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Posts Tagged ‘talent’
The Distinct Advantages of Working With a Creative Talent Representative
8/8/2011 11:37 AM By William PirragliaThere are many excellent employment recruiters in the US, but high tech professionals are wise to deal with a creative recruiter. For example, a strong experienced financial recruiter may lack some expertise with matching talented professionals with creative jobs. Experienced creative talent recruiters, however, understand the nuances of your profession and market.
For example, creative recruiters seeking Chicago freelance talent know their area clients and understand their preferences. They further realize that, even in a large metropolis, the creative community is typically tight and many people know each other. Just as a successful sales recruiter knows the players and can be an outstanding performer for clients and candidates, experienced creative recruiters have a distinct advantage in making successful matches.
These top recruiters, like those at Artisan, offer another priceless advantage: Effective interviewing tips and resources. For example, a recruiter knowing graphic design firms in Indianapolis might know which employers prefer clean or flashy portfolios and which favor more understated resumes. Neither freelancers nor full time candidates would receive this important knowledge without experienced creative recruiter assistance.
Another common interview benefit is the recruiter’s knowledge of those employers favoring a “be yourself” policy and those preferring a more traditional interviewing climate. For example, if your typical work uniform is a plaid shirt, blue jeans and boat shoes, some employers are now comfortable with interviewing you as yourself. However, other clients may still prefer that candidates wear classic gray suits with white shirts or blouses.
Working with a creative recruiter that knows their market and clients can help you perform better during the always critical interview process. Communicating the superior level of your talent, while forever important, may be easier and less stressful by having the helpful inside information an outstanding recruiter can provide. Use this information to focus on discussing the exact employer or project needs without added stress or distractions.
What If the Client Wants Me to Give Away My Hard-Earned Knowledge?
1/14/2011 10:15 AM By Sharon PotschFreelancers often get hired because they have expertise the hiring organization doesn’t have in-house. If this is the case, you may find staff members at the work site asking you to teach them the program you’re using, or give them advice on how to approach their own projects. Here you have a dilemma. You want to be responsive, informed, and friendly. Yet if you share your expertise too freely, you may find yourself out of a job. A better approach may be to encourage the company to hire you as a trainer, to develop staff expertise that’s focused on organizational goals. If they can’t or won’t do that, approach local colleges and technical networking groups about doing an evening class which company employees could take.
How to Find User Interface Designers That Fit Company Budgets
12/16/2009 11:14 AM By Catherine TYour best choices to find User Interface Designers that fit your company budget probably depend on the answers to at least three questions.
1. How strong or lean is your budget for one or more design jobs?
2. What level of interface design professional do you believe you need?
3. Can you write a winning user interface design job posting?
Even during times of general economic prosperity, compensation and freelance budgets are typically under consistent stress. This forces you to focus on maximizing your return on investment to offer interesting online jobs that help you find User Interface Designers that match your needs in both quality and cost.
Learn as much about User Interface Design as you can and spend time considering what you’d like the finished product(s) to achieve. Excellent user-centered design is critical in the e-commerce and modern business world. To hire the best interaction design professional you can afford, you need enough knowledge to analyze graphic design portfolios in light of your project goals.
Knowing what you want your online jobs to create helps you find User Interface Designers who you believe will create the graphic design you want to increase sales and improve your branding efforts.
Some Good Questions to Ask When Hiring Interface Designers
12/12/2009 11:15 AM By ArtisanEven if you are not an IT professional, you can learn enough to ask some good questions when hiring Interface Designers. You should concentrate on two primary considerations.
1. Building a knowledge base to avoid confusion with “techspeak” when interviewing interface design professionals. Know enough to ask good questions and understand the answers you get from interaction design experts. Ideally, you can then analyze the responses and make a valid judgment regarding the personality and “fit” of the candidates you interview.
2. Deciding what specific result you want from one or more design jobs. Spend the time to consider what user interface design result you really want. To find User Interface Designers that are right for you is dependent on knowing what you want them to accomplish. Offering jobs for User Interface Designers might become frustrating if you cannot specifically describe your goals for user-centered design upgrades. However, knowing how you’d like your user interface design to look like and what you want to achieve will give you a good base to construct the right questions.
Consider asking questions that display –
• The process the candidate uses to achieve the client’s goals.
• How the candidate’s interaction design promotes usability.
• A navigation structure that makes it easy for users to understand and get the information they want quickly.
Construct other questions that specifically relate to your graphic design project. Analyze the answers to learn which candidates have the technical expertise you want and appear to have the professional personality that creates good chemistry with you and any others with whom they will work.
Use Solid Interface Design Principles to Help You Hire the Best User Interface Professional
12/8/2009 10:51 AM By ArtisanWhen you seek a good Interface Design professional, it helps to have a checklist of items to consider and discuss with qualified usability experts on your candidate list. A primary component is a usability professional who thoroughly understands user Interface Design principles. Consider the following suggestions for checklist topics:
- User-centered design. Whether your customer base is composed of IT professionals or baby boomers, your website should be designed for and focused on your users.
- Usability testing. Near the top of any freelance user Interface Design tips lists is usability testing. Regardless of the beauty and drama of your new web pages, their true usability is critical for your success.
- Usability engineering processes. When discussing a usability job with candidates, ask about their process to go from the client’s wishes to their finished product. You will learn much about the usability consultant and his/her thought process and his/her understanding of their responsibilities. Remember, you’re not interviewing graphic designers, but hiring usability specialists.
You want a usability professional that expertly integrates pleasing design and aesthetics with efficient information organization and retrieval. Users should be able to navigate your site easily and simply and get the information or make the purchase they want quickly without having to "think too much."
Primary Talents That User Interface Design Professionals Bring to Companies
12/1/2009 11:15 AM By Catherine TUser Interface Design professionals can bring a variety of valuable skills to your company. Here are a few of the primary talents you should look for when hiring Interface Designers.
• Excellent concept of graphic design. Beyond simple technical expertise, candidates should display an understanding of the interface design that is appropriate for your company and industry.
• In depth information architecture principles. Organization of information and ease of retrieval for users is extremely important. Information architecture involves structuring your information safely, intelligently, and logically.
• The ability to integrate strong information architecture and graphic design to maximize website aesthetics with simple and fast data retrieval. You want to find User Interface Designers who a) understand this necessity, and b) know how to integrate these functions professionally.
• A solid knowledge of how to maximize interactive design. User-centered design involves simple, consistent, and common navigation structure. Users should not have to recall how to navigate your website. They should immediately recognize the conventions and icons, often used by others, and with which they are already familiar.
User Interface Design principles dictate that your website should be state-of-the-art from a technical perspective, but as comfortable as a favorite pair of sneakers when used. The best User Interface Designers will bring this talent of combining expertise, understanding, and user empathy to your company to increase your income and improve your brand.
What Is It Like to Work with Multiple Agencies?
11/25/2009 12:05 PM By Catherine TThere may be several talent agencies in your area, and it's a good idea to make contact with all of them. Over time, you can narrow down the list to spend most of your time with one or two agencies who can consistently provide you with quality projects. If you want to take advantage of agency-paid benefits, you often must work a certain number of hours for that agency. This can be an excellent way to maintain your health insurance, but can sometimes shackle you to doing jobs that you wouldn't otherwise choose because you need to make up those hours — meanwhile turning down better opportunities from other agencies. At the same time, it is a good idea to maintain relationships with at least two agencies. One agency may be slow while another is busy so teaming up with two agencies would ensure more consistent work for a freelancer.
Hire a Usability Consultant That Understands Your Customer Base
11/8/2009 10:50 AM By Catherine TA good understanding of your customer base – current and potential – is critical when hiring a usability consultant. You are probably intimately aware of the preferences, demographics, and tendencies of your customers. However, unless a usability professional you consider retaining has completed projects for similar companies in your industry, it is unreasonable to expect him/her to fully understand your customer base.
To help ensure success when hiring usability specialists, prepare a data sheet that provides as many details as possible about your current and, hopefully, future customers. If you need to provide this information to one or more Interface Design candidates before you make the hiring decision, you should prepare and have candidates sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, to protect the integrity and privacy of your customer base. This agreement prohibits the signer from disclosing any of this information to another party. This document could be particularly important if a candidate works for a direct competitor in the future.
Employing solid user Interface Design principles, taking advantage of freelance user Interface Design tips, and enjoying a deep knowledge of your customer base, a good usability engineering professional can create a website and process that pleases your customers and increases your bottom line.
Evaluating A Web Designer
10/17/2009 2:16 PM By Catherine TWhen you are trying to connect with a freelance Website designer that can make your vision a reality, it can pay off to spend some time finding the right match. This is one of the most important details you can attend to. Your first step may be to take out an ad that says, "Freelance Web Designer Needed," but there are some overall guidelines you can use to see if a particular designer would work well for your project. Here are a few of them:
- Does the designer listen to you? When you are talking with a Web designer, you should feel as though they are trying to get a good picture of what your company is like and what you are looking for in a Website. If there is any doubt about this, you may want to keep searching.
- Do you like their approach to building a Website? If the style of a designer is very modern and you like classic, it might be a good idea to opt for someone who is a closer match. Also check to see if their quality level is up to your standards.
- Are they able to meet your timetable? If you have to get the Website up and running in two weeks and they can't start for five days, you are setting things up to fail. Make sure that you communicate your schedule and talk about their current workload and ability to make things happen according to your plan. It doesn't matter if you have a perfect fit if you can't get your Website live when you need it.
Employers Should Explicitly Define the Job Position for Interface Designers
8/4/2009 11:09 AM By Catherine TInterface Designers are a widely varied group of professionals. While a top Interface Designer could probably function well regardless of the industry or project, you should save yourself as much time as possible evaluating, interviewing, and hiring professionals. Of all the tips for Interface Designers evaluation, explicitly defining the job position or project details is the most important.
Whether you are attempting to find the best professional yourself or using one of the top sources for Interface Designers, like ArtisanTalent.com, explaining the job specifics as precisely as possible should help reduce the talent pool to a manageable number. Successful Interface Design demands an effective combination of website aesthetics with intelligent information design and organization.
Most agree that the best user Interface Designer portfolios are those wherein the designer -
- Knew the audience,
- Used consistent, simple navigation methods,
- Employed conventional icons and terms that all users understand, and
- Implemented simplified, obvious (to the user) steps to retrieve the information desired.
By explicitly defining the job position and results you, the client, wants eliminates wasteful time discussing project generalities during an interview. You and the candidate can concentrate on the process and end results that match your wishes. Saving valuable time for specific issues are among the most valuable interview tips for both you and the candidates you evaluate.
