CASE STUDY OUTLINE: Redesigning Design Hiring at Scale

Title Options

“From Inconsistent to Intentional: Building a Hiring System That Scaled Design from 17 to 50+”
“Hiring as a Design Problem: Creating Structure, Speed, and Fairness at AppFolio”
“Beyond Filling Seats: How Strategic Hiring Design Transformed Design Culture”

I. THE CHALLENGE

Context: As Interim VP of UX at AppFolio, you inherited a design organization poised for massive growth - scaling from 17 to 50+ designers to support 60+ product teams serving 7M+ users.

The Broken Process:

5-stage process taking weeks: recruiter screen → HM screen → portfolio review → heuristic evaluation → focus interviews
Decision criteria varied manager-to-manager based on individual experience and intuition
Candidates performed free work (heuristic evaluations of AppFolio’s product)
No access to ATS data to understand bottlenecks or optimize
Process wasn’t accessible to cross-functional partners in atomic team structure

The Real Problem: This wasn’t just slow - it was unstable infrastructure for the scale you needed to achieve. Inconsistent decisions, lengthy timelines, and poor candidate experience would compound as you added more hiring managers.

II. THE STRATEGIC VISION

North Star: Compress time-to-hire while finding the best talent in market, without sacrificing candidate quality or creating bias.

Critical Insight: Hiring is itself a design problem requiring:

Structure (to enable consistency across managers)
Transparency (to reduce candidate anxiety and improve preparation)
Instrumentation (to measure and optimize)
Humanity (to differentiate in a competitive market)

The Forcing Function: Articulating what “good” looks like at this scale would force organizational alignment on design maturity, values, and evolution.

III. THE APPROACH

Discovery & Diagnosis:

Mapped end-to-end process flow: activities, touchpoints, time in state
Identified missing data infrastructure - no ATS visibility into bottlenecks
Marked data instrumentation as strategic objective (aligned with Talent team goals)
Recognized that variability in manager judgment was the system’s fundamental weakness

Design Principles:

Speed through structure - Remove steps, add clarity
Consistency through rubrics - Baseline all evaluators against role expectations
Humanity through transparency - Share process and criteria with candidates
Accessibility - Enable non-designers to evaluate design talent effectively

IV. THE SOLUTION

The New Process

Role-Specific Job Descriptions
- Coded for team/level (e.g., “Senior UX Designer, Payments”)
- Set clear expectations upfront
Recruiter Phone Screen
- Standard initial filter
Manager Phone Screen
- Standardized question set
- Script refined over time to surface disqualifiers faster
Case Study Presentation (1 hour)
- 10-15 min: “About Me” - Low-pressure time for candidates to share who they are outside work, humanize the process, settle nerves
- 30 min: Project walkthrough - Candidate presents past work to their potential product team
- 15 min: Q&A - Clarifications and human connection
- Replaced free work with candidates presenting their own projects
- Each panelist completes survey against rubric criteria immediately after
Focus Interviews (45 min 1:1s)
- Retained from previous process
- Standard questions and focus areas

The Infrastructure

Rubrics:

7-9 core evaluation areas (storytelling, aesthetics, research, problem-solving, etc.)
1-7 scale questions like: “The candidate’s storytelling effectively and simply communicated their experience and impact”
Channeled UX Research best practices for question design
Senior roles expected higher aggregate scores
Shared across hiring managers to reduce bias (DEI best practice)

Real-Time Visibility:

Survey results available immediately to recruiters and hiring managers
Enabled faster decisioning and identification of gaps extending hiring cycles

Knowledge Management:

Coda “homebase” per role: Mission, how-to materials, candidate tracking, evaluation criteria
Example questions (and what not to ask)
Private Slack channels per hiring squad for notes, updates, logistics
Archived upon completion for knowledge retention

Enablement Materials:

“How to hire designers” resources for all stakeholders
Made process accessible to product, engineering, and cross-functional partners
Explained criteria, evaluation approach, what to listen for

V. THE CONTROVERSIAL BET: RADICAL TRANSPARENCY

What You Did: Shared the rubric criteria and evaluation process transparently with candidates upfront.

Leadership Concern: Candidates could “game” the system by optimizing their presentations to hit rubric scores.

Your Hypothesis: The rubric evaluated authentic experience and judgment - you either had it or you didn’t. Gaming wasn’t really possible.

The Outcome:

Yielded more structured case studies with tangible, relevant examples
Gave candidates scaffolding to showcase their best work vs. guessing what you wanted
Reduced need for panel to “reshape” unguided presentations
Became a recruiting differentiator - candidates gave positive feedback even when not hired
Process was perceived as less stressful and more respectful

VI. ROLLOUT & CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Pilot Approach:

Started in your own area as Senior Director (you had autonomy)
Tested with leaders from other areas
Proposed to people leaders for system-wide adoption

Resistance Encountered:

Pushback on removing steps: “Less information = bad hires”
Fear that faster process would increase risk

How You Overcame It:

Rubrics demonstrated that structured information was better than more information
Articulated that hiring is inherently risky - you needed to accept some level of risk
Showed that internal heuristics were hard to articulate and inconsistent
Rubrics actually de-risked by baselining on critical examples and experiences

Adoption: System became the organization-wide standard and survived your departure.

VII. IMPACT & OUTCOMES

Process Improvements:

Compressed timeline (specific metrics to be added)
Faster decisioning through real-time survey visibility
Consistent evaluation across hiring managers
Eliminated free work / spec work concerns

Candidate Experience:

Positive feedback even from declined candidates
Reduced anxiety through transparency and structure
Humanized through “About Me” segment

Organizational Impact:

Forced articulation of what design excellence looked like at micro (role-specific) and macro (org-wide) levels
Created shared language around craft and impact
Surfaced conversations about design maturity and organizational evolution
Pushed people leaders to externalize, align, and confront organizational inertia

System Longevity:

Process remains the standard post-your departure
Successfully scaled organization to 50+ designers

VIII. LESSONS & ITERATIONS

What You Learned:

Some candidates reached case study stage when they clearly weren’t good fits
Manager screen stage needed tightening - faster disqualification decisions
Adjusted screening script multiple times to surface actionable information faster
Case study is “expensive” for candidates who aren’t strong fits

Broader Takeaway: Hiring is a design problem. It requires the same rigor as product design: understanding user needs (candidates + hiring teams), mapping journeys, identifying friction, building systems that scale, and instrumenting for continuous improvement.

IX. CLOSING REFLECTION

This wasn’t just about hiring faster - it was about building the organizational muscle to articulate standards, operate consistently, and scale culture intentionally. The hiring system became a mirror forcing the design organization to confront who they were, what they valued, and who they wanted to become.

NEXT STEPS

Potential expansions:

Expand any section into full narrative prose
Create visual/structural flow showing before/after process
Add specific metrics once available from former colleagues
Craft different versions for different audiences (design leaders vs. HR/talent vs. executives)
Write executive summary / TLDR version