“Give them a live problem from your product and watch what questions they ask before they sketch. The ones who slow down to understand the user, the constraint, and the trade-off are the ones who will make hard calls when the work gets messy.”
“I’d skip the portfolio review for an hour and ask each candidate to walk me through a real product decision they reversed after talking to users. The ones who light up describing what they killed, and why, are the ones you want.”
“I stopped trusting polished portfolios years ago at Ola. Give them a live, messy problem from your product and watch what question they ask first: the ones who start with the user’s context, not the layout, are the ones who can make the hard calls.”
“I look for the one project in a portfolio where they had to decide what not to build, and how they explain the cost of that choice. At Nextdoor I interviewed designers whose work looked polished, but the ones I hired could walk me through the research that changed the shape of the product, not just the final screens.”
“Give them a live problem from your actual product, watch how they ask before they solve, and ask what they would cut if the deadline halved. I learned this the hard way when a 90-minute design challenge turned out to be free consulting on a live revenue tool.”
“I would put them through a live whiteboarding challenge, not another portfolio review. At Cyber Dive and Deel, the designers who stood out were the ones who could ask the right questions in the room, not the ones with the shiniest case studies. Portfolios show craft; a live problem shows whether they can uncover the real issue and defend a trade-off under pressure.”
“I stopped trusting polished portfolios years ago at Bolds Creative, where beautiful work often masked designers who couldn't name the problem they were solving. Now I ask candidates to walk me through one messy project: what user signal changed their mind, what they killed, and who disagreed. The ones who light up on the fight, not the final pixel, are the ones I hire.”
“I would ask each candidate to walk me through one messy decision from a real project: what user problem they uncovered, what they had to cut, and who they had to convince. Portfolios hide the negotiation; I look for the moment they chose the user's reality over a cleaner pixel.”