What companies look for when hiring Product Designers

Last week, I shared my design hiring observations, and this week, I’m going to expand on what I am seeing in how companies assess designers.

I’ve sat in enough debriefs recently to feel confident in what I am posting.

Disclaimer: This is very focused on Product Designers at the Senior to Principal level.

We’re in a different age now. Everyone requires different ways of thinking and approaches, but some things are the same for designers, such as customer centricity, curiosity, etc.

Which means looking for a design job and being assessed for a role is changing all the time. Design tasks, on-sites, and trial days are back. And most importantly, expectations on designers has changed.

• High energy and entrepreneurial mindset

• Mindset of building cool things vs. playing career advancement games

• Values culture and working with world-class people

• First principles thinker

• High ownership mindset

• Curiosity - This is what I hear the most because getting high performance from AI is a process of daily experimentation and going down rabbit holes (that’s how it feels). Companies want people who are all in on the new way of building.

• Strong craft skills with a systems thinking approach

• Strong product sense + ability to operate as a PM in many contexts (smaller companies) as the roles continue to blur.

• Work showing high ownership

• Demonstrating explicit AI experience across workflows. Tommy Geoco spoke on Dive Club about what he looks for when assessing AI fluency and spoke about how AI fluency isn’t just shown by tool knowledge, but it's demonstrated by showing the actual working process, all the messy process, and being able to explain why you made certain decisions. It’s a mindset.

• Creative problem-solving: can show divergent thinking, for example, during an onsite interview, can talk through 3-4 solutions.

• Goes deep on problems and can articulate individual contribution vs. team decisions. Understands that building a product is a team game, not a solo performance.

• Side projects are strong signals if your day-to-day work can’t bring the best out of you. More on the power of side projects here.

• Technical depth - You do not have to be an engineer, but I am seeing a growing need to understand technical environments much more.

• Passion for learning and building outside work. (Not to say you need to burn out)

• Can demonstrate consistent impact at previous jobs and have been in roles for long enough to see things through.

• Research the product you’re interviewing for and use it if you can (always surprised by people who do not do this)

• Unclear thinking when communicating about projects worked on

• Didn’t use the product and don’t know about important features, can’t back up their thinking when challenged.

• Lacked depth and too reliant on big company processes

• Tied to playbooks of yesteryear. Not thinking about what it means to be a designer in 2026.

• Jumpy profile. People who have moved to new permanent roles after 6-12 months for the last few roles. If not explained properly, this could be a red flag.

• Present work that has been vibecoded, but looks very vibed. This is becoming an increasing reason people are declined.

  

• Candidates claiming others’ decisions as their own

• Over-indexing on visual design without enough deep systems thinking / complex product design. Some candidates looked strong visually, but that was not enough.

• Shallow AI usage. Can only demonstrate surface-level use of AI for brainstorming, not end-to-end workflow usage that companies really want to see. This would be a weak signal.

• Needing too much hand-holding. The majority of companies cannot afford to bring someone in who needs every piece of information given to them, regardless of level.

• Lack of ownership/independence. It is important that candidates can answer their own questions, escalate when necessary, and show genuine interest in figuring problems out themselves.

Have I missed anything? Let me know!