Designing the future of recruitment: Ty Fairclough, UX/Product Designer at SmartRecruiters

Meet Ty Fairclough, a UX/Product designer whose creative vision and passion for improving the candidate experience are shaping the future of hiring at SmartRecruiters. From his base in Essex, Ty discusses his multifaceted role, the unique culture at SmartRecruiters, and his advice for aspiring designers in this insightful interview.

Question: Tell about your current role in SmartRecruiters, your set of tasks and team you work with.

Ty: Hi folks I'm Ty a UX / Product designer working for SmartRecruiters and I'm based out of, sometimes sunny, Essex in the UK.

My key responsibilities are to lead the discovery and design tracks in a team accountable for the application and screening steps in the candidate experience. I am one member of a triad that supports a product team including: engineers, a product analyst, an Agile coach, and a marketing manager.

I'm wearing many hats from recruiting customers to writing acceptance criteria. As a team, we are cross-functional and support each other whenever we can. I spend most of my time in Slack, Miro, Google Meet, and Figma. In that order, contrary to the stereotypical designer. I'm spending most of my time communicating and listening so that the designs I put together in Figma are well-considered and speak to my stakeholder's needs.

Question: What do you love most about your job? Please share examples.

Ty:

1) I’m like an Agony Aunt, I enjoy listening to customers and candidates talk about their struggles and goals. The role of recruitment in society is to bring people together. My work, in some small part, helps improve how we do this. Consequently lives change and the world becomes a better place than before. While that is terribly cliche it is what intrinsically motivates me each day.

2) Solving problems is also a big part of my role as a designer, the more complex the better. I think of the competing needs of customers, candidates, and the business as a jigsaw that needs piecing together. We're not solving simple problems here, we are in the match-making game and it is hard. If you have ever been a hiring manager, a recruiter, and most of all a candidate you will know just how hard it can be.

When you zoom out and think about the scale of the challenge, it consists of two parts:

- To find a strong match between employer and employee so that they may work together for a day, a month, a decade or more.

- Do that with very little information and very little time.

You can appreciate how the odds are stacked against you as a candidate, a recruiter, and as a designer. I like that this isn’t a solvable problem, only one you can get closer to ideal. That means my work is never done.

Question: What makes working at SmartRecruiters different from other companies?

Ty: SmartRecruiters’ flexible and remote first policies give my family the flexibility we need and in kind I return that with flexibility on my side. I have gained 3 hours of daily commute back that I can use to live my life. I was contracting before and while the money was fantastic, I was spending long periods of time away and isolated. It wasn't good for the mental health of my wife and daughter which in turn stressed me out.

I enjoy the relationship we have with our customer support and success managers. They are always on hand to talk, be involved in our workshops as SMEs, and ultimately stand-up and be heard on behalf of the customer. They also go beyond what I have seen other organisations do in terms of helping each and every customer the best they can.

Question: What advice would you give to someone looking to join your team at SmartRecruiters? What qualities do they need to succeed?

Ty: I would like to see more neurodiverse perspectives so folks who see the world differently would top my list of valuable qualities for improving the success of the team, so therefore I believe you need to be a good team player to find success here. Design, for me, is a team sport. If you are good to your colleagues they will often reciprocate and help you achieve your goals. Our job, as designers, is to bring different perspectives together and facilitate these people to design with us. My focus is on customers, users, and our internal stakeholders. If you can bring these people into your team, and manage them well, success is likely to follow.

Facilitation skills are very valuable. To manage all these people can be tough. Some are highly engaged and hold strong opinions, while others are quieter and have a weaker ability to assert their views but in no way makes them less valid. It is beneficial if you can; facilitate groups, keep them engaged, and find ways to extract their perspectives in equitable ways. It is tough and a skill that can be continually improved.

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Designing the future of recruitment: Ty Fairclough, UX/Product Designer at SmartRecruiters

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