TL;DR: Here’s a Portfolio Review–Set-up and Assessment Tool for you to use.
A couple years ago I contracted with Capital One to help bring some order to their rapidly expanding design organization. I focused on recruiting and hiring practices–when you’ve got ~40 open reqs, you want to make those processes as efficient and effective as possible.
Key to any design recruiting process is the portfolio review, where a designer walks people through a selection of their work, and the thinking and activity that went into creating it.
Every interview loop at Capital One includes two behavioral interviews (BIs), which have a formal and repeatable structure, and require training to administer. It turned out the topics of one of the behavioral interviews was similar to what you’d get out of a portfolio review, and in an effort to reduce the time on-site (which could get up to 7 or 8 hours) I had hoped to replace a BI with the portfolio review.
I worked with Capital One’s HR team on this, and learned that, to be a worthwhile tool, it needed rigor and repeatability. This was key to removing bias from the process, focusing it on skills and experience, not personality and camaraderie.
I had never conducted ‘rigorous’ portfolio reviews. I’d always just had a candidate show their work, and ask some questions to clarify the candidate’s role, and that was that. Such a loose approach was not going to fly here.
The goal was to make something that ensured fairness in the process, and that, regardless of who was providing feedback, the assessment would be the same.
I asked the folks at Capital One if I could share the tool, and they said yes. So here you go:
Portfolio Review – Set Up and Assessment Tool
The idea is to not just have it be a free for all. The candidate preparation helps candidates know what to expect and how to shape their presentation. The suggested prompts provide a guide to the interview team for how to probe in a productive fashion
And key to making this work is the assessment tool. When I first drafted it, for each skill (visual design, interaction design, communication, etc.) you could score someone 1 to 5. However, there was no guide as to what a “1” would be or a “5”, and so it was too open for interpretation.
So I worked with craft leaders throughout Capital One to come up with language for these skills, to provide clear guidance in scoring candidates. That, for me, was the key ‘innovation’ in this approach.
I share it with the hopes that this helps make designer interview processes better everywhere. Feel free to copy it and make it your own!
Org Design for Design Orgs 