Inbound Hiring is the Future

I think inbound is going to become a much more important part of the job search.

Most job seekers approach their search through outbound activities. They apply to jobs, contact people in their network, and send messages to recruiters or hiring managers to try to create opportunities. You find a role, decide whether it looks relevant, and put yourself forward.

Inbound is the opposite. Someone comes across your LinkedIn profile and wants to schedule a call. A designer finds your portfolio and sends it to someone on their team. A former colleague sees something you shared and thinks of you when a role opens.

Both can lead to the same conversation. But we tend to spend much more time thinking about how to apply than what would make someone find and contact us.

I think that balance needs to be reconsidered.

AI has made it much easier to tailor a resume, write a cover letter, put together a portfolio site, and apply to a job. This is only going to get faster as agents take on more of that work.

That makes applying easier for candidates. It also means companies have more applications to look through, many of which use the same language, follow the same advice, and make similar claims about the person’s experience.

Being able to produce a polished application becomes less useful as a way to stand out when everyone else can produce one too.

Applications aren’t going away. But I think companies will put more effort into finding and contacting relevant candidates themselves. If sorting through the applicant pool becomes increasingly difficult, there’s a reason to look elsewhere: search for someone with specific experience, ask people on the team who they know, or revisit someone whose work caught their attention previously.

That’s the shift I’m thinking about. If companies do more outbound, candidates need to pay more attention to what allows them to be found.

For a job seeker, that means it won’t only matter how well you apply. It will also matter what someone sees before you ever apply.

Imagine a recruiter comes across your LinkedIn profile. They’re looking for someone who has designed operational tools for enterprise customers. You’ve spent several years doing exactly that, but your headline says “Product Designer | Creative Problem Solver,” and your experience mostly describes your responsibilities.

The relevant experience is there. But someone has to spend time digging through your background to recognize it.

Now imagine a former colleague wants to recommend you for a role. They remember enjoying working with you, but they aren’t sure what you’ve been doing lately, what kind of role you want, or where to find a current example of your work.

In both cases, there’s a potential opportunity. There’s also missing information that makes it harder for the other person to take the next step.

This is where I think inbound becomes more practical than it might initially sound. A lot of it comes down to making your experience easier to find, understand, and pass along.

Your LinkedIn profile is one place to start. Does it describe the kinds of products you’ve worked on, the people you’ve designed for, and what you actually contributed? Are you using language a recruiter or hiring manager would recognize when looking for that experience?

One advantage designers have over many other professionals is that most of us already have a personal portfolio website.

We've traditionally treated our portfolios as something we send to companies when applying for jobs. But I think we should start thinking about them as something that can help generate opportunities in the first place.

That doesn't necessarily mean investing in SEO or trying to attract thousands of visitors. It might mean making your portfolio easier to find through LinkedIn, sharing relevant projects with people in your network, or becoming known for solving a particular kind of problem.

And when someone does visit your portfolio, can they quickly understand the kind of work you've done? Do the first one or two projects give them a useful picture of your experience? Is there a straightforward way to contact you?

Those details matter because you may never be in the room to explain what someone is looking at. Your materials have to give them enough context to decide whether a conversation would be worthwhile.

There’s also the question of who knows what you’re doing.

A former teammate might know you’re a good designer without knowing that you’re looking for your next role. Someone you met a year ago might remember your name but have no idea that you’ve since worked on the exact kind of product their company is building.

Sharing a project, updating people on what you’re looking for, or talking about a problem you’ve worked through gives them something more specific to remember. It also gives them something they can send to someone else.

This doesn’t mean every designer needs to become a content creator or build a large audience. A useful project shared with a few relevant people can give them a reason to think of you later. You don’t necessarily need to publish twice a week for that to happen.

Some of this still starts with outbound effort. You contact someone, share your work, or let a former colleague know what you’re interested in. The inbound opportunity might come later, when they encounter a role and connect it to you.

I’d still apply to relevant jobs and reach out to people. But I’d also spend some time looking at the search from the other direction.

If someone were looking for a designer with your experience, how would they find you? What would help them recognize the fit? And would they have enough information to contact you or recommend you to someone else?

You can’t know every company that might value your background. But I think the future of job searching might be less about getting more people to see your application and more about helping the right people discover and remember you.

— Chris
The Design Co.

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Want to better convey your design experience to hiring teams?

If you’re having a hard time figuring out how to communicate your experience, that’s one of the things I look at in a Job Search Audit. Shoot me an email at chris@thedesign.co or learn more here.

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