May 12, 2025 The Merholz Agenda

[TMA] Pokemon, Config 2025, and Recruiting

From the sofa of Peter Merholz—

How Design Leaders are Like Pokemon

If that statement spurs your curiosity, watch my 1-minute video.

Impressions of Config 2025

Config (Figma's annual sales event masquerading as a design conference) provides a pulse check on what's going on with UX/Design.

The discourse, whether there or on places liked LinkedIn, has become dominated by the gravity well of AI. The big shift from this time last year is that many teams are using AI tools in their workflow, but it's too early to tell just what the nature of that impact will be, so the conversations feels stuck.

That sense of stasis pervaded the Leadership Collective (a kind of conference-within-the-conference), in that the global uncertainty caused by Our Idiot President is literally giving pause to many companies as they figure out what's next.

The most informative session I attended featured Rachel Kobetz (Chief Design Officer at PayPal) and Eliel Johnson (VP of UX at CVS Health) sharing how their teams are embracing AI in their work. In particular, Kobetz used the phrase "function collapse" to describe how, in the teams equipped with these new tools, the work of UX/Design, product management, engineering, and analytics only gets blurrier. It's imperative that design leaders get crystal clear on the how they define their team as a function, or they may get blurred out of existence.

My other takeaway was that, while last year Config (and Figma) appeared to broaden the tent to include product managers and engineers, this year the event returned its focus to design and designers. Given the throes of the competitive landscape, I suspect they want to reinforce the connection to their core audience, particularly as they prepare for IPO.

Companies Still Don't Know How to Recruit and Hire UX/Designers

Last week, I railed against the folly of design tasks. Well, this week I was struck by a post from Maria Pentkovski on the role of hiring managers in the recruiting process, where she shared her "hot" take: "Hiring Manager screening should be the hardest interview to pass," whereas her experience is that Hiring Managers are moving candidates to the next round, relying on their colleagues to be the judge.

Is this prevalent? If so, it's broken. The primary consideration of the Hiring Manager is finding a candidate fit for the role. The secondary consideration is to make the most of everyone's (candidate and colleagues') time.

Something that I think is a truly 🌶️ Hot Take is that an offer should be extended to the first candidate who is rated "Hire." Taking to heart "make the most of everyone's time," warrants a 'measure twice, cut once' approach. This means the Hiring Manager does the work up front to:

define the role clearly and specifically (identifying which skills at what aptitude levels; what experience and achievements)
crafts a smart series of discussions that reveals that aptitude and achievements
develops criteria and tools that interviewers use for fair and specific assessment

If this has been done, the first candidate to make it through the process as a "Hire" is evidently fit for the job, and and offer should be extended ASAP. It's literally a waste of time to keep the process going in the off-chance that you may find someone better. If you want better, that should be reflected in that up-front work.

Another potentially Hot Take is that over 50% of candidates put into the interview panel (after one or two rounds of screening) should come out of that process with a "Hire" determination. If that isn't happening, then either the up-front work lacks clarity, or the Hiring Manager distrusts their own judgment, and is too loose with their assessment.

Learn Leadership With Me

I mentioned these last week, so I'll be quick here. In two weeks I will be offering two ways to participate in my Design Leadership Demystified masterclass: