What’s the best way to recruit great UI/UX designers to an enterprise software startup?


For the last 5 years, I've been working at Salesforce.com as a designer and design manager. In that time, our team has grown from 8 UX people to nearly 40 highly qualified and highly productive UX professionals. There are several factors that I believe are key to attracting great designers in the enterprise space:

  1. Find designers that thrive on challenging design problems. Enterprise software offers a cornucopia of complex problems to solve.
  2. Create a collaborative atmosphere where designers can learn from each other and where they play a significant role in the product development lifecycle from product definition through to production.
  3. Seek out recent graduates from top schools. We have had great candidates from CMU, Stanford and Berkeley. Consider taking on summer interns to help develop a relationship with the school and its students.
  4. Don't settle for "B" players. Top talent attracts top talent. Keep your standards high and don't compromise.
  5. Ship great products often! Great designers want to build a portfolio of work that actually made it to market. Too many enterprise companies have release cycles measured in years, not weeks or months.

These are just a few of the things that I think help Salesforce.com attract great UX talent. There are many more factors such as company culture, being a leader in your space, and having a clear company objective that also play a big part in attracting top talent. Best of luck to you.

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