Summary
DesignOps as a discipline offers career opportunities for people of many different backgrounds. This is true even for those who are just getting started and may have little to no professional experience. At Salesforce, we create unique opportunities to support, inspire, and guide new employees towards meaningful DesignOps careers. In this talk, we’ll share our experiences and best practices for newcomers, including a special look at our DesignOps internship program.
Key Insights
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Junior Design Ops roles currently make up only about 1% of roles, revealing an opportunity to grow the talent pipeline.
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Most Design Ops practitioners come from adjacent fields such as project management, marketing, or advertising with years of experience.
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Salesforce intentionally invested in training Design Ops practitioners with little to no prior experience to broaden inclusion and fresh perspectives.
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Creating junior Design Ops roles helps meet business needs economically while building critical skills and professional confidence.
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Interns can support both product-specific and centralized Design Ops teams by taking on meaningful projects that impact design workflows.
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Three primary goals for developing junior practitioners are fulfilling business needs, teaching Design Ops skills, and growing professional competencies.
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Effective onboarding includes system setup, clear communication of expectations, knowledge transfer about projects and processes, and welcoming the new hire culturally.
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Regular one-on-one meetings and relationship-building across teams are crucial for new practitioners to expand networks and learn.
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Mentorship from different teams or disciplines enhances new Design Ops employees' career development and support.
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Managing interns requires significant upfront time commitment (up to 50% during ramp-up), with ongoing support shifting to asynchronous communication tools like Slack.
Notable Quotes
"We started to ask ourselves, does every new Design Ops practitioner need 10 years of experience like Lisa and I? What opportunities are we missing by not having more junior roles?"
"These brand new practitioners can bring fresh perspectives and new ways of thinking to hopefully see current problems in a new light."
"It’s really okay if this new position on your team is short-term only; we can provide the initial opportunity to get started on their career paths."
"Preparation is critical to ensure new employees have everything they need prior to their first day and the first few weeks."
"Building connections early in their career could create even more opportunities further along their career path."
"Mentors are wonderful partners for feedback, collaboration, and setting employees up for success."
"Time commitment for onboarding interns was close to 25%, maybe 50%, of at least two weeks, easing as they became familiar with roles."
"We wanted to actively promote the Design Ops discipline to more people, especially those not familiar with our craft."
"Sometimes doing working sessions together to strategize and solve problems can be really beneficial for these new practitioners."
"Investing in new practitioners is mutually rewarding; we learn from their fresh perspectives and reassess what we know ourselves."
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