5 things to do when starting a new mid or senior design job
As some of you may know I started a new job recently. And there are a few things I did to set myself up for success based on learning from past experiences!
I wrote this blog as one of the designers I’m mentoring has just started a new role too. He was telling me about how nervous he felt as he had no idea what to expect a few days before joining the new job. I explained to him how he could decide what his first few weeks could look like by giving himself some tasks. This way he had some goals instead of joining the new company with no plan.
Organise 1-1s with people you will work closely with
You want to start building relationships and rapport with people (designers and non-designers) you will be working with. This will make it much easier to work together when you start your first project as you will already have already built a connection.
Depending on your personality this can be an exciting exercise or an absolute daunting one! I’m a bit of a mix with this. Depending on my social battery that day I either really enjoy these one to ones or absolutely dread them! However I’ve found that having a set of questions to guide the conversation works so well!
So think through what genuinely interesting questions you would want to ask your new team mate and you will really enjoy the conversation. Here’s some of the ones I go with:
What was your journey with getting into design?
What is one thing you know now that you wish you had known when you started this role?
What part of design do you enjoy the most?
Whats your favourite benefit this company offers?
Can you talk me through the project you’re currently working on?
2. Read through your companies goals and metrics.
Having this understanding is crucial as it builds awareness on why you are working on specific projects. You’ll understand how the work you do feeds into the company goals. This helps you feel more motivated as you’re able to see your impact. It also helps with decision making on projects as you have clarity on what the company or you team are trying to achieve.
Designers need to spend more time understanding the business side of design. It is often something that is overlooked for designers. However as you become a midweight/senior designer you have to have a clear understanding on how what you design impacts the business.
You should be looking at metrics often. Especially your team metrics. Each team will have a set of metrics and often one core metric which they look at daily. Become familiar with these. Examples of some include number of sales, number of leads, acquisition numbers, number of users completing the registration flow. Every project you work on should be driving that metric your team has chosen.
3. Create a template for your 1-1s with your manager
You’ll show initiative by having prepared this beforehand, building a great reputation for yourself! You’ll also feel more confident going into the 1-1 as there will be a structure you have defined. This way you will know what to expect.
You can add a slot in the template for questions you need answered. This gives you an easy way to ensure you get the questions you have answered. DM me if you want an example of other things to add to this template.
A lil tip - a question I ask often in my first few 1-1s is “what is your biggest worry about the team/project in which I will be working in”. This is such a great question as it puts you on offence so you’re aware of possible problems. This way you are more prepared and can take relevant action instead of becoming a ‘victim’ to the situation. For example if the manager says “we’ve struggled to push designs through with stakeholders in this team so this is something I worry about”. This is a huge piece of information which will really impact the approach you taking moving forward. As a result you may add more data and insight when presenting ideas to stakeholders that you may not have done initially if your manager hadn’t given you this information.
Remember your manager probably has a million things they need to be doing. And onboarding a new team members adds a lot of work to their already big list of tasks. By using your initiative and giving them one less thing to think about will help them out a lot! And they will be grateful!
Helping solve problems for the person who manages you is a fantastic habit to develop for helping get promotions. I may touch on this in another blog post about how to ensure you get a promotion! Let me know if this is something you’ll be interested in.
4. Learn how developers, designers and product managers work together.
This is a really important one as all companies differ. You want to have awareness of common practices and expectations so you meet these expectations.
You want to avoid a situation where you are applying new methods that don’t work with the current ways of working that could lead to frustration. Team members will have a set way of working and abruptly changing this can cause problems. An effective way to do this is by running a team alignment workshop! I did a great workshop with the developers in my team on ways of working. We mapping out how we currently work and how we would like to work in an ideal situation.
This was a great activity as it helped build trust with the developers. We were openly able to discuss what types of challenges there are in the current ways of working and how we could improve things. I learnt a huge amount from this workshop and was able to implement small changes leading to huge improvements in the way we work together.
5. Explore and experiment with the design system
Whenever I join a new company I always set aside a few days to do this! I take the design system and libraries and ask designers to send me some of the favourite screens and some of their more complex UI screens. I then try to recreate these screens using the design system.
This is an effective way to get comfortable with the design system before starting an actual project. It also avoids the pressure you may feel where you’re trying to learn how to use the design system and get familiar with components whilst working on an actual project with a deadline.
There will be a lot of rules with creating UI designs that you won’t be aware of, so the quicker you learn these the better. It’s also important to accept that different companies will have different design systems. For example some companies may just have a very basic design system with a few components and styles in place. In a scenarios like this you may have more space for creative licence and you may want to get involved in building up the system. Other companies may be on the opposite end of the spectrum, where the majority of scenarios and components are already thought through. If this is something that is important to you, make sure you ask this in the design interview!
Those are my few tips for making it easier to transition into a new role at a new company. You don’t have to use this for a new company. You can also use these approaches in your current role if you haven’t. You will see the positive changes that come from these immediately.
Good luck to you if you’re starting a new job! If you have any questions, feel free to message me!
