When I hire a designer, I'm looking for someone who won't back down. Gonna stand their ground, keep this world from dragging them down.

I think this is really well written. I think the one benefit you have going for you is that your company has an existing design culture. It makes the type of hiring process you have work - and work quite well.

The problem lies with the startups that didn't care about design, but think they are ready to now. The companies where engineers go off-spec because they feel their way is more efficient - even at the sacrifice of UX. The companies where too many of the wrong people have voices... and not enough of the "right" people do. The list goes on and on. Some of it I've experienced at various companies... others friends have.

I alluded to this in a similar topic yesterday, but I think one of the trickiest things is looking internally... and evaluating if your current process and current decision-making staff is conducive not for where you are now - but where you want to be in the future. For all the companies like yours that really have their ducks lined up in a row... there are just as many that don't. Heh.

For me, this is something that's often overlooked, but is super important in a company of any stage, but especially a startup like GoCardless:

Hunger to learn & develop

Experience is important. Knowing what you know and accepting what you don't know is important. Knowing when to stand your ground or when to walk away is important. Most important though, IMO, is to have that hunger and acceptance that we're all a WIP and work to improve every day.

You want people like that on your team - it raises the bar for everyone and sets the right tone of humility/hungerness > hubris.

An initial online meeting, then a longer online meeting, then an in-person meeting, then a working meeting, then an in-person meeting. Sounds too easy. What's the catch?

In all seriousness, sounds like a thorough and well thought out process. A few things do stand out to me though. Firstly, I feel like this is asking a lot of someone with a full-time job who may be interviewing other places. Could any of these be consolidated for consideration of their time?

Also, why have the founders meeting at the end? This person has gone through 3 meetings and a project, and the final meeting is another personality match? Seems like this should happen when he/she is meeting the rest of the team.

Someone asked this in the comments but really want to know what feedback you would give to someone who doesn't meet your attributes of “Exciting / interesting to talk to” or “Want to work with / be around them”?

Nice way to frame the hiring process, but....

The process of evaluating a candidate seems narrowly focused.

The end product of design, a designer’s output is also the product of - how the designer thinks.

In addition to collaboration style, I’m very interested in how a design candidate thinks.

A main facet of how a designer thinks is (should be) the sum of user, business/ use context and the responsibilities design shoulders to guide a user through various contexts.

I would want to know how a design candidate evaluates user needs (key), analyzes the business context and problem being addressed and finally, how that is expressed in design.

Finally, the sum understanding of knowns and knowns of a user and business context is key for one simple reason:

As designers our days are often filled with defending and debating design decisions.

You need ammunition to defend.

How can you defend a design decision if you have no understanding of the user or business context?

You're simply matching the curtains with the sofa and carpet, because...

If you are doing this work on behalf of a customer, even more so, you have to defend the decision or have a process for gaining more understanding to make a case for the best design decision.

In a business setting, many major design decisions should be backed by a case.

What are you trying to accomplish?