Max Armbruster: Hello, welcome back to the Recruitment Hackers Podcast. I'm your host Max Ambruster and today I'm delighted to welcome on the show Julia DeBari who is

Max Armbruster: a designer turned into a recruiter of designers, and we’ll get to her story in a minute, and I hope to ask Julia about how to hire designers and how to hire them in a way which opens your talent pool and opens the door to as many qualified talents as possible.

Max Armbruster: So Julia well, welcome to… welcome to the show.

Julia DeBari: Thank you very much Max, I appreciate you having me.

Max Armbruster: It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure. We… we got connected because I saw some of Julia's work online where she… she explained some of for UX and design work. And… and Julia like many, many recruiters kind of stumbled into recruitment and talent acquisition. I suppose bit late in your career.

Max Armbruster: So it's only been… you've only been a full time recruiter for less than a year, right?

Julia DeBari: Five months.

Max Armbruster: Five months. So well,

Max Armbruster: that's the hardest part probably.

Max Armbruster: Hope… hope you're hanging in there and but yeah how did you end up… Well, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and… and then perhaps how you ended up in talent acquisition.

Julia DeBari: Sure. Sure. Yeah, so as Mike said then in UX design actually 22 years, primarily in the San Francisco Silicon Valley area. Most of my life, I recently moved up to the Pacific Northwest.

Julia DeBari: And I had the normal career, you know, go up the career ladder and then I decided that wasn't for me, and so I switched to teaching UX design for five years.

Julia DeBari: And I got a little burnt out, and switched to design program management for a year and felt like I just wasn't having the same impact that I was able to in the past.

Julia DeBari: So yes, I decided to try recruiting to see how the sausage is made, so to speak.

Julia DeBari: As I was doing education, I saw so many students struggling to find that first job after graduating. And I just really wanted to understand the hiring process and more detail, so I took the plans and jumped right in and been doing it for five months.

Max Armbruster: All right, all right. And you're… you're helping… are you able to help those young people today find jobs? Or is it like every other field? Nobody wants to hire them straight out of school. We want them to have like three, four years to basically to have their…

Max Armbruster: To… to have all their training, the initial training, paid for by someone else.

Julia DeBari: Yes, now it's just like that.

Julia DeBari: In my recruiting role, I got one junior graphic design position and I've gotten 500 applicants in 24 hours.

Julia DeBari: That I get to go through.

Julia DeBari: So yeah it's really tough, just like many other industries, design mostly wants senior people.

Julia DeBari: Frustrating. And many people out of school do a lot of contract or freelance work for a few years before a company is willing to take a chance on them.

Max Armbruster: Yeah, it's a great way to at least get something started, go build a portfolio, you go on Upwork, you take the odd gig, and then adds up right? I mean,

Max Armbruster: Yeah, people put Upwork on their resume all the time now.

Max Armbruster: Good enough for me, actually. As an employer who works with a remote distributed team, I'd be happy if somebody spends five years on Upwork, as long as they got good credentials.

Julia DeBari: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, it's sort of your only option to waive the processes right now.

Max Armbruster: Well Julia, I'm thinking about these…

Max Armbruster: these young people who don't have a long portfolio and these 500 candidates. Did you know… did you come up with a process that works and that… that you could recommend for others who are hiring designers?

Julia DeBari: Um, I don't think I've quite finalized the process. I think I've made some improvements.

Julia DeBari: But the thing is the improvements are mostly just me. I'm still trying to scale those improvements out to other people.

Julia DeBari: And I think one thing, so when I was in UX design, I was a manager and hiring.

Julia DeBari: And I was much more open to mentoring, whoever the new person on the team was. And I know there’s a lot of hiring managers who are just too busy and don't have the time, which is why they're looking for seniors.

Julia DeBari: So I think what's positive in the industry is there are a lot of design apprenticeship programs

Julia DeBari: popping up where people can join and get the ongoing mentorship well working, if they can get someone to take a chance on them. And I think that's really important to be like, I have a regular steady mentor who I talk with and reviews my work.

Julia DeBari: And I think that helps when you can bring that to the table when you're interviewing.

Max Armbruster: And that does sound…Oh, you mean the candidates would…Oh, no, you mean the recruiter of the candidate should…

Julia DeBari: Oh, the candidate. So, something I like advocate

Julia DeBari: for when I get junior candidates is to tell them like step by step, how to like get a regular mentor, and like how to get by.

Max Armbruster: Get a mentor and bring that to the discussion. Bring out to…to the interview.

Julia DeBari: Yeah.

Max Armbruster: Oh yeah, brilliant! I could use a mentor from…from my designers. That's…that's not a dig. It’s just to say we know we're a small business and we don't…we don't necessarily have the layer of senior mentorship available in house. 

Julia DeBari: We need to take that conversation offline and give me some

Julia DeBari: free consulting advice.

Max Armbruster: Thank you. I will…I will take you up on that. And so thinking about the…the mistakes we want to avoid when…when hiring designers.

Max Armbruster: What are…what are some…I mean you must have…you must have hired a few in your days when…when you were on the other side, when you're managing your design.

Max Armbruster: Can…can you run…you know, kind of walk…walk me back through some o...