Career help for UX Professionals

Job titles this article is helpful for:

• UX Designer

• UX Consultant

• UX Architect

• UX Researcher

• and other similar job titles

Define what kind of company you'd like to work for

e.g. a larger corporation with a large UX team who you can learn from in your early career

It's important to know who your audience is (the hiring manager/company), because this sets the tone for your portfolio, the projects you choose to put in your folio or how you choose to communicate your approach & results, plus allows for a more focussed CV.

Once you have a vision, work out a strategy for selling your skills and experience to this kind of company. For example, if you're an entry level designer but you have work experience, list out what is 'saleable' about you. Examples of this are:

• You have x years experience managing / leading a team

• You have great people skills (useful in UX research particularly)

• You are bi-lingual in say German and English and want to work for a German company in the UK

• You're an avid photographer, so you have a keen sense for aesthetics (You can put photography projects or examples on a separate area of your folio, not mixed in with UX projects I suggest)

• You used to work in Marketing - some smaller companies may like a UX person to also help out with marketing activities

• There are many more, ask your friends and family what they think you're good at if you 'can't see the wood for the trees' because they can often tell you about your 'soft skills' best.

Make a list of your ideal companies

It's useful, based on the type of company you'd like to work for, to start making a list of your ideal company and keep adding to that as you find more. You can also follow the company on Linkedin and maybe twitter or other relevant channels, to stay 'in the loop' when they're hiring

Perhaps note your list in a spreadsheet, with details of the hiring manager and notes on when you contacted them. Hubspot is a great way to organise your contacts also, and much better if you have over 10 on your list because it's like a digital address book which automatically records all your emails to each contact and has 'personas' so you can categorise them and set 'follow up' tasks.

Reach out to people who work there, not for a job, but just to ask questions such as, whether they have a graduate program, how large is their UX team, if they have skills gaps coming up, if you can make contact with their senior UX person for a chat.... whatever suits the situation.

If it interests you, find companies who have graduate entry programs

Note when is the next intake and start a discussion with the relevant person about what they look for

Grow your network

If you don't already have a Linkedin account, set one up and fill your profile completely with things such as your job title, what makes you special and stand out from other candidates e.g. 'A UX Designer with leadership experience', add projects to links in your portfolio, ask ex-colleagues to recommend you. Use your existing network to get introduced to other people. They say there are only 7 degrees of separation between any 2 people, you can make use of that. Again, don't 'chase' jobs necessarily, but just keep talking and asking questions. Most people are happy to answer a quick question and share their knowledge.

Sign up for job alerts set to your location and level of seniority

https://www.uxswitch.com/

https://uk.indeed.com or https://de.indeed.com/ or for your location

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/

There are hundreds of sites, you need to choose one which suits your location and has the right filters e.g. if 'language' is important to you, you need to find sites which always list the required language in the job specs and allow for filtering in the interface, and also in the job alerts you sign up for.

After a few weeks of alerts, you should have a good feel for the current market conditions - which can change a lot. As I write this in August 2021, the UX job market has exploded and recruiters have lists of 15 to 20 jobs in each post which they say they are struggling to fill!

Be careful about interviews and 'Design challenges' 'a.k.a 'Free work'

In recent years there has been an explosion in UX and development jobs of companies demanding free work as part of the interview process. It's up to you whether you agree to this, don't feel compelled - That is what your portfolio is supposed to be for! My opinion is that it's exploitative and the tasks are often very poorly conceived by a person who has no idea what UX is. I always offer to do the design challenge at my contracting hourly rate or even at up to 50% discount. To date, not a single company has accepted that offer, so that speaks volumes. Here's some tips on avoiding having your time stolen:

1. Does the person offering the job know that UI and UX are not interchangeable terms?

2. Is the person interviewing you an experienced UX person or just a HR junior?

3. What is the salary or range to within 10-20%? Beware of long interview processes when the final offer is laughable. There is a trend for jobs to have no salary advertised now, which benefits only employers.

4. How many interviews have you done before a 'design challenge' is offered? Alarm bells if the answer is 0 or 1. Some companies have no job to offer, they just want free work.

5. If you have been given the opportunity to meet the hirers, do you want to work with them?

6. How many other people are doing the design challenge at the same time? You may have a 1 in 30 chance for example, is this a good use of your time? You can say no, and the more UX people who do, the better for us all.

7. How long do they say the design challenge should take? If they say 3 hours, yet they are hiring for a UX person and they want to see a high-res UI design at the end as the deliverable, this is obviously impossible and shows them up as people who have no idea how long proper UX process takes i.e. research, user research, personas, user flows, wireframing, user tests, UI design, Hi-fi design.

8. IF you decide to do free work, always add a disclaimer, something like - 'This document, the I.P. and designs remain the property of <insert name> until paid for. Remember to put the work into your own portfolio, it's OK, to name the company who asked you to do the work, and write any result of the process e.g. 'They eventually decided not to offer me the job because they realised that they actually want to hire a UI Designer'.

9. If the hiring process was shocking, put your experience onto sites like Glassdoor to warn others.

• Glassdoor.

• Indeed.

• Vault.

• CareerBliss.

• Kununu.

• JobAdvisor.

• Ratemyemployer.

• TheJobCrowd.

Remember to check these review sites before you agree to the first interview to check what kind of employer they are and how bad their recruitment process is.

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