While preparing for the San Francisco installment of the Coroflot Creative Confab series in October, a freelance videographer and AAU student named Josh Couto approached us. In exchange for free access to the event and a venue for showing his work, he offered to shoot and edit the event for free, going so far as to conduct short interviews on the subject of creative employment with three of the panelists: Emily Delmont of Google Creative Lab, Kate Gilman of 24 Seven, and John Foster of IDEO.

What we expected, to be honest, was a working document to record the happenings of the day. What we got was something much more valuable: a series of beautifully shot and sensitively edited discussions that get closer to the truth of the creative hiring process than anything in recent memory, told by some extraordinarily knowledgeable and qualified hiring experts.

This is the first of the videos. It logs in at just over 4 minutes, but ties together several themes that have recurred consistently throughout the past year’s research: the necessity of network-building, the difficulty of determining culture fit, and the crucial need for designers to demonstrate collaborative ability and dedication to their art.

My involvement in this one is indirect: I assembled and moderated the panel, and helped organize the event, but the interviews are all Josh and his colleague Drew Dorsey.

If you’ve got 45 minutes to spare and want to see the panel itself, it’s posted up in its entirety here.