As briefly mentioned in the article, all startups want "unicorn designers". A person who is good at Visual Design, Front end skills, Interaction Design, Content Strategy, Usability, A/B Testing etc. is very very rare. And recruiting that peson for your startup is impossible unless your startup is awesome like Dropbox or Instagram. It'd be better if founders look for any two of the aforementioned skills and let the person grow in that role. There are lot of designers in the valley but everyone is looking for "unicorn designers"
Yep, very true and very insightful. But you can't tell these people to hire someone with talent and help them grow into the role. Startups have imbibed the unicorn philosophy that they must have a multitasking design "rockstar" or "ninja" and they won't accept anything less. Then they wonder why the job has been open for half a year and they can't find a designer that "fits."
Exactly. And such job postings also create negative effect. I'm a designer/engineer hybrid and some of my designer friends cringe when they see "we want unicorn designer who can manage everything" postings. Because:
1.It shows founding team has no design experience, which means designer's voice can be undermined (which is the major gripe for lot of designers)
2. Founding team has no clue about what they want to do on product design
As saying goes, if you are not technical then god help you to hire rockstars engineers on your startup. Same can be said, if your founding team lacks design talent/experience then it will be hard for you to hire ninja designer.
Tip: Ask your designer friends to help you out with hiring other designers if you lack design talent in founding team. From wording of your job posting to portfolio reviews.
