Hire a freelance UX designer

The right freelance UX designer? I'll help you hire the best fit.

I worked in UX for 20 years, including 10 as a freelancer. Now I connect organisations with the right UX professionals.

I recruit and qualify on your behalf

You don't get a stack of resumes, but 1 excellent match each time

Clients often hire candidate one or two.

Market-compliant hourly rates, no additional fee

300+ UX Designers placed

To work for organisations like:

In-house or through agencies like:

2026: an exciting year

With curling, you can make adjustments. Not in shooting sports. A similar anomaly has larger and more definitive consequences.

In 2025, digital product development went from curling to shooting sports. With AI, you can generate output at lightning speed. But is that output a hit, or a miss?

In 2026, therefore, the extent to which your employees can give AI direction, assess its output, and adjust it will determine whether you benefit from AI or whether damage occurs.

Right now, it's crucial to have the right people at your disposal.

Why recruiter-first hiring doesn't work for UX

Lots of candidates. But only a handful are worth your time.

The best don't apply, get overlooked, or drop out before you can hire them.

Sounds harsh, but this is the reality for many organizations.

Here's what I've learned when it comes to hiring high performers in UX:

Continue to read

UX recruitment expert Roy van Balen

Roy van Balen

20 jaar in UX

5.500 followers

Lots of candidates. And only a handful are worth your time.

The best don't apply, get overlooked, or drop out before you can hire them.

Sounds harsh, but this is the reality for many organisations.

Here's what I've learned when it comes to hiring high performers in UX:

1. They don't apply. Because they don't recognize themselves in generic vacancies.

2. They are overlooked. Because recruiters are not equipped to screen UX profiles.

3. They are mistakenly rejected. Because recruiters are not equipped to qualify UX professionals.

4. They drop out before you speak to them. Because the process is too slow when recruiters have to process a lot of candidates.

5. They feel undervalued. Because the response time does not meet their expectations.

6. They loose interest. When the role appears to be shifting, because the story was not clear enough in the early stages.

7. They get scooped by others. While recruiters and managers are occupied with the pile of low-quality candidates

8. ...

The full list includes 21 drop-off points.

Recruiters are not the cause of this.
Neither did hiring managers.
The problem is the recruiter-first setup.

UX professionals have a complex, multidisciplinary and strategic role. They combine research, psychology, product strategy and design skills. It takes years of experience in UX to reliably screen, select and qualify UX professionals.

Recruiters usually have no experience in UX.

The result is lots of low-quality candidates. And while you two are busy handling them, the best ones are disappearing from the pipeline.

Recruitment becomes your second job.

When organisations call me in, this changes.

I have 20 years of experience in UX and 6 years in UX talent acquisition.

I take over the workload of the recruiter and the hiring manager in one go.

Sourcing, screening, selection, qualification, scheduling interviews, follow-up, rejections.

This means that most of those 21 drop-off points disappear.

Instead of a stack of resumes, the hiring manager gets one strong candidate at a time.

They usually hire the 1st candidate, sometimes the 2nd. Very rarely does it come down to 3rd.

1. Recruiters have more time for non-UX roles.

2. Managers have more time and headspace for other goals.

3. The organisation hires stronger UX professionals.

4. Teams achieve better results.

In this way, I've helped more than 300 organizations.

Would you like to get acquainted to see if this suits your organisation?

Then book a UX hiring call for us.

Sincerely,
Roy

Want to know more?

Duration: 30 minutes.