Agoda.design, making the switch from .com

Every new name brand using .design is exciting news for us at .design HQ, but we were particularly thrilled to learn about agoda.design launching. This is because it was actually moving from agodadesign.com to agoda.design! Cheers for a more succinct, interesting, readable, and designful URL like agoda.design! 

The site moved from agodadesign.com to agoda.design and was already full of content and engaging from the start.

Of course, our community of designers and businesses using .design is now over 100,000 strong, and only a small percentage of them are name brands like Agoda. We track our name brand usage because it shows the credibility that we have all built together. The only reason that Agoda feels comfortable using agoda.design, or Airbnb continues to grow airbnb.design into a vibrant destination, is because of the wider community of .design’ers. Like any company that has mastered content marketing, they are speaking to their target audience of designers and design-minded creators where they are already at: on .design domains. 

Agoda.design clearly fits into the pattern of large companies using a .design site to recruit for their design departments. However, they do not just fall into the pattern set by such notable companies as Facebook and Uber, but they lead (see facebook.design, uber.design). This is because they go beyond the pattern set by others, which tends to showcase a company’s goals, how the design department contributes, and introduces actual designers. Agoda.design speaks to the practical sides of employment too! They mention their benefits, their corporate focus on health and wellbeing, and how a position at Agoda will help you develop your career. They sell you not only on the big picture idea of working at Agoda but help you imagine how it will impact you on a daily, practical level.

Parts of the site link out to a legacy recruiting site for the rest of the country. It is clear from that site that the agoda.design site was necessary to speak to designers in a language and mode that they appreciated. While the legacy site is built out and functions for all Agoda departments, the agoda.design site bolsters the design department’s ability to claim design excellence. The agoda.design site is functional, thoughtful, and beautiful in a way that the legacy site simply is not. 

We’re excited to see Agoda make the switch to .design. They are already leading the growing trend of using .design to recruit. Assuming the Agoda.design is successful at recruiting, they may have the opportunity to make some fundamental changes to how the rest of the company recruits and those legacy systems involved! 

indeed.design - a hiring manifesto

If there was any company that shouldn’t need help hiring, it would be Indeed, the operator of the popular job site indeed.com. They claim to be the #1 job site in the world, with 200M unique monthly visitors. We know from experience that they do a good job sending traffic and talent to open job postings.

Still, even Indeed is competing for top-talent. As we’ve documented frequently on our blog, many of the top tech companies are all competing for the same designers. So even though Facebook, Uber, Amazon and Indeed may all have very different businesses, they are interested in the same possible applicants. All of them have content marketing and recruiting sites aimed at designers on their .design name, including indeed.design.

While the site does not feature the same robust content as other .design sites, such as the video content on amazon.design, or the depth of content found on facebook.design, it is a clear design-first manifesto. A quote from  Indeed President, Chris Hyams, seems to underscore that, while the company did not start out at a design-led company, that their design-centric strategy has reoriented the business and “there is no going back.”

They go on to list out how the design team is changing and leading the company:

So while the site may be sparse they have good reason. The site basically says, “we’re busy building. Come join us.” So they are effectively able to jump into the competition against sites like facebook.design, airbnb.design and others without dedicating the same amount of content resources. They know a hiring and recruiting trend when they see one and so Indeed jumped on at the right time and in their own way. We’re excited to see the public releases of what these new design teams are working on at Indeed.

Amazon's new amazon.design site

It is now no longer a trend but a standard practice to give a design department its own content destination, soapbox, and recruiting platform. Increasingly this is taking the form of a website on a .design domain. The introduction of the amazon.design site certainly marks a further maturation of the development we saw previously from the likes of facebook.design and airbnb.design.

What currently sets the new amazon.design site apart is its reliance on videos and first person accounts from their designers. At launch, the site featured five videos, each focusing on a given designer. The videos feature both design team leaders and team members, who all seem to work in the broad field of interaction or user-experience design with additional focuses such as motion design and sound design.

Each video also highlights how the Amazonian (yes, they call themselves that) was an interesting person before they arrived at Amazon and how they continue to focus on solo pursuits as well. The “work-life” balance is addressed head on. The designers in these videos spend as much time talking about what excites them in their personal life and pursuits as what inspires them at work. It’s clear that they are talking to potential peers and future colleagues, inviting fellow creatives to consider the benefits and challenges of working at Amazon.

I’ve personally seen Amazon exhibit at multiple, major design conferences. Unlike other vendors, they were not hawking products or wares but the company itself; their presence at these events has largely been a recruiting push. Of course a company of Amazon’s stature spends considerable time and resources finding the right candidates, hiring, and retaining them. It is a logical but important step to provide a destination for design recruits to learn more about the design department from their potential peers and teammates rather than just the HR or recruiting team.

The site links up to existing channels as well as personalized recruiting channels. The prominent Come Work With Us! tab redirects to an existing jobs portal. At the bottom of the page they reference a recent conference they attended as part of their design recruiting campaign, Did you catch us at IxDA and want to reach out? The link follows through to an email address set up specifically for messaging and recruiting around the IxDA conference, which is an Interaction Design conference that they were headlining sponsors of.

While Amazon is only slightly late to the .design party, it’s really encouraging to see them holistically linking the new amazon.design site to their recruiting strategy as a whole. There is too much time and money spent on design recruiting to not take the extra step of a dedicated platform like this .design site.