Let me start showing the numbers about what happened in the design job market in the last 16 months.
A few questions that will help illustrate the findings:
#1 — How many design jobs were published*? How many Junior, Mid-level and Senior positions?
* Disclaimer: I only counted positions added on the job board. There were, undoubtedly, many other positions that might have been filled through internal networks or not even advertised. Also, until a few weeks back, I only added positions written in English, as I could not read the Finnish ads and add tags to classify each position.
Bad news for those looking for their first job: only 1 every 10 positions are for Juniors (internship, summer job, trainee, etc.).
On the other hand, good news for mid-level and senior designers: the market is looking for people with experience. I classified positions as ‘Senior’ when the title carried the words ‘Senior’, ‘Lead’, ‘Head’ or when the position asked for over 5 years of experience.
#2 — Who was hiring?
Some companies are frequently looking for designers. Here are the companies with most positions added in the job board.
Kudos to Wolt, Nordea, Posti, Reaktor, Adventure Club and Yousician for pushing the design job market forward :)
In a previous post, I discussed the idea that design is moving towards in-house teams. This is also reflected in the job market, as there are more positions for in-house designers (those working inside a company) than positions for designers working in consultancies/design agencies:
#3 What were the job titles?
Job titles are a good indicator of what companies think about design. Do they want someone focused on one area or someone who spreads around a few areas? Companies have played around the words ‘UX’, ‘UI’, ‘Product’ and ‘Visual’ quite a lot. Here are the top 5 job titles:
As you can see, UX is quite a hot topic. It’s both the most frequent job title, but also is in the third place (UX/UI designer).
The fact that quite many job ads are falling into the ‘others’ category (75) shows how hiring managers are ‘creative’ when naming their positions. Some examples in the ‘others’ category are ‘Design researcher’, ‘Brand designer’ or simply ‘Designer’.