I will not be applying for this position:
Executive takeaway: If you want to attract talent with high standards, what they see in your job posting has to be up to those high standards.
Here's why: This posting does not give me confidence that the hiring manager knows what they need, and the copy itself is too sloppy to reflect well on the hiring company's production values.
Copy matters
Before I get into the content of the posting, let's do a little copyediting. Grammar, capitalization, and word choice aren't the most of significant problems, but they're also very visible — not to mention easily avoided.
- Capitalization. This is grade-school stuff, guys: In English, we don't capitalize nouns. That's German. None of these should be capitalized: user experience, mobile, designer, strategy, design, road, and tools. Oddly enough, capitalization isn't just wrong here but also inconsistent, which just adds to the general feel of sloppiness: Web, which is a proper noun (as part of the name of the thing we call the World Wide Web) and should be proper cased, is done right only once but wrong (web) twice.
- Grammar. This sounds like something you'd see in a 419 scam e-mail: “performing enterprise-level User Experience Designer”. How do you perform designer? How about perform copy editor?
- Word choice. Words and phrases like quality, cutting-edge, revolutionize, and exciting are so overused they're completely empty. They cheapen the message, making it sound like you're selling vinyl siding or used cars.
Sloppy copy shows you didn't care enough to have someone proofread it. It's an indication that production values aren't very high at this company, and that's a problem if you're trying to attract talent with high standards.
Content matters
Here's the meat of the thing: The bullet points describing the actual requirements are a mix of relevance, irrelevance, and buzzwords. It tells me the person or team hiring for this position does not understand UX well. If the hiring company does not know what they need, they can't know the value of UX, in which case it's most likely a career dead end for experienced UX talent.
To wit:
- “Prior experience performing enterprise-level User Experience Designer for web, mobile, and tablet initiatives” Enterprise-level as opposed to what? Prior experience as opposed to what — future experience? Experience is by definition prior. What you want to ask for is experience designing responsive user experiences for the Web.
- “4+ years of UX Design experience for enterprise web and mobile sites” This is what the first bullet point should have been. (Just please remove the word enterprise. It's meaningless.)
- “Prior experience creating UX Road maps” UX road maps are glorified product plans. Here is a UX road map: “Q1: Improve features A and B > Q2: Add features X and Z, improve feature C > Q3 Add new app 1, improve features X and Z” … etc. I could even make it look good on the PowerPoint preso to wow the C-suite, but that doesn't make it any less meaningless: It will fall apart almost immediately, not matter how detailed or how generic, because UX design follows business priorities, which change. More importantly, if you need a UX road map, what is product management doing? Your product management should be prioritizing and scheduling product improvements and additions based on marketing strategy, not have UX do that job for them.
- “Strong communication ability and prior experience working closely with business teams, product manager, designers, and developers” This isn't wrong, it's just painfully obvious. It's hard for me to imagine any UX designer who doesn't routinely work with people in all those roles. Sure, you can ask for candidates with good communication skills, but how often does anyone look for candidates with poor to middling communication skills? It goes without saying.
- “Demonstrated experience using research methodologies to improve and define digital user experiences” I'm not sure about this one. Yes, ”research methodologies” are one tool in the toolbox when you want to improve and design user experience, but then it's also weirdly specific: Are you interested in the other ways UX designers do UX design, or is there some reason you're very specifically interested in the application of research methodologies — not just research in general but methodologies?
- “Prior experience working with Design Tools such as Axure, Balsamiq, Omnigraffle, Visio, etc.” Another one that goes without saying. Everyone uses tools, so if you're looking for someone who's an experienced UX practitioner you're looking for someone who uses tools all the time. It's like asking a carpenter if he's ever used a saw. I think what you're really looking for here is someone who has experience using wireframes as a design step. (A wireframe is like a rough draft, and asking if you've used wireframes is legitimate. Not all UX designers have experience working at that level of abstraction, particularly if they're primarily graphic designers. My point is you're asking about tools when you should be asking about experience with specific design methods.)
There. That's why I won't apply for this position, and I'd advise other experienced UX talent to pass as well.
If you want to get a better idea what you should be looking for in a UX designer, I have advice for you here, here, and here.
