Interview Questions For Graphic Designer
Hiring the best graphic designer is quite a quest for searching rock-solid talent. Also, it demands the right impetus before you judge. Once you know your own needs and are sound about the quality you’d like your graphic designer to have, start your hunt. While skills do talk, but overconfidence may build up mystery. So, you must be equally sure about – if working with the person is a breezeway if the person has creative solutions to design problems if the person is genuinely hardworking and committed toward work.
1. Share your work culture
Be clear and elaborate about your entity as a company, your business objectives, your clientele, your expectations and requirements from the prospective candidate. Sharing details like the various genre of work, the nature of clients, the work culture, the steep deadlines, etc, – every bit helps make the hiring process more transparent.
2. Focus on skills that fit your purpose
While posting proposals, it is quite obvious that candidates will put their best foot forward and blow the trumpet of respective skills. But it is only your purpose that you need to focus on and review the candidature accordingly. Of course, you wouldn’t hire somebody specializing in Adobe Illustrator for a project that requires artwork to be created on Visual Studio.
3. Check on prompt creativity
Goes without saying, the said profession needs candidates who are at the crest of their creative and thinking abilities. Throw a situation or a question that’s out of the syllabus. Check how would he criticize a competitor’s design or how could he have done the same differently. How promptly and confidently a candidate answers would give a fair understanding of his intellectual framework.
4. Don’t bet-bottom-dollar on portfolio
If you are working with any top-notch agency, your graphic designer must not be selected depending on their portfolios alone. Instead, figure out what might have inspired them to create those designs. Try to infer their creative ability and thought process. Also, adjudge how compatible would he be as a teammate.
5. Assign on-the-spot trial
Consider assigning a graphic designing task that should take only a few hours. It can be a pretty simple work like revising upon a previously done project. This will help you check how the person does it differently.
6. Online video interview for long-distance candidature
If you aren’t taking a face-to-face interview, it might get difficult to judge a candidate over a telephonic conversation. That way, you miss the candidate’s body language and expression. Hence, it is only wise to conduct such interviews over video calling apps like Skype or Hangouts. This will help get a better feel and sense of the candidate, you are interviewing.
7. Learn candidate’s expectations
Ask the applicant about his expectations from you as an employer or co-designer and the company as a whole, which may include the other departmental team members. His answer could be flat or mouthful. His expectations could be like discussing concept designs before jumping into projects, seeking feedback, etc. Understanding the candidate’s expectations will smoothen the work process.
8. Define your target audience
Make the candidate understand your business, the vision of your brand, your target audience. Otherwise the designer you finally shortlist might have difficulty in coping up with your company values. Whatever design he may come up with may not match with your standard that is readily accepted by the consumers.
9. Similar industry experience helps
If you can appoint a graphic designer who has previously worked in the same industry, like yours, it’s a win-win! This may make him already equipped in basic knowledge, eliminate several learning and speed up the task.
10. Sense candidate’s driving inspirations
It’s not always a good idea to enforce your thoughts and conceptions upon the designer you appoint. Instead, you must try to learn what motivation drives the candidate’s creative designs. It could be different artists, websites, brand designs, catalog designs, etc. that serve as the impetus behind their work. You never know, you yourself might get influenced by some new ideas for your project.
As it might have been clear by now, it isn’t all about a candidate’s style, creativity, and skills that make for judging the best graphic designer. It’s much beyond what the resume or the portfolio says. And, it’s only through conversation that you can have more hands-on him while conducting the interview.
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