UX Hiring Insights: Sylvain Maretto, Director of Design, on Why AI Hasn’t Taken Over Hiring and What He Looks for in UX Portfolios

Sarah (00:00)

today

We have Sylvain Maretto, director of design at Ecosia. Did I say that right? Ecosia.

Sylvain (00:08)

Yes, you did.

Sarah (00:10)

All right. a search engine that uses its profits to plant trees. And Sylvain is a strategic product and design leader with 15 years of experience building and leading teams in Berlin, Tokyo, other places.

and he joined Omeo, which is a European app for booking trains, buses, and flights when it was just 25 people. So he’s a lot of perspective into what hiring managers are looking for in startups, but also maybe a smaller team. and Sylvain also did design at Zolando. I may need to use that because I love shopping. they’re one of

Europe’s biggest online fashion retailers. And he’s worked in design and product at travel companies like Tour Radar and Get Your Guide. I will be booking some tours with Get Your Guide very soon. I’m going to France and Denmark in the fall. And yeah, perfect timing. And he also worked on software that helped seal the acquisition of Holoplot, which is this audio company whose sound kind of software powers.

The Vegas sphere, which I really want to go to, but maybe next year. and Sylvain is really passionate about the overlap of business and design and technology. and I’m really excited to chat with you. The way that Sylvain and I got connected is through a LinkedIn post, which I will share in a moment. But Sylvain, did I miss anything? Do you want to add anything?

Sylvain (01:38)

so good maybe at Ecosia now we’re also working on trying to provide the most privacy first AI and the greenest AI because since we reuse most of the profits to plant trees trying to offset the consumption like occurs from the from the server farms

Sarah (01:56)

Yeah. the environmental impact of AI is a topic that is very big right now, right? And I think it’s really important because we are just so oblivious to how much our usage of AI is taxing the environment, not just us as individuals, but like the the products that we use.

Sylvain (02:19)

Good.

Sarah (02:20)

all right, so I want to dive right in. And the way that I met Sylvain is because a few weeks ago I saw a LinkedIn post by Oana Telano. You know her as UX Goodies, but she basically suggested that portfolios need to be more like a tool, kind of like experimental,

Some of the other words in the post were like an AI playground and weird little experiment. And Sylvain, you left a great comment and pushed back on the post and essentially said, like, why are we doing this? Right. It’s not what hiring managers want. So give us a little bit more hot take on your kind of perspective on that, that idea that portfolios need to be playgrounds and experiments.

Sylvain (03:06)

So first I’m gonna break some hopes. I think every design hiring manager wants something different. It’s not per country, it’s the regarding their bringing, you know, what what companies they have worked at, what type of jobs they have occupied, what type of management style they have been exposed to. Some people will be into

leaner hiring processes, for instance, because they come from a culture of I trust what I see, and therefore we need to work together. Some people would be more into heavy processes with seven steps and in a belief that making recruitment scientific is going to help find out the the top A player in the pile of applicants. The reality lies in between and it’s

the good qualities, the qualities of a good hiring manager are to adapt to the situation at hand.

the good thing is there’s a common denominator between every successful portfolio and application. companies usually they are trying to at the moment to find out three things in employees. So you have to visualize a triangle. How sady are you with AI? And you don’t need to be a developer, plenty of design directors from big

US companies I spoke with recently told me like they’re not like we we’re all in the same basket, we’re all exploring at the moment. Then you have UI and branding, sometimes like they will call that craft or taste, or sometimes we’re gonna ask for motion design shops. And then you have the strategic side where business acumen plans with research basically.

If you can identify the shape of triangle that these jobs requires, you can have a core of your case study of your portfolio that can match this triangle. And I’m sure we’re gonna look at this core later on in the questions, but these are the how can I get a signal per angle of this triangle as soon as I can when I’m looking at a portfolio? Does that answer the question?

Sarah (05:09)

yes, and I love the visual. I had to take notes so I don’t forget, but the visual of this triangle with kind of savviness, if you will, right? UI design and business. and I think as it becomes easier to produce deliverables and make stuff, I think the the people who

Can tick all the boxes of this triangle. Especially, I think that that business side will be the ones who become more desirable. And I love the the word you use, the signal. this has come up in other conversations I’ve had with hiring managers. I spoke with Jared Treadley, who’s the design recruiter at Shopify. And he really leaned into this idea of signals. And I’m curious.

As you are hiring for roles, kind of put us in your shoes to understand why it’s so important to get that signal so quickly.

Sylvain (06:10)

So I don’t know if people in the panel have been or people watching this podcast have been in the shoes of a hiring manager. But the hirings that you make because you know someone who knows someone, or because someone heckled you on LinkedIn and you looked at their portfolio, these hires, it’s maybe 1% of the hires. Most of the hires are you meeting the team.

looking at your carry metrics and trying to see if your team charter is up to date to understand okay, who do we need in the team so that we have all the the strength and skills to achieve our goals? From there, you craft usually you work with your recruiter and your HR department, you craft your job requirements and job description. you match the onboarding on your conference or notion page that goes with it.

And you release that to the world, you know. So you can have it on LinkedIn. I’m a firm advocate of first off referrals to bring people to apply there that might be missing the job opening. When you have five hundred people applying in a couple of days, you know you don’t leave it open for three weeks usually. So you have to target your time.

You know that on the weekend some people disconnect completely and it would be unfair. Try to do that second half of the week. And then you get to your applicant managemental. Like the one we use at Ecosia is called Ashby. Some people may be familiar with it. Basically, in Ashby, what you see is an immense Excel file, basically, where there’s a bit of AI trying to get

Early signals from the few questions that are being asked in your application form. This is what these questions are for. We don’t use this AI because the results are very bad. Up to this day, and all the ATSs I’ve tried doesn’t work. So you just take or you share that with some people of your team. Someone starts at the end, you start at the beginning, and you go through every application. An application you have the answers, the questions, the main data point they are provided.

In one click, you can open the resume, all the links present in the resume, and usually the portfolio because you ask it in a different form entry. So you open a few tabs and you start reading. You glance at the question, the answers to see if someone is particularly brilliant, but honestly, everybody answers the same thing. And I’m usually it’s recruiters who want to have that to help them understand.

They are talking to because they’re not professionals, they’re not engineers, they’re not designers. And I look at the portfolio. I might glance before at the resume, but usually I start the portfolio, the experiences are listed there. And I’m trying to get to the most relevant case study as quickly as I can.

Sarah (08:51)

Mm.

Sylvain (08:52)

things move around. Usually I’m pretty sure that my brain is hiding these things moving.

So going back to Johanna’s comment about every portfolio needs to be a design engineer portfolio with a lot of motion and everything, I’m pretty sure I’m not even seeing them. I’m going to the case study and I look about what they have actually done. If I were to hire a very senior, very technical designer or design engineer, I might look at their portfolio obviously, but I would look for the GitHub page because I’m sure these people have something to show.

I want to find in 10 seconds the entry point to the case study that made me say, make me say, can I work with that person given our goals and constraints? Or is it no or a soft yes? You know. And after you go from that, you look at the other documents and you make technology in your applicant management system.

Sarah (09:49)

Mm-hmm.

Sylvain (09:50)

And before you make a actual decision at the end of the session, you look at all the people that are strong yes, soft yes, soft no, strong no, and you make sure you haven’t made any mistakes.

Sarah (10:00)

That was a great breakdown. And I think exactly what people who are in a job search right now or maybe thinking of a job search, I think is exactly what they need to hear because you see posts on LinkedIn, I see posts, people listening to this podcast see posts all the time, which are largely opinions, I think, of what they think.

Hiring managers want what they wish hiring managers would do. And this is a perfect example of why I do these interviews because I want it to essentially be like a user research interview with someone who is involved in hiring. And I want to go back to a few things you mentioned, not in this order, but I want to go back to the AI part. I want to go back to

The questions that you pay attention to versus the recruiter who’s just trying to do that initial pass. but I want to start at the end of your answer, which was how you get down to that list of people who are a strong yes, a soft yes, etc. And one of the questions I’m asked all the time is: how do I know what to emphasize?

In my portfolio, what skills do I need to show to stand out as an applicant, you know, for whatever role they’re applying to? And my answer is always, well, just go back to the job description. That that is your giant list of clues as to what your portfolio resume, etc., needs to show for that early pass. since we have you here, I just want to

Find out, is that correct? And are there other ways that people could learn more about what you’re looking for?

Sylvain (11:48)

So let’s ground that in reality. I recently

Sarah (11:51)

Yes.

Sylvain (11:52)

hired, and she’s about to start on the 3rd of August, a junior mid designer in a team that was mainly made of senior we were looking for was someone that could be a pitch in the design system, who’s already pretty interested and active with AI, whatever the tool they decide to use.

And

how to make sure that the other members of the team that help me in the screening know what to look for. So good hiring managers, they they start very early on. They start with the team, you know, not just like, we need a job in vast cross-functional team. They look at design organization and they try to figure out, okay, but who do we need? And we’re gonna list clearly

How does that profile we’re looking for fit in the team? What are the the opportunities of growth? Because you need to hire for potential and not hire for someone that is already completely formed and is gonna not gonna evolve as quickly as a younger mind or a fresher mind. how to how can I say that? make sure that

We all have the right signals to look for. So you need to align on this is not a senior, this is a mid-level, you’re only looking for appetite for AI, I don’t need a GitHub that is full of things. And you make everything clear in the job description. Therefore, as an applicant, the first thing is that your profile doesn’t match all the jobs.

I know we have one website, it’s hard to customize a website. You know, you can change your resume for an application, but you need to really look at is this job good to me? I know that the market is tense, well it’s it’s getting better, but it’s tense, and you you’re tempted to apply to everything. But you need to target the things where you already could fit, and then you can

change the shape of your triangle a bit, you know, by the correlator. We do read correlators, at least I do, I make a point of that. and you can for a few days, you know, change something on your portfolio, like the order of case studies, or change a few titles, reorganize a section so that you get the chances.

To check these early signals, especially in the t head of the recruiter, that is okay, is it a big no-no? As long as you’re not a big no-no, like we hired for every UI AI focused profile, and a lot of people that are extremely UX heavy apply it. it’s easy to see someone who is not interested in in UI or didn’t have the experience and the opportunity at a company to hone this craft. This this helps us.

very quickly figure out, okay, then are you the kind of right shape and should we invest more time into looking in your application or does that answer your question?

Sarah (14:26)

Yes. Yes, I think.

Candidates need to be looking at the job description because unfortunately a lot of them are not. And I’m sure you’ve experienced scenarios where you’re hiring for a role and there are 500 people, and within 10 seconds or even less, it is 100% clear that that person is not a fit and probably did not read the job description.

And it it sounds so basic, but I really encourage people to not just read it once, read it two or three times. And if you’re old school, like print it out and highlight it and do what you need to do to really absorb it because the clues of what you need to provide across your resume, your portfolio, your cover letter, as you said, even you know, things you may say in the initial.

conversation you have with the recruiter or whomever is kind of that first point of contact. All those clues are really in the job description. And the other thing I would add is, you know, sometimes in the spirit of hiring faster, you and I both see people post on LinkedIn, you know, the hiring manager, maybe you’ve even done this where you post on LinkedIn, hey, my team is

Hiring right now, we are looking for XYZ. And sometimes those posts on LinkedIn maybe provide a little bit more context about what that role is looking for. To your point, maybe you’re maybe you’re mentioning things about the team or, you know, curiosity for growth or things like that. So I think we cannot emphasize enough the importance of.

Reading and really studying the job description.

Sylvain (16:11)

Yeah, if I can add one thing is

Sarah (16:13)

Yes.

Sylvain (16:14)

crafting a good job listing or job description is an art in itself.

Sarah (16:18)

Mm-hmm.

Sylvain (16:19)

A lot of us, me included, for many years, thought we were really good. You know, you try to find the nice words that set you apart from the other companies, but you just don’t bring the you cannot paint the picture of who do you expect that hire to become in three months, six months, one year.

You can be very make it very easy by just saying this is how we measure success. In three months, you would have done that. In six months, this, in one year, you you will be this and holding that part of the experience. But if you can dilute it and just create a strong story across your job description that explains what’s the context. Why do we need to hire at the moment? This is the base situation. We want someone that can help us solve it.

We think we want to solve it that way, but we are open for you to make your own market. And the great job postings are done like that. And it doesn’t happen that often because I think because of COVID and other things, the job of managers has been skewed towards delivery management and less and less on hiring, because there’s a lot of applicants, a lot of people going out of uni.

And they just take people, if you don’t like them, you stop the probation period and you hire again. but it’s coming back. People realise that high quality hiring is important and you owe it to the people that are be gonna become your team.

Sarah (17:34)

Yeah, and you know, i i if you hire incorrectly, that is going to distract your team’s time and it’s going to cost you a lot of money. It’s it’s there are parallels to product development, right? Like if you rush to build in product and skip research or do do do features in the wrong priority, you’re going to spend time and money redoing it. And the same applies to like the product of

A design team.

Sylvain (18:00)

it’s probably the first thing I I I I coded with AI. It’s a small engine, it’s just a HTML and JS page that helps HR comp organizations and hiring managers figure out how much is it gonna cost for me to hire someone new or to keep that person and increase their salary, you know, and people realize that hiring.

costs a lot of money and in most of the cases unless you want to get rid of someone you should raise the size.

Sarah (18:27)

Yep. I especially hiring takes so long right now, I think, because companies are inundated with 500 applicants in the first 72 hours of a role, for example. I wanna go back to something that I think is important and and very timely. You mentioned the use of AI within the software where you know, not just your company, but many, many companies use.

software, applicant tracking systems, whatever we call it, to manage and vet their hiring pipeline. And you said that the AI tools are not good and and you don’t even use them. I’m curious to hear just briefly, what is AI getting wrong? Because I think there’s this gigantic misconception out there.

That UX hiring is broken because AI has taken over and there’s no more humans involved. So what’s your take on that?

Sylvain (19:21)

So I will take a real example, the last hire that I’ve done, but basically

Sarah (19:25)

Yes.

Sylvain (19:26)

the problem is that there’s no standard about what what should a resume look like. Whether you do it ATS ready with Google Doc or you do something fancy in Figma that cannot be read by an ATS, it’s the same. The AI is gonna look for my last hire for signals around design system skills, for instance.

So the you as the hiring manager or the recruiter, you tell the AI what you search, you know, what are the signals that you wanna have, and it’s kind of automated. But basically, you would have just a tiny mention of a design system that doesn’t even live in storybook but just in Figma, and the AI will tell you, yes, the signal is there. This is low quality signals, therefore it’s noise. I trust my eyes better, and yes, I’m gonna review maybe.

fifty people over a day or sixty, you know, the breaks, not. It’s gonna take a lot of time, a lot of money. In fact you need to factor in the panel that’s gonna unite one, two, three, four, five times for the interviews, and then you get an idea of how resource intensive it is.

Sarah (20:27)

Yeah, I th I think it’s safe to say a lot of AI that’s integrated into hiring software right now is very, very basic, providing low quality, and I think largely just focused on keyword matching and not not also pairing that with kind of context, which I think is the problem with a lot of AI out there. It’s not just unique to hiring. I think it’s just

so low quality, even in the products I use, it’s just horrifying kind of the AI generated suggestions that I receive, you know, in in email marketing software I use, in podcast editing software I use. I mean, it’s terrible.

Sylvain (21:07)

Yeah, I’ve because of a I used to run a startup with some friends where we tried to match doctors and nurses with job openings. So we had to translate not only like the w what do they want in life, do they wanna work in a clinic in the forest or something, but also is that diploma in cardiology in Vietnam compatible with working as a cardiologist in Germany, for instance.

Sarah (21:28)

Mm-hmm.

Sylvain (21:29)

So I keep fiddling with that, and I know that people can hack government websites using Fable, the latest model from from Cloud.

Sarah (21:37)

Mm-hmm.

Sylvain (21:38)

I try to just get it to match candidates with job descriptions, just to look like, hey, here’s the URL of the portfolio, here’s the resume. What can you tell me if it’s a good match or not? The results are still not as good as my eyes, or even the eyes of someone in my team that is not trained in hiring.

human factor is still irreplaceable in that in recruitment.

Sarah (22:00)

Yep. I I think it’s an important reminder for everyone that there are still two users involved in hiring or stakeholders, let’s say there’s the humans. And yes, there are the algorithms, right? But it’s not as though AI is just taken over and there’s no humans involved. And I wish we could really put an end to that narrative because I think it’s creating.

A lot of fear for people. And I think it’s causing a lot of people to be creating portfolios and resumes that are just overly stuffed with keywords, with not enough storytelling about not just what they did and and why versus what they did, why they did it, how they did it, who they did it with, what was the impact to.

you know, the product, the team, the stakeholder, the customer, et cetera. and that just all gets lost in this race to, you know, try and get the word design system in your resume as much as possible, for example.

Sylvain (23:04)

Yes, and I’m sure you w we can talk later about what makes a good case study a

Sarah (23:09)

Yeah.

Sylvain (23:10)

jack of all trade, if I may say.

Sarah (23:12)

Yes.

Sylvain (23:13)

but I’ll follow your pace with the questions.

Sarah (23:15)

I

I would love to move into, you know, case studies and portfolios and the signals that you see as you are going through candidates. And I love kind of the theme we have going about having you thinking back to past hires. So I’ll let you take it from here. You know, what are the what are the signals that help people stand out in a good case study within a portfolio?

Sylvain (23:39)

So obviously is a question of the taste of the hiring manager for do they like to to read a lot or are they more visually stimulated and how much time you have. But in general, whatever the length of a case study, usually people go too long in general.

But at the beginning, you need to make a few points clear. So some of you are probably familiar with the STAR methodology to answer interview questions. So STAR stands for situation, tasks, action, and results. This is a bit savile as a methodology. Like you should always work your storytelling to make your answers more humane when you are being asked very well questions. But these form the core of a good case study. I need to quickly see.

What was the situation that you were in? What’s the team setup? What’s your role? Did you lead the project, or were you just an IC focusing on one part of the delivery? What are the tasks that were given to you? Like what are the goals that you need to achieve, you know, and the constraints that might hinder you in reaching these goals? What are the actions that you undertook?

You created a persona, you ran this, you created this prototype. And honestly, this should be the smallest section. Like there’s always so much blah blah about long process of discovery with a lot of wireframes and everything. In 2026, we assume that everybody can use and UX properly and can decide the right amount of process to put in a project.

Then at the end you have the results, and this is what changed a lot. So you might notice that when I say the triangle, I didn’t mention UX actually. I just it’s just AI, UI, and strategy.

Sarah (25:16)

Mm-hmm.

Sylvain (25:17)

It’s because, as I explain, we kind of consider that UX is a requisite for everybody, you know, to just be able to understand users, have a bit of smarts about.

scoping pain points, weighing in difficulty versus rewards, these kind of things. So we slowly replaced signals such as persona or mindsets that signals that you know a lot about qualifying your users by things that are a bit more business, you know, and the signals today are gonna be more like, that person said they used the RICE methodology.

You’re gonna look into like, okay, what’s the difference between ICE methodology and RICE methodology to prioritize your efforts? This part moved a bit into the direction of product management, especially with AI, because I’m gonna make a lot of enemies, but you can do most of the job of your PM with AI. It’s very good at creating matrixes, at prioritizing things, you know, at clustering. you should create agents.

To help you do that, you’ll be very successful at your job. But yeah, this is the backbone of a case study, and then after it’s gonna be today, show videos of what you’ve done and or before and after. you change tokens in your design system, how what the MVP you created functions, you know, with a nice explanatory video of 20 seconds.

This is worth more than just pasting screenshots and stuff like that. And wireframes don’t tell us anything about the start. We’d rather see what was before, nothing happened, and these were the problem the users had, and this is how we solved it with this flow and these screens. Or this screen had a problem and didn’t convert. This is a new one, these are the results, plus three percent conversion rate optimization, easier acquisition on

landing pages and you you nail it down with that and avoid all the things around while I’ve learned all these things. You can talk about your mistakes and the learnings throughout your case study. Don’t make it you don’t don’t need to make a section at the end, you know it it feels a bit scholarly or scholar like the work of a student.

Sarah (27:23)

Sure. I I really like the tip you gave about showing kind of the before and after of a situation in a in a product, in a user flow, et cetera. I think that contrast can just communicate so much in such a small amount of time and physical space in a portfolio. And, you know, if if we think of

How the human brain works. The human brain remembers stories, right? And a before and after if done well. A before and after can be a very memorable story that before it took people, you know, four days to do this task, and now it takes four hours or four minutes or something, right? That is something that, you know, will extend the impact of your portfolio and maybe make that.

recruiter or hiring manager remember you tomorrow, even though maybe they only looked at your portfolio today. So thinking of how you can show that impact before and after is is a great, great tool. one question that comes up quite often is how do I include metrics and results in my portfolio or my resume?

If I don’t have any. And the pushback I hear from candidates is I don’t have metrics because the product didn’t launch, it got canceled, or I left the company before it launched. And I’m curious to hear your take on that. my short take is there’s still a lot you can explain to people beyond just this made the company a million dollars. Metrics doesn’t have to mean

You know, you made the company a million dollars. Metrics and results could be things like the size of the design system you worked on, the number of research interviews you conducted. So what’s your take or advice on how do you include numbers and metrics if you think you don’t have any?

Sylvain (29:21)

I think you already have very good insights there. And if you cannot say whatever the granularity of your matrix, whether you’re speaking about money, about UX outcomes, or just in very simple terms of NPS score,

Sarah (29:35)

Mm-hmm.

Sylvain (29:36)

what matters is that you can quickly articulate what is the problem, what is the matrix you’re trying to change, and you make that big at the beginning of the case study.

So that it’s easy for me to understand that this is the change that you expect to happen. You know, this is what you’re targeting. You wanna increase activation or acquisition with that feature. You know, you don’t need to speak about revenues and these kind of things. I just need to understand that you have agency in the design work you do. And

Even though there’s a lot of cases where you just you know there’s a problem, there’s a obuse fix, you do it, and your PM is happy and you just happen when it’s released, you see numbers moving, you know, and you’re like, it was positive. it will show maturity in your work when you treat matrix as something very important instead of an afterthought. And that will be reflected in your case studies.

What is it that you are trying to change? I always tell my reports that we need to work with what is the change in the behavior of the users you want or what is the desirable future that you want to create with this? What change? What’s the after and before?

Sarah (30:41)

I I think that’s a nice way to kind of wrap this up. And I think too, it ticks up that part of the triangle of business, right? AI, UI, business. And what you just described is a great example of how you could demonstrate that business savviness and acumen, you know, right from the first sentence of a case study, potentially.

Sylvain (31:05)

Exactly. You are basic. I I wish I had an AI but would be like you because you just make everything I say more interesting with more data points and better articulated.

Sarah (31:16)

you’re making me laugh because some people email me and think my podcast is AI generated. Like I write a podcast, especially when I do a solo episode. So I’m glad that you’re reinforcing that you and I are talking in real time and this is not an a simulation.

Sylvain (31:34)

I think you because you’re a very good interviewer and because the quality of your webcam is absolutely out of this world. But

No, to come back to the the topic of what makes a good case study, it’s whatever the type of hiring manager you’re gonna have in front, you need to make your sections clear, you know.

That if I dig into this chunk with a few images and text, I’m gonna find out, I’m gonna learn more about your initial situation, what a pickle you’re in. And this section is gonna teach me about like how successful you were, and if you messed up some things, it’s not a problem as long as you can explain me why, you know.

Sarah (32:13)

Yes.

Sylvain (32:14)

but that’s why like for a long time there was a belief that you needed to have case studies that were tenfold long, you know, ten times your MacBook screen.

Sarah (32:23)

Mm.

Sylvain (32:24)

Th this is getting a bit long and I think today there’s reward

Sarah (32:27)

Mm-hmm.

Sylvain (32:28)

for concise and very articulated case studies that left us wanting to know more, even though you withheld some of the information. If you can get this itch, like, that looks so interesting and it could be a match and I want know more, you’re getting an interview.

Sarah (32:43)

Well, and if you can create curiosity and intrigue and maybe even, you know, a desire to hear more about the project, if you can create that in case studies, that’s going to then increase the chances that you get an interview, right? In in storytelling, there’s this kind of concept of cliffhangers, right? Like at the end of a chapter, something happens and it leaves you wanting to, you know.

Stay up late in bed reading that next chapter. That’s a cliffhanger. And the same can be applied to portfolios and case studies too, right? and then it also allows the conversation you might have once you get an interview to reveal new information that makes makes that person interviewing you like want to learn even more. So cliffhangers, Google it, everyone. Maybe we’ll do an episode

Sylvain (33:30)

Yeah.

Sarah (33:31)

about cliffhangers.

I think the one really valuable question to end this on is one that I’m asked all the time. What do hiring managers look for in different countries? And does that change? For example, two days ago, someone emailed me and they said, I

live in Germany. They wanted to know if my UX career coaching program, Career Strategy Lab, would work for them if they live in Germany, because they wanted to make sure they are creating a portfolio that’s going to resonate for, you know, a hiring manager in Germany. And my response back to them was look, what recruiters and hiring managers want does not change across country borders.

Given that you’ve hired in multiple countries, I’m pretty sure. what is your take on on that question?

Sylvain (34:24)

We are living in a very globalized world. There are cultural differences do not create changes in behaviours like like people might assume, you know, we don’t look for something different in Germany because of the imaginary things about the culture that people have, you know, deutsche qualität and stuff like that. It’s not different from Spain or Japan or in the US.

We have the same good old corporation in every country where people behave the same. All startup is across the world come from the same business schools and behave the same. This is where you’re gonna see difference. Startup trying to find someone with just conversations that’s gonna flatter the CEO, challenge him or her or them, but not too much, you know.

You’re gonna go in a big company if they want process and proof that you have done that in the past already. Scale ups tend to be the most flexible and most open. If you can put your hands on the hiring manager, you can make that very casual, you can just apply to the form. This is where you see differences. going back to the very first things where we met on LinkedIn. So Johanna used to work at MIRO. She was a senior product designer there.

This is how she started this whole thing about, hey, I’m using AI for design. Someone that is also a great voice and more relevant, that’s my opinion, is her former colleague, Lena Kühl, who used to be design recruiter admirable.

My room operates in plenty of countries, there are plenty of offices. Lena hired people from everywhere, you know, remote positions. This shows you that depends on the company, the the shape of it. The more A players, the more picky they can be, you know. And Lena says something very good every time she speaks about that in conferences or when you’re going for coaching sessions, is what matters is that you find your niche.

Kind of relates to the triangle, I say, but it’s also we designers are dime a dozen at the moment and it’s hard to understand, okay, it’s not that we don’t stand out from each other. It’s you’re being hired a lot of the time by people who don’t really know that much or just lost touch with the ground truth. And you need to create a unique persona. a bit like an actor in Hollywood, you know, hey, you want the action movie star that is full of steroids, you go for Shazenegger.

Your persona help you basically make this very first assessment that is, can I work with them to solve the problems I have today and the problems that we have tomorrow? My one, I’m not an AC anymore for a long time, but I crafted a niche, a persona that is I come in at times where you have a bold challenge or the company needs to pivot and you need security through a bit of business knowledge and good stakeholder management.

Survive that. Why? Because my situations and the proof that I bring was that I did a lot of freelance and interim management. And the companies I work for happen to always have to go through a rebranding or a pivot or completely change the business model. And I made that my bread and butter. Find

Sarah (37:26)

Mm-hmm.

Sylvain (37:27)

the things at every level that makes you happy at work, that is proven by your experience.

But you want to deepen. Do you want to be more technical? Then you can sell yourself as a design engineer. You can do that for every shape and form. And sell yourself. Build a coherent story across all the touch points that you could have.

Sarah (37:47)

I I think this is a great point to wrap up because you know the the greatest products are often very specific for a specific audience. They find their niche, right? You worked in startups, you you have built startups, and part of that success lies in finding that niche. And I wrote this book called The Product of You, and the first couple of chapters are all about.

Defining your niche, right? Because you’re not going to stand out if the first sentence in your portfolio says, I’m a product designer who’s passionate about finding user needs and solving business goals with research and design, which is what like 90% of portfolios say in some format. So find your niche.

Sylvain (38:35)

Social impact experience. So I guess that cutters to my specific setup at Ecosia.

Sarah (38:40)

I think so.

I think so, yeah.

Sylvain (38:43)

Obviously showing that you are some kind like selfless. It’s not because Ecosia doesn’t pay very competitively because it’s a non profit, but it shows that you have some type of initiative and your heart is in the right place. And this was when I built my matrix for hiring. This was actually one of the points that I asked the designers to check in the panel at one of the two interviews we had with the candidate. It was a very short hiring process.

are they AI enthusiasts and can they learn more? about UI taste and craft, general UX saviness, and just do they know how to work in the modern tech companies? is it good cultural fit with the team and how do they fit at ECOZIA at the end? if you come from finance or you worked at an oil company, that’s a

Not a soft no, but you’re like, why do you want to work for Ecosia? Usually you want to buy your soul back. But if you say that you have volunteered here or that you have a special connection to to tree planting or gardening or something, that makes makes me want to speak with you because I’m gonna spend every day of the week speaking with you, I’m gonna manage you.

you shouldn’t hire people that resemble you too much, and I make a very big point of enforcing diversity in hiring and good practices.

Sarah (40:02)

Mm-hmm.

Sylvain (40:02)

But there’s always a couple of in French we say atom crochet, it’s like of things that get people closer together, and especially because since we are a distributed team in the design team, how do people create connections over Slack and

biannual in person events that you organize, you know.

Sarah (40:21)

Mm-hmm.

Sylvain (40:22)

You use that. This is what you build upon, you know. And you can have very successful remote organizations. I think Ecosia is the proof of that.

Sarah (40:31)

Yeah, I think for whatever for whatever company you’re applying to, there’s the requirement to meet what is on the job description and then, you know, ask yourself in whatever industry this company is, whether it’s social impact, travel, health, whatever, is there some type of personal connection to that? And could you, you know, highlight that in a cover letter, in your portfolio, something like that? Because sometimes just demonstrating

you know, a connection to like you’re applying to a healthcare company and you or someone you love just came through a health care care challenge. That probably could provide you some great insights and experience that could help you do better in that role, right? Or just kind of fuel your passion to improve, you know, the healthcare experience for people in a in a troublesome time. So any little connections like that, it’s not as though you need to have them.

But sometimes it can give you the edge.

Sylvain (41:27)

Some some industries are a bit agnostic, like looking at Zalando and my time there as a full time then as a freelancer, you

Sarah (41:34)

Mm-hmm.

Sylvain (41:35)

meet every kind of people. People that look like rockstars, people that are very into fashion, a lot of diversity, the management that did a great job. But you’re gonna look at what are the teams working for Coinbase or crypto companies or NFTs.

Probably because the different policies regarding hiring and bias and everything, but there’s some kind of uniformity there of homogeneity. And if you wanna get in, you know, you wanna ride this wave, you need to be in the industry. Like you need to talk about it. You need to be into NFTs and stuff like that.

Sarah (42:09)

Mm.

Sylvain (42:09)

if you have very good skills that could match, but it’s don’t apply one to one.

Especially in fintech, for instance, at the moment might be hard. But if you show that you’re one of them already, you get it. Is it good, is it bad for the industry and the design quality? I don’t know.

Sarah (42:23)

All right, I know we are at time, so I wanna I wanna cut us off. I feel like this could be a regular series, so maybe we’ll have to have you back. But thank you so much for for sharing your expertise, for being so honest and for giving us, you know, examples from your recent past hiring experience. because like I said, I do these interviews to try and cut through the noise that is out there in the UX industry.

which is quite loud and I think it’s really confusing candidates. And so these interviews are meant to be user research interviews with people involved in hiring so we can make decisions based on reality versus opinions.

Sylvain (43:03)

There’s a few voices like yours who tell the truth and the truth is that it depends and you don’t have a magic recipe. There are places like LinkedIn is not a great place for getting opinions because everybody’s playing the personal branding card. Avoid the subreddit UX design. You will find only sorrows there. Nothing. It’s too many opinions at once.

Sarah (43:24)

Yes. Yes. I think what one piece of advice I give so many people is, you know, when someone tells you to do something or you read a tip on LinkedIn, ask yourself, what makes that person qualified to be telling me that? Like what receipts do they have to to tell me that is true? And that that applies to anything in life. It’s not just specific to our jobs, right?

Sylvain (43:44)

It’s true.

Sarah (43:45)

Yeah. All right. Thank you.