How I landed a senior designer role after two weeks during a recession
3 tips for getting the design job you want
Photo by Edmond Dantès: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-in-black-suit-jacket-sitting-beside-woman-in-brown-long-sleeve-shirt-4344860/
I had a bit of a panic moment when the startup I worked for informed me they couldn’t afford to keep me on full-time.
All of the sudden, I was thrust into the world of job-hunting as a UX Designer. Worse yet, it was in the middle of a recession. The last time I had to do this was as a Junior UX Designer, fresh out of grad school, so I was prepared to spend weeks, if not months, job searching.
Instead, I got several final interviews after a week and a job offer in the 2nd week. The job searching process was about as painless as it could be, but I know for many Designers starting out, especially in a recession, it might not be.
So I wanted to go over the lessons that I’ve learned to help you wherever you might be on your UX or Data Viz journey.
Learn in public
The #1 tip that I can give you if you want to speed up your career growth is to learn in public. What does this mean? Document what you learn, experience, or know in a public setting like Medium, LinkedIn, Youtube, or others.
One thing that you have to keep in mind is that businesses are looking for safe bets in a recession. Anyone can put they know “Figma” or “Design Communication” on their resume, but showing that you have proof of your skills, through a documented public learning experience, makes you a much safer bet.
It’s also a ‘second chance’ for a job. Think of it this way: a design portfolio or resume is your one chance to show that you have the right skills and mindset for the job before an interview. As a result, improper descriptions, poor formatting on your portfolio, or just minor issues can torpedo your chance at a job.
Rather than trying to stress having the best design portfolio ever, why not just make a public record about how you learned a skill? This allows people to see that you know what you’re talking about, rather than relying on perfectly formatted resumes.
As a side benefit, doing this allows you to help the UX community, and also can make you money.
This has been the best tip I can give to make yourself a strong candidate. In all my job interviews, my design knowledge or communication skills were never called into question because of the articles that I write.
While my learning came in the form of writing articles, that doesn’t have to be you. You can:
Create case studies or articles on Medium
Record YouTube Videos about UX subjects
Write insightful and engaging Tweets or LinkedIn posts
Create design widgets or files for the Figma community
Create designs (with an attached process behind them) that you post on your website
Etc.
The last one of these can be controversial, as many designers toss up beautiful designs on Behance or Dribbble with no design process behind them. However, as long as you document your design process, it’s one of the better ways to learn how to know your process.
Know your process
One thing that you have to realize is that for many design roles, a portfolio is just a conversation starter. After all, there’s no way a few slides can convey the weeks or months of UX Design work you put into things.
Whether it’s a top-tier design agency or a regular UX Design position in a larger organization, the main purpose of the portfolio, besides getting you an interview, is to have you answer one question: “What’s your design process?”
Therefore, you need to practice what you’re going to say by thinking about it ahead of time. Design projects are never the same, even if you’re doing them in a classroom or BootCamp like General Assembly. Each one should have a different set of challenges, research questions, problems to face, and more.
So you saying that you have the same design process for every single project, with no sort of variation, is a red flag.
Consider the intricacies of the project and how to simplify things. One thing you’ll find is that the context or terminology you used on the project might not be understandable to an outside observer, so you’ll have to think about how to explain things. Some factors you want to explain include:
Goals: What was the thing you were trying to achieve? Were you designing something new or re-designing something?
Problems: What type of problems did you face? What were your primary challenge or unique factors to consider?
Actions: What did you do? (You often only need to include “What you did”, as interviews will ask you “Why you did these things”)
Images: What did your design look like at a ‘high-fidelity’ stage (like a working prototype or public website)? Don’t be afraid to use the blur tool if you are working with sensitive data.
By coming up with these things ahead of time, you won’t be caught unaware during the interview when someone asks you these questions. However, perhaps you’ve been doing these things, but you’re still not getting to where you want to be. What else might you consider?
Find your design niche
This tip is meant for designers who are a bit more established in their career: perhaps you’ve had 1-2 Design positions, but you want to move towards something better.
In that case, think about and establish your design niche. I think this played a large factor in me getting that offer in two weeks: I had a portfolio, resume, and body of work that focused on the niche of Healthcare UX, which meant I was a perfect fit for a Healthcare Technology company.
A design niche is something that you figure out over time, and finding one often means that you’re filtering out a lot of job opportunities in a bunch of various fields. So I might not recommend this approach for Designers starting out.
However, the ‘generalist UX’ approach, where you’re open to any sort of UX Design position, means that you’re yet another Designer in a huge pool of applicants. You may have some useful skills, but you’ll have to get past several rounds of interviews (to get to who might be your boss) to distinguish yourself. This can serve you well in finding your first position, but it also makes future job interviews a slow and drawn-out process.
If you’re a ‘specialist’, with a skillset perfectly catered toward a niche, then you might not be ideal for certain companies, but perfect for others. You might have to try harder to convince people outside your niche to give you a chance, but those companies in your niche will be eager to reach out, interview, and offer you positions.
You might think that there aren’t that many Design Niches in UX, but that’s incorrect. Here are several sample niches that you might cater towards:
Service Design
Interaction Design
Healthcare UX
B2B UX Design
Enterprise software
CX/Voice of the Customer
Data Visualization
Mixed-Methods User Research
Field Research
E-commerce UX
Banking UX
Finance UX
etc.
Whether you’re aiming for a specific domain (like Healthcare or Finance), specific organizations (like B2B or B2C), or specific skills (like Mixed-Methods User Research or Interaction Design), there are a ton of niches you can aim for.
To do this, you need to cater your resume and portfolio towards a specific niche. Throw away the scattershot approach of putting whatever keywords you need to get past the computerized screener: make sure everything is related to the job niche that you’re aiming for.
I often found that I didn’t even need to go through the computerized screener: recruiters would reach out to me and immediately put me in touch with Design Managers after a quick interview. This is what happens when you appear like a strong candidate for a position (and also have helpful recruiters).
But what if you don’t work in the niche that you want to end up in? For example, you’re working in Banking UX right now, but you want to end up in the B2B niche? Then, we go back to the first tip: learn in public.
If you don’t have the skills for the job you want right now, you have to learn them somehow. You might as well learn in public, where people who look you up can see that “Yes, they might not have the working experience, but I can see they know what they’re doing.”
Give some time and effort to the UX community, and you’d be surprised what you get back
When I was out of a job, I made a post on LinkedIn, not expecting much. Instead, I was overwhelmed by the amount of support that I received, including interview offers, jobs to check out, and more.
I didn’t expect it, but my efforts in learning in public, including posting UX articles and writing books, built a community around me.
That helped me get back on my feet in two weeks, with a generous job offer.
So whether you’re starting out or wanting to find a UX job that better fits your interests, follow these three tips and you might be surprised at how generous the UX community can be.
Kai Wong is a Senior UX Designer, Design Writer, and author of the Data and Design newsletter. His new book, Data-informed UX Design, explains small changes you can make regarding data to improve your UX Design process.