About
Hello. I'm Gerren ("jair-ren"). I'm an an outcome-oriented, user-focused, executive design and product leader based in Austin, Texas.
Currently, I serve as a Senior UX Director at Indeed for the Employer Growth & Innovation group. I lead the UX team and experience strategy for employer offerings such as Indeed Hire, Indeed Hiring Events (virtual, onsite), Scheduling & Interviewing, Interoperability, Workflow Automation, among others.
Before this, I was the early founding designer of Creative Market where I designed the MVP and helped scale the business over 7 years resulting in it being acquired twice (Autodesk in 2014, Dribbble in 2020).
Before that, I designed digital and physical branding, marketing, and experiences while working at boutique-to-large agencies over 8 years.
I'm passionate about connecting new and seasoned UX practitioners to insights, resources, and opportunities.
Experience
Senior UX Director
Jun 2022 - Jun 2024 (2 yrs)Served on the Employer Growth & Innovation leadership team. Led a 54-person UX team and the experience strategy behind offerings and capabilities such as ATS integrations, AI/LLM capabilities, workflow automation platform, scheduling & interviewing, hiring events, full-service recruiting, enterprise solutions, and more.
Expanded a cross-functional UX organization by 134% (from 23 to 54 people) in 3 years, and mentored a team of 9 managers.
Orchestrated a cross-platform team effort that identified and repaired 240 of 450 usability and accessibility issues across 8 enterprise-focused product groups.
Empowered research and design to identify customer needs through user insights and develop user-centered features that grew Hiring Event’s revenue 30% and interviews 108% YoY in 2022.
Fostered a new scheduling and availability platform and collaboration framework that captured 6M+ 1:1 interviews scheduled on Indeed and improved the scheduled rate by 48%.
Spearheaded multi-year, strategic, end-to-end visions that influenced roadmap priorities and contributed significantly to product innovation.
Cultivated UX guidelines for AI/LLM usage, organized complex workflow automation audits, and fostered emerging tech product incubations.
UX Director
Feb 2019 - Jun 2022 (3 yrs 5 mos)UX Director
Served on the Recruiting Automation leadership team. Led a 23-person UX team and the experience strategy behind new offerings and capabilities such as enterprise candidate evaluation and management, scheduling & availability, hiring events, equity features, and full-service recruiting.
Scaled a cross-functional UX team by 280% (6 to 23) in 15 months, and retained and developed talent into senior ICs and managers.
Validated new product capabilities and service improvements with user research which contributed to growing Indeed Hire’s revenue 202% YoY, NPS +50%, and net hires +280% in 2019.
Championed customer-focused cross-functional collaboration to build a new automation product, Indeed Hiring Platform, resulting in +56% events, +47% show rate, and +185% revenue YoY in 2021.
Guided UX delivery of a new Enterprise Candidate Management MVP resulting in millions of page views and applications in the first 30 days.
Chief Design Officer
Jul 2017 - Feb 2019 (1 yr 7 mos)Served on the leadership team. Led a 12-person UX team and the experience strategy behind the design marketplace, platform capabilities, subscription product bet, and custom designed office.
Collaborated with leadership to spin out Creative Market from Autodesk with series A funding.
Identified opportunities through UX research and data analysis that supported the platform to grow to 5M members, 28k shops, and 2.7M products by the end of the sixth year (2019).
Cultivated market research, competitive analysis, and brand testing to inform the design of a new professionals-focused brand and subscription product MVP, resulting in $1M in revenue within the first 6 months.
Partnered with the COO to implement recruiting and onboarding strategies that scaled the organization size (10 to 60) and UX team size (2 to 12) by 500%.
Director of Design & Community, Marketplace
Feb 2014 - Jul 2017 (3 yrs 5 mos)Served on the Creative Market leadership team within Autodesk's Consumer Group. Led a 7-person UX + Community team behind the expansion of the marketplace.
Empowered community initiatives, content marketing, and product growth tests that accelerated acquisition of 1M members and 10k shops by the end of the third year (2014).
Collaborated with marketing, support, product, and engineering to launch new Photo category, 3d design asset category, and an Adobe Photoshop extension.
Chief Design Officer
Sep 2012 - Feb 2014 (1 yrs 5 mos)Served on the leadership team. Led a 3-person UX team and the experience strategy behind growing the marketplace resulting in an acquisition by Autodesk.
Orchestrated design of 25+ data-informed features that resulted in 24% CMGR, 7x catalog growth, 4x revenue growth, and 230% purchase increase in 2013 resulting in an acquisition by Autodesk.
Design Director
Apr 2012 - Sep 2012 (6 mos)Served as the founding designer. Responsible for designing the Marketplace MVP.
Directed the brand and product design efforts to launch the Marketplace MVP, achieving 37% M/M new users, 23% M/M purchase increase, and $1M in shop owner payouts within the first year (2012).
Informed pre-launch strategies that captured 75k customers and 1k shops before MVP launch.
Senior Designer
Jun 2011 - Apr 2012 (11 mos)Established web design processes and educated the team about digital design workflows for new business offerings as the only in-house interactive designer. Led digital projects end-to-end with in-house front-end developer and contributed to pitches that won new accounts.
Select clients:
HomeAway, USAF, Hallmark, Marshalls
Highlights:
Contributed digital work that supported winning advertising agency of record for HomeAway.
Designed a promotional campaign that celebrated the agency’s 40th anniversary which won a 2012 AAF gold addy award.
Senior Designer
Jun 2009 - Jun 2011 (2 yrs 1 mo)Led full-cycle digital design projects in a cross-functional agency team. Pitched interactive work to new and existing clients. Led internal design critiques and collaborated with engineering and content teams to build digital experiences. Provided client teams with technical training.
Select clients:
Livestrong, Central Market, Paypal, LG, Disney, University of Texas
Highlights:
Won an AFF gold addy award and a Davey gold award for the redesign of livestrong.org.
Won W3 and Davey silver awards for seasonal interactive campaign work for local Texas grocery chain Central Market.
Designed the new Visual Arts Center brand identity for the University of Texas.
Designer
Jan 2007 - Jun 2009 (2 yrs 6 mos)Operated as lead web and environmental designer. Owned the full lifecycle of projects and collaborated closely with principal on all creative work. Carried multiple clients and projects which improved revenue growth and offerings of the studio. Delegated production work to junior designers and interns.
Select clients:
Culinary Institute of America, Valero, Pearl Brewery, Tobin Foundation
Highlights:
Won gold and silver DSVC awards and the TSA best of show award for environmental projects designed for the Tobin Foundation park and library.
Freelance
Creative Director & Designer
Jun 2003 - Apr 2015Provided startups, businesses, and non-profits with services to help them achieve their goals like market and UX research, product strategy, branding & identity design, product and UX design, print design, illustration, writing, creative direction, education, workshops, marketing, advertising, and more.
Select clients:
AIGA, Creative Mornings, Puma, Workman Publishing, InVision, Cisco, Blackboard, Help Ink, HowDesign, Over App, Design Studio App, United Pixelworkers, and more.
Education
Collegiate
Bachelors in Fine Arts, focus in Graphic Design
University of Louisiana at Lafayette • Lafayette, Louisiana
3.6 GPA, 2006
Certifications
Responsible AI: Principles and Practical Applications
LinkedIn Learning • Apr 2023
Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy
LinkedIn Learning • Mar 2023
Enterprise Design Thinking - Team Essentials for AI
IBM • Mar 2023
Skills
Core Skills
Leadership • Management • Product Vision • Product Strategy • AI/LLM • Automation • B2B Enterprise • B2B SMB • C2C Marketplaces • Problem Discovery • Survey Creation & Management • Market Research • Competitive Analysis • Product/UX Design • User Research & Testing • Service Design • Brand Design • Content Design • Design Systems • ATS Integrations • Hiring • Mentoring • Cross-Functional Collaboration • Storytelling • Communication • Design Principles • Usability • Accessibility WCAG 2.0 • Inclusivity • Data Analysis • Agile & Lean Methodologies • Project Management • Design Ops
Technical Skills
Figma • Adobe CS • Sketch • HTML • CSS • Google Workspace • Microsoft Suite • Google Analytics • Mixpanel • Tableau • IQL
Select Clients
Companies I've designed for:
LG, Disney, H.E.B., InVision, GSD&M, AIGA, Blackboard, Cisco, Creative Mornings, Culinary Institute of America, Livestrong, PayPal, Pearl Brewery, University of Texas, Valero, among others.
Speaking Engagements
A selection of conferences and podcasts I've had the opportunity to speak at:
Circles Conference 2024 (coming soon)