You know the pattern. You post a role. Applications pour in. You identify a few exceptional candidates—the kind of designers who could genuinely move the needle for your team. You start the interview process feeling optimistic.
Then, one by one, they disappear.
Candidate A accepts another offer between your second and third interview. Candidate B withdraws after your design challenge. Candidate C gets to the offer stage, counters your number, and ghosts while you're "getting approval" for the adjustment.
By the time you're ready to make a decision, your top three choices are gone. You're left choosing between your fourth and fifth options, wondering what went wrong.
Nothing went wrong, exactly. Your pipeline just has holes in it.
Most companies don't realize they're bleeding top talent until it's too late. They think they're running a rigorous, thoughtful hiring process. What they're actually running is an obstacle course that systematically filters out the best candidates—the ones with options, with leverage, with the confidence to walk away from processes that don't respect their time.
After building and scaling design teams across startups and enterprise organizations for over two decades, I've seen every variation of the leaky pipeline. More importantly, I've learned exactly where the leaks are and how to plug them.
Let's walk through where your best candidates are actually disappearing—and what you can do about it.
What happens: A talented designer applies to your role. Their portfolio is exceptional. Their experience aligns perfectly. You're excited. Then... silence. Five days pass. A week. Maybe ten days. Eventually, you or your recruiter sends a calendar invite for a screening call.
Why it's a leak: The best designers aren't sitting by their inbox waiting for your response. They're applying to multiple roles. By day three, they've probably had initial calls with two other companies. By day seven, they've advanced to second rounds elsewhere.
When you take 10+ days to schedule a first conversation, you're signaling something—probably not what you intend. You're signaling that this role isn't urgent, that hiring isn't a priority, that your organization moves slowly.
Top candidates read that signal clearly. And they keep moving.
The fix:
Establish a 48-hour response rule for candidates you're genuinely interested in. Not 48 hours to make a hiring decision—48 hours to get them on the phone for an initial conversation.
This doesn't mean lowering your bar. It means moving quickly on the candidates who clear it. If someone's portfolio and background are compelling enough that you'd want to interview them eventually, there's no reason to wait a week to find out if they're interested.
I've worked with teams that implemented a simple rule: if a recruiter or hiring manager flags a candidate as "excited about this one," that candidate gets a scheduling link within 24 hours. Not a promise to review their application. An actual calendar invitation.
The result? They stopped losing their top choices to faster-moving competitors.
What happens: Your candidate passes the initial screening. You're interested. Now you want to see their work. So you send over your design challenge: a comprehensive exercise that requires research, strategy, wireframes, visual design, and a presentation. Time estimate: 4-6 hours.
Why it's a leak: Let's be blunt: your "4-6 hour" exercise actually takes 8-10 hours if someone does it properly. And here's what you're asking top designers to do:
They already have a full-time job. They're probably interviewing with 2-3 other companies. They might have a family, hobbies, or simply a desire to not spend their entire weekend doing spec work for a job they might not get.
Meanwhile, your design challenge is asking them to solve a fake problem for a product they don't understand, with constraints you haven't fully explained, for stakeholders they've never met.
The designers who complete elaborate challenges often aren't your best candidates—they're your most desperate ones. The truly exceptional designers? They have options. And they're increasingly declining to jump through hoops that don't respect their time or showcase their actual capabilities.
The fix:
Rethink what you're actually trying to evaluate. You don't need a 6-hour design challenge to assess someone's skills. Their portfolio already demonstrates their craft. What you need to know is: can they think strategically, collaborate effectively, and solve problems in your specific context?
Here's what works better:
Portfolio deep dives: Spend 60-90 minutes walking through 1-2 projects from their portfolio. Ask about their process, the constraints they worked within, the trade-offs they made, and the impact their work had. You'll learn more about their thinking in this conversation than you will from watching them solve a made-up problem.
Collaborative exercises: Give them a real (but scrubbed) problem from your product. Spend 45 minutes whiteboarding through it together. Watch how they ask questions, frame problems, and think through solutions. This simulates actual working conditions and respects their time.
Abbreviated challenges: If you must do a take-home exercise, keep it under 2 hours. Focus on strategic thinking over execution polish. Make it clear you want to see their process and approach, not pixel-perfect mockups.
One team I worked with reduced their design challenge from 6 hours to 90 minutes and changed the brief from "design a solution" to "tell us how you'd approach this problem." Their acceptance rate for extending to the next round jumped 40%.
What happens: Your candidate has now met with the hiring manager, the design lead, two other designers, a product manager, an engineer, and someone from leadership. They're scheduled for round four next week, where they'll meet with three more people. No one has told them how many total rounds to expect.
Why it's a leak: Each interview round is a decision point—not just for you, but for your candidate. And with every round, you're asking them to invest more time, take more meetings during work hours (which means more creative excuses to their current employer), and maintain enthusiasm for a process that seems to have no end.
Meanwhile, your competitor? They moved from application to offer in three weeks with four total interviews. Your candidate knows exactly where they stand in that process.
Interview fatigue is real. By round five, even your most enthusiastic candidates are exhausted. They're repeating the same stories, answering the same questions, and wondering if your organization is actually capable of making decisions.
The fix:
Three interview rounds is the sweet spot for most design roles. Here's a structure that works:
Round 1: Screening (30-45 min) - Phone or video call with hiring manager or recruiter. Mutual fit check, logistics, expectations.
Round 2: Skills & Collaboration (90-120 min) - Portfolio review + collaborative exercise with 2-3 people they'd work closely with (hiring manager, peer designer, key stakeholder like PM or eng lead).
Round 3: Culture & Leadership (60-90 min) - Meet with broader team and leadership. Verify culture fit, answer remaining questions, assess leadership potential.
That's it. Three rounds, 4-6 people total, completed within 2-3 weeks from application to decision.
If you need eight people to weigh in, that's a signal your decision-making process needs work—not that you need more interview rounds. Involve more people in fewer, more efficient sessions.
The enterprise teams I've worked with resist this at first. They insist that every stakeholder needs individual time with candidates. Then they wonder why they keep losing their top choices to startups that move faster.
The truth? Efficient processes signal organizational competence. Bloated ones signal bureaucracy and indecision.
What happens: You've made it through the gauntlet. You love the candidate. They seem interested. You prepare an offer—standard range for the level, maybe slightly below market "with room to grow." You extend it. They counter. You say you need to "check with finance" or "get approval." Days pass. Maybe a week. By the time you come back with a response, they've accepted another offer.
Why it's a leak: The offer stage is where you're supposed to close the deal. Instead, most companies fumble precisely when urgency matters most.
Here's what top candidates are thinking at this stage:
They've invested 10+ hours in your process. They've taken time off work, canceled personal plans, and put other opportunities on hold. They're ready for a decision. They've probably received or are about to receive other offers.
When you extend a below-market offer and then go silent on their counter, you're sending a message: "We don't value you enough to fight for you." Or worse: "We're not sure you're worth it."
Meanwhile, your competitor extended a strong offer immediately after the final interview, followed up within 24 hours to answer questions, and closed the deal before you finished "checking with finance."
The fix:
Know your numbers before you make an offer. Understand what market rate is for the role, seniority, and geography. If your budget can't support market rates for senior talent, acknowledge that upfront and adjust your expectations accordingly.
When you make an offer:
Move with urgency: Don't wait a week after final interviews. Move within 48-72 hours while enthusiasm is high.
Offer competitively: If you want top talent, pay top rates. "Room to grow" is not a selling point when competitors are offering market rate today.
Anticipate counters: Top candidates will negotiate. This shouldn't surprise you or require three levels of approval. Have a range, not just a number.
Close the loop quickly: If they counter, respond within 24 hours. Even if the answer is "we need another day to figure this out," acknowledge receipt and set expectations.
Be transparent about constraints: If you genuinely can't match a counter, say so clearly and quickly. Don't string candidates along. They'll respect honesty more than hope.
I've watched companies lose exceptional candidates over $10K differences—not because they couldn't afford the adjustment, but because they took too long to approve it. The candidate interpreted the delay as lack of enthusiasm and accepted another offer.
Speed at the offer stage signals that you value the candidate and are capable of making decisions. Delays signal the opposite.
Beyond the specific tactical leaks, there's a meta-problem most companies miss: they're not thinking about hiring as a product with a user experience.
Your hiring process is how candidates experience your company culture before they join. Every interaction, every delay, every point of friction is teaching them something about what it's like to work with you.
What are they learning from your process?
If it takes you two weeks to schedule a call, they're learning you move slowly.
If your design challenge is poorly scoped and requires 10 hours, they're learning you don't respect people's time.
If your interview loop has no clear structure or endpoint, they're learning you struggle with decision-making.
If you lowball your initial offer, they're learning you don't value design talent.
The best candidates are constantly evaluating whether they actually want to work for you. They're asking: Is this a company that moves with intention? That values its people? That can make decisions? That understands what good design culture looks like?
Your hiring process answers these questions—whether you intend it to or not.
If you want to stop losing your best candidates, start treating hiring like the strategic function it is. Here's how:
Map out every step from application to offer. For each step, ask:
Be honest about the friction points. Most companies discover they have 3-4 unnecessary steps that exist only because "that's how we've always done it."
Fast doesn't mean sloppy. It means efficient.
Good fast: Responding to strong candidates within 48 hours, completing interviews within 2-3 weeks, making offers within days of final interviews.
Bad fast: Skipping portfolio reviews, not doing reference checks, making decisions without team input.
The goal isn't to hire faster. It's to reduce the time between decision points so you're not losing candidates to process drag.
Every hour you ask a candidate to invest should have clear ROI—for them and for you.
Design challenges should be short and focused. Interview rounds should be distinct and valuable. Meeting the same person twice should happen only if absolutely necessary.
When in doubt, ask: "If I were interviewing at three other companies, would I still prioritize this process?"
You can't pay below market and expect above-market talent. This is basic economics.
If budget is a constraint, hire at the level you can actually afford. A mid-level designer you can pay well is better than a senior designer you're undercompensating.
Silence is where trust dies.
Every candidate—whether they advance or not—should know where they stand. Send rejections promptly. Provide feedback when you can. Answer questions quickly.
This isn't just about being nice. It's about reputation. Design communities are small. The designer you reject today might be the perfect candidate for a role next year—or might tell their network your hiring process is a nightmare.
Here's what most companies miss: a well-designed hiring process is a competitive advantage.
In a market where top design talent has multiple options, the companies that win aren't always the ones with the highest salaries or the most prestigious brands. They're the ones that make it easy to say yes.
Easy because the process is efficient and respectful.
Easy because the communication is clear and responsive.
Easy because the offer is competitive and arrives promptly.
Easy because every interaction reinforced that this is a place where decisions get made and talented people are valued.
I've seen smaller companies with tighter budgets consistently win candidates from FAANG competitors—not through heroic negotiation, but through process excellence. They simply made it easier to choose them.
If you're frustrated by your hiring results—if you keep losing your top candidates to other offers—the problem probably isn't your employer brand, your compensation, or your job description.
It's your pipeline. And pipelines are fixable.
Start with one change. Maybe it's the 48-hour response rule. Maybe it's cutting your design challenge in half. Maybe it's collapsing six interview rounds into three.
Pick the biggest leak and plug it.
Then measure what changes. How many candidates who used to drop out at that stage now advance? How many offers are now accepted instead of declined?
Your best candidates aren't rejecting you because they don't like your company. They're rejecting you because your process is making it too hard to say yes.
Fix the leaks. Make it easy. Watch what happens when top talent actually makes it through your pipeline instead of slipping away.
Losing too many great candidates to slow, bloated hiring processes? Empirika helps design leaders audit their hiring pipelines, identify leak points, and rebuild processes that attract and retain top talent.
Let's fix your pipeline—so the best designers actually make it to offer stage.