How to Get a UX Design Job: Create a compelling portfolio, submit a stand-out application, and ace the interview to land your user experience dream job Read online

  Do you want to do something socially impactful, or are you okay working for “the man” and selling something? A lot of UXers are so good-hearted and truly do like helping people, and I am not being sarcastic when I say that if you get to know your users and empathize with them, you’ll soon recognize that you’re helping make their jobs easier or their lives better, regardless of what you’re building.

  I was on a project once where I designed an iPad app that helped Finance & Insurance (F&I) Managers at car dealerships (you know, the guys that sit across from you and push paper after paper for you to sign when you’re buying a car) sell customers vehicle service contracts. I got to know several F&I Managers over the course of the project and they were cool and they liked the app we designed. Overall it was an interesting project to work on and the app tested well, which is always rewarding for a designer. I just tried not to think too much about the fact that we were selling vehicle service contracts. (When I was doing early user research for the project and googled “vehicle service contracts,” half the results were about what a scam or waste of money they were. Consumer Reports gave them the big thumbs down.)

  What do you hate about your current job and hope you never have to do again? What do you like about it? What would you like to be doing in the future?

  Make sure that whatever job you take fits into this plan. Don’t just take a job because you’re running away from your current situation, run toward something instead.

  Your Job Hunt is a UX Project

  Think about the whole job hunt process from a UX point of view. Your job hunt is a project, and you already have everything you need in your toolbox to make this project successful.

  On this project, you’re the business, and your business goal is to get a UX job. Your resume, portfolio, cover letter, website, social media presence, and in-person interactions (interviews, design exercises, emails, conversations) are all products you’re creating to make this goal a reality.

  The users are all of the people who will be interacting with these products you create and evaluating you. They have their own goals – they need to fill a job opening and find someone who meets their criteria, will make their lives easier, make their products better, work well with their team, etc. These are recruiters, HR people, hiring managers, potential UX teammates, and other stakeholders.

  The user-centered design process that UX designers follow is iterative and involves users throughout the design and development of a product. The names of the phases can vary, but they’re generally laid out like this:

  Discover > Define > Design > Deploy > Measure

  Here’s what to think about in each phase. We’ll get into a lot of the how-to details later in the book.

  Discover

  This is the phase where you’ll nail down the business objectives and do user research.

  Decide what kind of UX job you actually want.

  Get to know your users (starting with the personas below).

  Deconstruct job postings.

  Look at your “competitors” (other designers’ portfolios, LinkedIn profiles, etc.).

  Research the companies you’re interested in.

  Google yourself.

  Let’s look at your users a little more in depth.

  PERSONA

  Recruiter – “Kate”

  “Being able to play matchmaker and connect a great company with top talent is what truly motivates me as a recruiter!”

  Overview

  May be in-house (as part of company’s HR department) or part of an external recruiting firm

  Annually reviews thousands of portfolios and interviews hundreds of candidates to find the right match for her clients

  Works for the employer, not you

  Goal

  To match talented professionals with opportunities from employers

  Pain Points

  Race against time – many recruiters searching at the same time for the right candidate

  Logistical nightmares – phone tag and interview scheduling

  Not hearing back from candidates

  Candidates reacting poorly to interview feedback

  Candidates turning down offers

  UX Knowledge

  Low

  Interaction with You

  Shepherds you through the interview/hiring process

  Acts as the primary liaison between you and the company

  Often your ally, advising you on how to make the best impression

  Handles administrative details (such as salary, benefits, travel arrangements)

  PERSONA

  Hiring Manager – “Andrew”

  “It’s pretty straightforward – do they have the skills and do they have the right personality and cultural fit?”

  Overview

  Reviews anywhere between 12-50 portfolios for a position

  Sometimes reviews portfolios on his phone

  Often removed from day-to-day design decisions

  Wants you to succeed – if you’re the perfect fit, he can hire you and get back to his “real” work

  Goal

  To hire a UX designer that has the necessary skills to do the job and is a great culture fit

  Pain Points

  Uncertainty over what parts of the portfolio were actually created by you

  Long rambling cover letters or badly formatted resumes or portfolios

  Afraid of making a hiring mistake

  UX Knowledge

  Medium to high (depends on their background…may be more strategic than tactical)

  Interaction with You

  Interviews you and introduces you to the rest of the team

  Makes the final hiring decision

  Wants to see and hear details about your design experience (usually through a portfolio review)

  Wants to see how you interact with the team and how you react to design feedback

  PERSONA

  Senior UX Designer (potential team member) – “Melanie”

  “I wouldn’t want to hire a UX designer without seeing them do design work.”

  Overview

  Usually not involved in high-level screening of candidates

  May or may not have final say over whether somebody is hired, but definitely has influence

  Would prefer to hire someone she’s already worked with or knows personally

  Goals

  To hire a UX designer that will fit well with the rest of the team

  To add somebody to the team that can contribute something valuable, either through knowledge/skills or collaboration

  Pain Points

  Fear that the person they hire won’t know what they’re doing and the work will fall on her

  Afraid of recommending the wrong person

  UX Knowledge

  High

  Interaction with You

  Interviews you and provides feedback to recruiter and hiring manager

  May participate in collaborative design exercise with you

  Wants to hear about your process in great detail

  Wants to see examples of your deliverables (like wireframes/prototypes)

  PERSONA

  Senior Software Engineer (potential team member) – “Eric”

  “If you’re an engineer without a background in design, hiring a designer can be challenging, frustrating, or downright scary.”

  Overview

  Usually not involved in high-level screening of candidates

  Probably works with UX peripherally

  Goal

  To work with a UX designer that understands technical constraints and the importance of efficiency and quality (the less bugs and changes, the better)

  Pain Points

  Prima donna UX designers who over-design things

  Not reusing UI patterns so he constantly has to reinvent the wheel

  UX Knowledge

  Low

  Interaction with You

  Interviews you and provides feedback to recruiter and hiring manager

/>   Wants to hear that you’re willing to tweak your design (without compromising the user experience) to help meet deadlines or reduce development work

  Define

  This is where you’ll get things organized.

  Gather your content (for your portfolio, resume, website, LinkedIn profile, etc.). This could include existing resumes or portfolios (yours and other designers’), screenshots and images for your portfolio, links to social media profiles, possibly a logo for your website, a professional-looking headshot, and unique background image for LinkedIn, etc.

  Write down your answers to the most common interview questions and practice answering them out loud.

  Set up a spot in your house for online interviews and have someone test it with you (using Skype, Google Hangouts, etc.).

  Design & Deploy

  For the sake of this job hunt project we’ll combine the Design and Deploy phases, because you’re not going to be doing much sketching/prototyping beforehand, you’re just going to be cranking things out (and constantly iterating on them).

  This will sound obvious, but as a UX designer you’re going to be held to a higher standard than most people when it comes to things like your resume, portfolio, cover letter, and website. They should be attractive and easily scannable. They should contain all of the important information a user would want. They should be typo-free. The fonts and colors should be consistent (on the print versions of your resume and portfolio, for example). They should look every bit as good, or better, than something you’d create for a client.

  Don’t worry if your visual design skills aren’t all that great. Just make everything look clean and professional. Use white space and category groupings and good fonts (no Comic Sans!) and color accents to create compelling “products.”

  What’s included in these phases (again, we’ll cover the details on all of these in upcoming chapters):

  Create a resume that is Applicant Tracking System (ATS) friendly.

  Create a pretty resume (PDF format) to email to people that ask for it, and to print out and bring to interviews.

  Create an online portfolio.

  Create a PDF version of your portfolio.

  Complete your LinkedIn profile and turn the recruiter beacon on.

  Go through all your public social media accounts (Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) and make sure they look professional and are consistent with each other. If your Facebook account has posts that are visible to the public, make sure there’s nothing inappropriate on there.

  Create a personal website (optional).

  Create new content or social media profiles (if necessary) to improve Google search results on your name.

  Test everything – read your resume and portfolio out loud to yourself and have friends read through everything for you. You could also join a few UX Meetup groups and share your resume/portfolio with other members.

  Start applying for jobs.

  Measure

  Imagine that every interaction (email, interview, etc.) with one of your “users” is user research or a usability test.

  Use Google Analytics to track visits to your website and online portfolio.

  Use LinkedIn’s “Profile Views” feature to see who’s looking at your profile.

  Check Google to see what comes up when you type in your name (if you’ve been making changes/additions to your online presence).

  Document all the jobs you apply for – it can be a simple spreadsheet with company name, date applied, and a notes area.

  Document any interview questions you were asked and how you answered them. If there’s room for improvement, tweak the wording in your cheat sheet of written questions and answers and practice saying the new answers out loud.

  Where to Look for Jobs

  Here are some good places to look for UX jobs.

  Indeed

  This is my personal favorite because it’s so simple and comprehensive. It’s a lot like Google, you just type in a keyword or two (with or without a location) and boom, you get all these great results back. Indeed indexes company websites, newspapers, job boards, staffing agencies, etc., so it feels like they’ve found just about everything.

  You can set up easy email alerts that let you know when something new has been added that matches your keywords.

  Indeed has an “Upload Your Resume” option that makes it easy to quickly apply for jobs, but don’t be tempted. Your resume should be customized for every job you apply for. You don’t want to upload a one-size-fits-all resume. More on this in an upcoming chapter.

  LinkedIn

  LinkedIn is another great place to find jobs, and they have some cool personalization features, such as letting you know if someone in your network already works at a company you’re interested in. Since LinkedIn already has all the info you entered into your profile section, they know what jobs you’re qualified for based on your skill set and where you live, so they proactively show you jobs you might be interested in.

  Another nice feature is that you can look at all the people on LinkedIn who currently work at the company. I usually go into stealth mode (Me > Settings & Privacy > Privacy > Profile viewing options) when I’m researching people at other companies specifically for job hunting. It just feels like I’m stalking them, and I also don’t want them checking out my profile (which leads to my website and online portfolio) too early in the process.

  If someone in your network works at a company with a job opening you’re interested in, it doesn’t hurt to ask them if they’ll tell you more about the job/company, introduce you to the hiring manager, or even refer you for a particular job. They may be open to it if you look like a strong candidate, because many companies offer a nice fat referral fee to employees whose referrals get hired. At my current company, referral fees can range from $2,500 to $5,000 depending on the role.

  LinkedIn has a new feature where you can turn on a little beacon letting recruiters know that you’re open to discussing new opportunities. If you go to your own profile, there will be a dashboard at the top (under your photo and summary). There you can toggle on the recruiter beacon (LinkedIn says that they will block recruiters from your current company from seeing it. I’m not sure how fail-safe that is, but I think the gains outweigh the risks.) There is also a link there to see who’s been viewing your profile recently.

  You can easily apply for jobs through LinkedIn, and they’ll pull information straight from your profile and send it to employers, but again – don’t be tempted! Create a customized resume instead and apply directly with the employer.

  All of the things I just mentioned are available for free – you don’t need to be a member of their Premium service to take advantage of them.

  Take the time to fill out every section of your profile and customize it wherever you can (add a headshot, add a unique background image, etc.). It really does help.

  It also helps to post a status update or to “like,” comment on, or share posts that you find interesting on your newsfeed. Doing this keeps your name in front of people. Don’t go too crazy with it, though, because people in your network get notifications about even the stuff you just “liked.” Be selective.

  Meetups

  We have a lot of UX Meetup groups around me (in the Denver/Boulder area). They meet regularly and have all sorts of great topics for their meetings, plus frequent guest speakers.

  Several of the groups also use Slack to stay in touch in between meetings, and all of their Slack workspaces have a #jobs channel. It’s a great way to find out about local jobs that have just been posted, and the people who post them (usually other UX employees at the company) are happy to answer questions about the job.

  Glassdoor

  Although Glassdoor usually has the same job postings as Indeed and LinkedIn, they include a salary estimate on the job posting that the others don’t, based on real salaries (for that company/role/industry) submitted by the Glassdoor community.

  In addition to salary information, Glassdoor also h
as anonymous reviews submitted by company employees and interview questions that candidates were actually asked during interviews at the company. This information can be unbelievably helpful.

  I saw a job posting for a User Experience Design Manager a few months ago that looked amazing – my skills were a perfect match for almost every bullet point of the job description and it would have been a promotion for me. And then…I read the Glassdoor reviews. I sorted them by date so that I’d be reading the most recent ones first, and they were devastating. I finally stopped when I read this line: “The sheer incompetence and all-out political culture of the VP level and down is downright comical at times if it weren’t for the fact that it chews up passionate employees and spits out zombies.” Wow. No wonder they had job openings.

  We Work Remotely

  We Work Remotely (weworkremotely.com) is owned by Tiny, the same company who owns Dribbble. The website, which is currently a simple one-page listing of jobs, promotes a variety of remote opportunities, including UI/UX-related jobs in the “Design” section. I have a feeling this site is going to explode over the next couple of years.

  A Note About Networking

  Some people will insist that networking is the be-all end-all only-all way to get a good UX job, but I’m here to tell you it’s not true.