The Origin of Practical Tests

When it comes to hiring, there are always two sides looking for balance: a company with a need to fill, and a qualified professional to fill it. In practice, the company evaluates the candidates it receives, selects the one who shows the best fit across the most relevant criteria, and makes the hire. Simple enough — but not always, as we explored in our article Employers vs. Candidates: Aligning Expectations.

As recruiters, we've been approached by many companies burned by "impostor" candidates who performed brilliantly throughout the selection process, but once they started working, revealed they weren't actually qualified. In other cases, the issue wasn't even technical — it was behavioral, and the professional's attitude created friction within the existing team. In both scenarios, companies face enormous losses: time, money, and planning, with the entire hiring process starting from scratch.

Watching this happen with increasing frequency, it became clear that the original selection format needed rethinking. Trusting someone's pitch wasn't enough — it needed to be verified. That's where the practical test comes in. Companies conclude it's better to invest in improving the selection process than to keep cycling through costly trial-and-error hires. A practical test typically evaluates:

  • Proof of the technical skills claimed
  • Time management
  • Reasoning process and ability to generate solutions
  • Foundation behind design decisions
  • Communication skills and capacity to explain ideas
  • Accountability and openness to feedback
  • Interest in implementation and delivering real results

With that in mind, here are some common situations in which companies introduce practical tests into their UX/UI Designer hiring process:

Leadership Roles

For positions where the candidate will take on a leadership role, a more demanding and thorough process is entirely normal — this person will be managing people who are already part of the team and conditioned to the existing environment. The test helps clarify strategic vision, decision-making speed, hands-on experience in conflict situations, and how they handle internal constraints alongside stakeholders.

Highly Specific Skills

Some roles require very particular knowledge and experience — for example, a UX Writer specializing in IVR systems and chatbots. A practical test can reveal whether the candidate is truly prepared for more sensitive situations, such as applying inclusive, social, and legally aware language. Even if the candidate presents solid and varied cases in their portfolio, every company interprets these through the lens of its own culture, strategic positioning, and target audience.

No Rush to Decide

In cases where the role has been carefully planned and involves multiple evaluators, companies prefer to hire right rather than hire fast. This leads to evaluation processes with many layers — collecting input, recommendations, and analysis from several departments simultaneously to identify the most suitable profile.

The Dark Side of Test-Based Selection

The way candidates experience a company's hiring process directly affects the quality and speed of its hires. In some cases, test-based processes become so extensive and exhausting that they end up driving away the best talent — or losing them along the way. Here are some of the situations that cause this:

Overly Complex and Lengthy Processes

Understandably worried about the risk of a bad hire, companies tend to design processes that are too complex and drawn out. Psychological assessment stages (averaging one week), interviews across multiple departments (another week on average), and the test itself — including briefing, production time, leadership review, and feedback — can easily extend the process to nearly two months. Given how competitive the talent market is, there's a very real chance that candidates get approached and hired by other companies during this window simply because those companies move faster.

Exaggerated Challenges

In companies with lower design maturity, test challenges can be wildly disproportionate — unfocused, or simply impossible to execute well. Asking a candidate to redesign an entire product in one week is unrealistic when the internal team took months to build it. The scope of a test should be focused: solving a specific problem or improving an existing feature.

Setting the Bar Too High

Demanding an unrealistic level of seniority or experience can make it harder to find the right person. Companies would benefit from being more flexible about the value propositions candidates bring — adapting their expectations to the best available offers so that hiring can happen more efficiently.

An Unattractive Offer

This comes down to how the role itself is crafted. In a competitive market, professionals are being approached by multiple companies at any given time — often with equal or better offers. It's essential that companies stay aware of what competitors are offering, and invest time and thought into writing job descriptions that convey their design maturity, the appeal and energy of their culture, the scale of the challenge, and clear expectations.

Fear of Being Used

In conversations with many UX/UI Designers who've been through complex selection processes, we've heard consistent reports of situations that felt like internal strategy disguised as hiring. Candidates describe being given a real and pressing company problem as their test, getting rejected without explanation, and then watching that very feature launch publicly shortly after — without anyone being officially hired. Situations like this generate serious distrust and disengagement among candidates.

Strength, UX/UI Designers

Despite everything above, there are real gains for a UX/UI Designer who goes through a hiring process that includes a practical test:

A Higher Chance of Genuine Fit

When a UX/UI Designer is hired and let go quickly, they too lose precious time in their career. Completing a practical test significantly increases the chances of a solid relationship with the company — the company has proof of your potential and goes in with aligned expectations, and you already have a sense of what your day-to-day would actually look like.

Interacting with Your Future Leader

Since tests are typically evaluated by technically qualified people, the designer gets an early opportunity to meet and interact with whoever they'd be reporting to if hired. In some cases, multiple evaluators participate — which is also great for your network. The market is still relatively small, and your name gains visibility. Depending on your performance, even if another candidate is chosen, you stay on the radar for future opportunities.

Gaining More Experience

Every project — no matter how small — brings learning. Even if the test is demanding, the deadline is tight, and there's the risk of doing it without getting the job, the professional gets the chance to take on a new challenge they may not have faced before.

Conclusion

Practical tests in hiring processes are highly beneficial for making better hires — as long as they don't demotivate the candidates going through them. There must always be clarity, transparency, and purpose from whoever designs the test. And commitment, motivation, and genuine interest from whoever accepts it.