as well. And say, like, hey, I was part of a team and you know we had we had this mission and here’s how I contributed to it. And the outcome was that tens of millions of dollars.

Sarah (28:55)

Right, right. I think it’s great, it’s great to be confident and speak about outcomes, but also the manner in which you communicate those outcomes and the tone, it can give a a foreshadowing of what it might be like to have you on someone’s team and you can have the greatest, you know, resume bullet points, but if

a recruiter or hiring manager is starting to sense that there is a lot of ego or kind of an eye centric attitude. As you said, it could it could be the difference between getting an interview or an offer or not.

Marc Aquino (29:34)

For sure. And and a good hiring manager will ask you like straight in the face in an interview, like, you know, you know, were you the one responsible for all of this? Like what role did you play in the team? And it if you’ve already claimed like, hey, my work led to you know, this dollar amount or this percentage increase, you better be ready to to kind of come in with the caveats to that because yeah, i I I don’t think I’ve ever met a one person team that is

done that outside of some extremely like edge cases, right?

Sarah (30:03)

Mm-hmm. I I know we’re hopping around the hiring funnel here, but I’m just gonna go with it. So I want to go to the beginning of the hiring funnel because that is where a lot of people get stuck. And I treat these interviews like as in you and I talking right now, I treat these interviews

Marc Aquino (30:21)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah (30:22)

as really an opportunity to give people.

A chance to hear directly from you, like a user research interview with you as the person involved

Marc Aquino (30:31)

All right.

Sarah (30:32)

in whether or not they might get the interview or not. So we hear all the time, and I’m going to assume it’s true for deal, that oftentimes within days or hours of posting roles, you have hundreds of candidates. So describe to us the process.

for deciding who gets that initial screener interview, even if the answer is you’re not involved there and it’s someone like in Deal’s HR team. But you know, it’s it’s

Marc Aquino (30:59)

Yeah.

Sarah (30:59)

helpful to hear how it works in a larger company like Deel

Marc Aquino (31:03)

Yeah, definitely. So I think Deel released like some metrics earlier in the year where I think it was like April or May, and we had already received over like 10 million job applications to Deel, like four months into the year, like insane amounts. and obviously not all of that was design, thankfully. but it just kind of goes to show the scale at like Deel is a 7,000 person organization. If you imagine

Even like a 5% churn rate that those are roles that we’re backfilling, plus you know, whatever 40% year-over-year growth. Like that’s a lot of applicants per role, right? so like you said, what does that process look like getting into your first meeting? I’ll be honest, like the TA team does manage a lot of that.

But we’re very, very close to them. We do a lot of training, them to us and us to them on like what we’re looking for in portfolios or you know we’re constantly recalibrating what’s a good portfolio, especially as we grow in the average strength and and

level of design in the team grows. So, you know, we have weekly meetings with the TA team to kind of talk about the pipeline and the funnel and what they’re doing well and, you know, what can be improved and things like that. But they they manage kind of that entire influx. So deal operates, you will put the we’ll put the job title, we’ll put the job posts out there, people will apply to them, and HR will do the original the kind of the original screening.

Hiring managers are also expected to go out and source candidates on our own as well. So we’ll go out and, you know, based on people we’ve worked with in the past or people we’re interacting with in our day-to-day life or on LinkedIn, you know, we might put them in the funnel as well, but the vast majority come through the TA team and they’re the ones that will look at your portfolio first and have a conversation with you.

After that happens, they’ll send us your profile with your portfolio just to make sure that they didn’t miss anything. We’ll give it like a quick yes or no. We’ll write like a little blurb as to why, just to make sure that we’re constantly sharing what we’re looking for with the TA team. And then once you pass that step, you’ll go into you know meet the hiring manager as your first stage.

Sarah (33:09)

I want to ask a follow-up to that because I’m going to guess

Marc Aquino (33:12)

Sure.

Sarah (33:12)

it’s gonna show up in our chat here, but talk more about this proactive sourcing of candidates. You mentioned LinkedIn and obviously people that you’ve

Marc Aquino (33:23)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah (33:23)

maybe worked with in the past, but I think so many people looking for roles right now struggle with, you know, quote, networking, which everyone has their

Marc Aquino (33:32)

Yeah.

Sarah (33:33)

kind of opinion on networking. And I think.

Where are you looking for candidates? I’ve heard from Steph McDonald, who is a UX recruiter at HubSpot. She said she often is hanging out in various online communities, sometimes active, sometimes lurking. And maybe someone stands out just because of like comments they’re putting in groups, for example. So give us a few places where you’re sourcing candidates beyond.

you know, people you’ve worked with in the past and maybe people you’ve interacted with on LinkedIn.

Marc Aquino (34:04)

Yeah, same. So I I completely agree with what she said. when I was when I was watching, I she was the one that you had on from HubSpot, right? What what did you say the name was? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Steph

Sarah (34:13)

Yep. Steph McDonald. Yeah.

Marc Aquino (34:17)

McDonald, yeah. So I I definitely agree. So I do a lot of lurking. LinkedIn groups. there’s like a gigantic UX group.

I I didn’t imagine the conversation going in this direction, so it’s not coming to the top of my head. But there’s there’s a bunch of LinkedIn groups

Sarah (34:31)

It’s okay.

Marc Aquino (34:32)

for UX designers. I’m there, I’m on LinkedIn every day. If I’m not posting, I’m engaging with posts and things like that. recently Reddit actually, like I’ve been I’ve been engaging a lot with the UX community on Reddit, which is

been an interesting take. There’s a lot of highs and lows there, but like I feel like any space where designers can come together and talk craft, like you at least myself, I naturally get drawn to the people with kind of the more realistic take. I don’t like I idealism in either direction. I like people that are more grounded. So those are the people I tend to end up

Getting caught up and entangled in conversations with. And if I feel like they have something that they can contribute, like I’m always open to like jumping on a call. I’ve done so many kind of quick coffee chats with people that I’ve met online through whatever avenue, just to kind of gauge them out, see what’s going on in their life, what they’re looking for next. and through that, I I’ve kind of I’ve done a lot of my sourcing.

Trying to think if there’s I mean, like don’t want to say like, you know, it’s the people that reach out to me on LinkedIn because I don’t want to encourage that more than it already happens. But like there’s some people that

Sarah (35:36)

Yep.

Marc Aquino (35:37)

they they have that first message that it and I can’t even give you like a great template for that first message, but you know, like sometimes sometimes someone sends you a message and they kind of have you dialed in and

you get into a good conversation with them and maybe they’re not even asking for anything up front. It’s like, hey, I read your article on this, I see it very similarly. This is something I did in my last organization, curious to get your take on it, or I don’t know if I did this right. What do you think? And sometimes those natural conversations lead to them saying like, hey, I was recently laid off, or you know, I’m looking for my next opportunity. What is it like a deal?

And that might encourage me to say, like, hey, well, why don’t we jump on a call and I can talk to you about it? that

Sarah (36:13)

Yeah.

Marc Aquino (36:13)

happens. Please don’t bombard my my inbox, but like it it does

Sarah (36:17)

Ha ha ha.

Marc Aquino (36:18)

happen that way.

Sarah (36:18)

Yeah, I I wanted to dig into that sourcing of candidates topic because one thing that I hear so much from candidates is, I’m scared to post on LinkedIn or I don’t know what to say, or what if people think my post or my comment is stupid or something. And it’s like you just have to reach the point where you you don’t care because you know why you’re

Marc Aquino (36:40)

That’s it.

Sarah (36:41)

doing that. First of all, it’s like just share your ideas. I mean, I wrote

I wrote articles in 2011 and 2012 that people still email me about and also opened insane doors in my career. Were there also a lot of haters? Absolutely. But I think it’s so important for people to be putting their thoughts out there because you never know who is reading. And put the haters aside, there are people like you, there’s people like Steph, there’s so many other people.

that may take notice. And that could be the thing that makes that person be top of mind, you know, for a role. Or on the reverse, if they do send you a LinkedIn message, they are a familiar, familiar name or face, right? It’s like, it’s no longer a cold message. It’s kind of lukewarm because you

Marc Aquino (37:32)

Yeah.

Sarah (37:33)

remember them from some thoughtful, engage

Marc Aquino (37:37)

Engagement, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Sarah (37:37)

back and forth that you yeah,

that you had in one of these communities.

Marc Aquino (37:42)

It’s true. And even on LinkedIn, like if you if there’s a company you want to work for and that you’re super interested in, like look at what the people from that company are posting, especially if if like you’re a designer and you want to get into the design team, look at what design team members from that company are posting on LinkedIn. Engage with it, like give your thoughts. You know, obviously don’t be like confrontational or anything, but if you if you don’t agree, let them know why you don’t agree. If you if you do agree, let them know why you agree. Have like

the real human conversations. Like we’re all we’re all trying to make this career better. We’re all trying to grow in our own careers. We’re trying to meet like minded individuals. So engage with those people and then, you know, shoot your shot in the DMs later. Right. Like, but

Sarah (38:25)

Yeah.

Marc Aquino (38:25)

put a face to the name.

Sarah (38:27)

Yeah. All right. I want to be mindful of time and get to some of these questions from people. So I am going to let’s start with Suzanne’s. So Suzanne’s goes back to a little earlier in this, but she said, are there any personal or team rituals you recommend to kind of celebrate and reflect on our work at the end of the vision setting phase? Writing might be one of them, but but

Ar is there anything else that you you even do with your teams or you personally?

Marc Aquino (38:56)

Yeah, so with my team, I have a non-negotiable monthly retro. it’s kind of we got a love-hate relationship with it, especially when times get really busy. But I I am super I’ll say I’m super serious about like not missing that meeting unless there’s like crazy extenuating circumstances. And the reason for that is like we get to I have nine direct reports right now, and like one of them has their own team.

so nine directs, and like that’s a place for us to come together and celebrate those wins, right? So I I ask four questions that re retro. What went really well for you? What went very poorly for you? What are some of the things that we want to improve next month? And then what action items should we take away? It’s very standard template, but like

Going through those wins, I so I give five minutes for everyone to write down what their wins were. And then we go through one person at a time and they go through all their wins and

It’s just a moment for us to like react and and we do it in fig jam so you can drop stamps on on their sticky posts and things. It’s just a great way to like celebrate each other, right? someone on my team was recently promoted and you know the whole team got to come together and say, like, hey, congratulations and drop stamps and things in there. another one just finished their vision project and we got to go celebrate that. So that’s great. the inverse of it is also true. Like when people have a rough month.

first of all, in a large organization, if one person has a rough month, probably a lot of people are having a rough month. So it’s a place to come together and just kind of unload about that and be in a place where you know you’re kind of in that safe space to do so. But if it’s if it’s a situation where this person experienced it individually or or maybe within a a localized group, it’s a place for the team to come together and say, hey, how can I help? Like what can I do to get involved? Do you have

Sarah (40:42)

Mm.

Marc Aquino (40:42)

work that maybe I can take on or

You know, is there something you’re stuck on that we can help give you ideas? So that that meeting for me is non-negotiable. it you know, as much as we have this love-hate relationship with it or we feel like we might be too busy that month, I always recommend people do it. another meeting that we have is called Walk the Shop. And this one started out as like a quality.

initiative for us like it started out like very kind of corporate y hey everyone go through your workflows and audit it we turned it into a weekly meeting where one person on the team will walk the entire team through what’s live in production at one workflow that’s live in production that they own and the whole team can come together and and kind of it’s almost like a design critique but on something live so it’s not like you know why did you make this design decision? It’s

It you kind of remove the owner from it, and we’re all looking at this flow together and saying, like, hey, how can we make it better? And it’s such a great way to learn how other people

Sarah (41:37)

Mm.

Marc Aquino (41:37)

think and how other people approach design audits and things like that. So those are my two kind of non-negotiables. Everything else, I think comes and goes.

Sarah (41:46)

I I love the idea of the munch monthly retro. I do this even with like some fellow business owners and a separate one with this business coach I have. And it’s just it’s so easy for us to constantly be moving on to the next thing and not pause

Marc Aquino (42:03)

Yeah.

Sarah (42:04)

and either celebrate what did happen or pause and figure out, well, why did that thing not go as I imagined it would go? so I love that. Okay.

Marc Aquino (42:15)

Yeah.

Sarah (42:16)

In the spirit of time, another question is back to communicating metrics. for team versus individual metrics, what is better to feature, team or individual? What’s your hot take on that?

Marc Aquino (42:30)

I

would be really interested to know how people kind of get down to an individual level metric. We’re talking about like product, right? Like,

Sarah (42:39)

Yeah.

Marc Aquino (42:40)

yeah, I I would say team. and the reason for it is even if somehow you can get down to an individual level metric, that to me is an interesting point, but it’s not the main point. I’m probably not gonna judge you as a designer because you have this one.

standout metric. I would want to see that you have a consistent record of your team having great metrics or at least consistent metrics. Because then I can say like, you know, this person to some level can work within a team that is consistently performing well. Right. Anybody that has like a great individual metric, I don’t know if that’s a if that’s like the highlight of your career. I don’t know if that’s a low point. You’re just kind of holding out on me.

I like it’s hard for me to take that one metric and and make a decision based off of it. But yeah, if you can show me team metrics that are consistently high or at least trending in the right direction, that tells me a lot more about you.

Sarah (43:31)

Yeah. Yeah, I I would agree. And I think the team versus individual, what do you think about this? Like team might be more focused on like what what you did, let’s say, and and the impact of it. Maybe if someone

Marc Aquino (43:45)

Mm-hmm.

Sarah (43:45)

were going to mention anything individual, it might be focused more on scope, right? So user research. Okay.

Did you do five user interviews? Did you do 15? Did you do 50? that might be something interesting rather than just saying like I was responsible for user research, because then we have some context as to kind of how much user research you were, you know, managing slash conducting.

Marc Aquino (44:11)

Sure.

Sure. So yeah, there’s definitely that. I I this is this is completely my my take on it, but I I still feel like like that bit is kind of like not a subline, but it’s like if your process is you went through and did research, great, like love that already. Then you can go and say, like I conducted five interviews and this is the reason I conducted them and this is what I was hoping to learn. That’s much more important to me than just that you did.

five interviews and then kind of that natural extension into because we learned these, this is what my team pivoted to or was able to accomplish. Like that to me, that’s music to my ears there. Right. I feel like everyone knows

Sarah (44:49)

Yep.

Marc Aquino (44:50)

what we’re supposed to be doing, right? You’re supposed to do research, you’re supposed to experiment to come up with a bunch of potential solutions and narrow it down to one. I want to know what you did, why you did it, and then what impact you did that

Actually had.

Sarah (45:05)

Thank you for saying that because this is also what I teach the people in my career strategy lab program. And I tell them the reason you’re not standing out is because if you think of a case study as an iceberg and all the all most people talk about is the tip of the iceberg. I did user research. I was responsible for the design system. You don’t care about that.

What you want to know is exactly what you you described. Okay, what you did, why you did it, how you did it, what happened, what was the impact. And if people just do that, they’ll stand out. Because if I had to guess, I would say that

Marc Aquino (45:39)

You’re better than ninety percent of the portfolios.

Sarah (45:43)

is the exact number I was going to say, Mark. All right.

Marc Aquino (45:47)

It’s true, it’s true.

It’s true. Yeah. I definitely want to know like I’m looking for what kind of designer are you? Why do you make the decisions you make? I’m not so much looking for do you know the design process? I hope you know the design process. yeah, I I I want to know that you know when to apply what parts of it and what you’re hoping to achieve by doing so.

Sarah (46:08)

Yes, I obviously could not agree more. and and I I’ll leave, I’ll end us with this. I read this book a while ago. It’s called 10% happier. it’s by Dan Harris. He is an American journalist who kind of had like this on-air meltdown and used meditation to help him with a lot of problems in his life. And he says to people, like, just meditation helps him be 10% happier. And I thought,

I love this 10% improvement concept. And so I tell candidates, like, just aim to be 10% better than everyone else. Make your portfolio 10% better. Make your resume 10% better. And you’re gonna

Marc Aquino (46:48)

Yeah.

Sarah (46:49)

see changes. because as you said, 90% of people unfortunately are not articulating and communicating their value in a way that someone such as you

needs to see as they’re, you know, hiring for maybe multiple roles at a time, and you don’t have time to like go on this mission to try and dig into and uncover what they didn’t tell you in their resume, for example.

Marc Aquino (47:19)

Exactly.

Exactly. I I wish I could bring everyone in and sit down and have a conversation and understand them as a person, right? But like the reality of the situation is we’re hiring, you know, whatever it is right now, like dozens of designers and you know, you get ten seconds with me as I’m skimming through your portfolio. And

Sarah (47:37)

Yeah.

Marc Aquino (47:37)

if if I don’t see that you know how to make those design decisions as much as I would love to sit down with you, I just don’t have the time, right?

Sarah (47:43)

Yep. Okay, speaking okay, last two questions, kind of rapid fire. Number one, you hiring right now and is the best place for people to to know about deals roles just to go to the deals website and find the career button?

Marc Aquino (47:57)

Yeah, so that’s the best for sure. Like deal.com slash careers, go check it out. We are hiring. We’re hiring I believe we’re hiring some senior roles, some staff roles, and even one senior staff role. So if you are later in your career, then we definitely want to hear from you as well.

Definitely check it out on the careers page. I think there’s also things up on LinkedIn. a bunch of us kind of hiring managers at deal on the design side are making more of an effort to post more often on LinkedIn as well. So find as many of us on LinkedIn as you can, follow us, engage

Sarah (48:29)

Mm.

Marc Aquino (48:29)

with us. Like we would love to hear from you. just again, please don’t bombard the inbox. but yeah, that’s probably the best way to approach it.

Sarah (48:35)

Okay, and if you were in a job search right now, what is one tip you would give yourself? Or or maybe if Mark from 10 years ago was in a job search, what what tip would you give?

Marc Aquino (48:46)

Yeah.

Sarah (48:47)

Take that however you however you wish.

Marc Aquino (48:49)

Sure.

great question.

I need a second to think here. I would say definitely, like I think as designers, we have a tendency to lean into like this is the work I’ve done, and this is this is why it was important to me, or you know, this is this is the process I used and stuff. And I think 10 years ago, I was just on my path towards like understanding what role the designer plays in the business. And I would say like.

Just understand the business. It doesn’t have to be deep. You don’t need an MBA or anything like this. Go and understand when you had a project, why was the business probably interested in that project? You know, even if you’re going and retrofitting projects into your portfolio, think a little bit outside the box. Why would the business have cared about that project? Use

Frameworks to help guide your thinking. Google Heart is a great introductory framework, right? Was it around trying to drive user happiness, engagement, adoption, retention, task completion? Find these metrics, figure out how they ladder up to overall business goals, revenue retention, new contract value, recurring revenue annually. Like look at how those things tie together and

Figure what that storyline is between the work you did to kind of the main product metric to the business metric. And if you can tell a compelling story there and you can talk about the work you did as kind of a stepping stone to those other metrics, you’re better than 99% of the portfolios I read.

Sarah (50:13)

Mm.

Marc Aquino (50:14)

If you then add what we talked about earlier about why you made those decisions, how you made them, you know, what impact they had at the at the micro level, like that’s a great story.

That’s that’s a fantastic story and I think people will find it hard to pass up those kind of portfolios.

Sarah (50:28)

Awesome. All right. Well, that is all we have time for today. I know I’m seeing a lot of thank yous in the comments. This was so valuable. It validated a lot of approaches I’ve taken in my career, brought up new ideas I’m looking to implement. So thank you for giving us your time and your perspective

Marc Aquino (50:44)

Amazing.

Sarah (50:45)

as someone who’s speaking some, speaking from, you know, actual experience of hiring people versus just your opinion of how you think it should work.

Marc Aquino (50:54)

At some level it is the opinion of how I think it should work. But it you know what, like yeah, but it

Sarah (50:59)

Yes. But it’s backed by reality.

Marc Aquino (51:03)

is, it is, and and every hiring manager I talk to says the same thing. So I’d be shocked if you run into anyone that thinks that this is a hot take.

Sarah (51:10)

Awesome.