How to land a job in UX

1. How to land job in UX: Welcome to how to land a job in UX. My name is Beth Johnson and I'm a Senior UX designer and I'm Jennifer all is Senior UX design consultant. In this course, we're gonna discuss a variety of topics to help you land a job and user experience. The perspective of this course is geared towards those who want to move into a user experience design rule, you may be asking what exactly is a user experience designer? User experience designer is someone who takes charge of creating evidence-based interaction designs between humans and technology. User experience designers make decisions based on user research, data analytics, as well as usability testing. And they really drive the design based on that information versus purely as a UX designer advocates for the user it while keeping in mind business goals. But we will be discussing are the foundations what you need to start applying for jobs, how to get through the interview process, and even how to be successful in those first few days on the job. So what do we expect as outcomes for this course? We hope that you feel prepared to apply for jobs and then also feel successful in obtaining those jobs. Because we all know it can be really overwhelming when you're just starting out. We've definitely been there ourselves. Yeah, it's not easy task, but we're gonna get you get prepared. You're going to gain a lot of transferable skills in the process. So let's get started. Let's do it. 2. SECTION 1 | UX foundations: In section one, UX foundations, we will be giving perspective on what different design roles exist, what constitutes a good UX designer, and what additional tools and resources are available to you. 3. User experience programs and certifications: Some certification programs seem appealing and even promised you jobs after the words, but there's a few things you need to consider before you really jump. Some pros of getting into a user experience certification program, you get a very structured environment with someone as your instructor that can help you and guide you along the way. You do get a certification at the end, you can start looking for jobs within just a few months. You have someone who can act as a mentor to you. Another benefit for me when I first started in my UX career was I worked in an industry where I was doing UX design but didn't necessarily know that. So what I did was take some of these certifications on the weekend, just kinda learn some of the industry jargon. So when I was applying for these jobs, I can speak to speak. So some of the cons of these certification programs are one, it can be really expensive. You may have to take out loan, afford it to their required that you there from normal nine to five hours. You can't necessarily work to pay for it while you're in the program. Hiring, having a full-time job would be challenging. Some employers don't view these certification programs as credible versus a formal education. In certification programs, you may not learn the soft skills that are needed professionally. So you have to really hold yourself accountable to learn these extra skills outside of your main program. Many projects are also group efforts and certification program. So you'll really have to work to showcase your individual contributions and showcase your abilities as a designer on your own. Recruiters and employers want to know about your strengths specifically. Here are some quotes from others who have joined certification programs. Interviewers are more interested in how I think and solve problems, but how I got into UX, I've had others that felt immediately prefer to traditional background and quickly past. You're going to succeed in a bootcamp. You really have to push yourself and find a way to stand out when it comes to interviews. In the next video, we'll dive into the different online platforms for learning user experience design foundations. 4. UX soft skills: Two categories of skills that you will need to develop as you progress in your career. Their soft skills and hard skills, which is also technical skills. Soft skills are not often taught in school or training, however, they're crucial to your success as a professional. Soft skills are more universal and can apply to a ray of jobs were hard skills are taught within educational port forms that could be easily measured. Soft skills are often referred to as interpersonal skills. And now we're going to jump into a list of examples. Time management is crucial because you want to make sure you deliver your work within a specific timeline as not to hold up other people or different milestones within a project for your team. Ux has many moving parts and things may fall through the cracks if you have poor organizational skills, many people may be viewing your work without contexts and we'll need to quickly get up to speed to elaborate further. It is our job as UX designers to effectively communicate our ideas and solutions, both visually and verbally. Being a strong communicator work make everyone's jobs easier as well as build credibility for you as a solid UX designer. For example, based on what we heard in testing, users were unaware of where the action needed to be taken as the solution. We've designed these two CTAs differently to call attention to a primary action. As a UX designer, you're designing with your user in mind. What does the user experience you're trying to solve for applying empathy to work puts you in the shoes of your user and ensures you're designing based on what they think and feel. Your first idea may not be your best. You need to think outside of the box to come up with novel solutions to create a world-class user experience. A good designer knows what tools and tactics to pull out to solve for a problem. Every problem is unique and deserves a unique approach. You will likely be working with a cross-functional team that is made up of people from different backgrounds with different ideas. Being collaborative will only help make the work easier and the end result better. A lot of your job is giving and receiving feedback. If you can effectively hear what others are saying, you can apply those results to your, your solution. Being open and receptive to changes will make a better end result. Ux is about user data driven decisions, not personal opinions, active listening and cheers, you're taking in all information, hearing what's being said, and you are able to synthesize all crucial details. Critical thinking helps you be analytical about what information should be included and applied it to create effective solutions, you will need to present your ideas, solutions, and findings to stakeholders, team members, and users. Talking about your work in a compelling way adds depth and color to help engage your viewers. Mastering these soft skills is crucial as a UX designer. But if you don't have these yet, don't worry, you'll get there. Yeah, you'll continue to hone in these skills as you build in your UX career. And if you already have a few in your back pocket, that'll just help you progress even faster. Now that you understand what soft skills are important. As a designer, we're going to talk about job titles and team hierarchy. 5. Differences design job titles: There tends to be a lot of confusion when it comes to job titles in the UX discipline. You may find that some companies misuse jobs titles in their postings. Ux was not widely understood by executives, but now many see the value it can bring to their users and in turn, their businesses. And for that reason, the practice is being introduced to many organizations. By gaining a better understanding of job titles, you have a better understanding of the roles, responsibilities that you would seek within an organization. You can in turn decide if this company has a mature UX function or not. We have highlighted some of the most common job titles and their most common deliverables. Ux designers are expected to do visual design, interaction, design, information architecture, and how some basic knowledge of technical feasibility of recommended solutions. Ux designers bridge the gap between different disciplines to create a solution that forms the user experience. They are a jack of all trades, so to speak. They tend to be generalists that have their hands in many different parts of the design and the strategy. They ask meaningful questions to uncover and address user needs and help them achieve their goals. Their work really starts in the discovery process. They work in hand with UX researchers to gain a deep understanding of the space they're trying to design for, they must understand the issues users have, where they're experiencing them and how to best solve for them. They work to develop designs and dress users needs clearly and tangibly some typical deliverables a UX designer may have our wireframes, prototypes, and user flows. There's a lot of overlap from UX designer and product designer, which creates a lot of confusion. Product designers are very similar to UX designers, however, they also expected no business strategy, product strategy and iterate on designs after initial delivery. These are the main areas of which the two rules differ. User experience designer is advocating for the user, while a product designer will be advocating for the business. And there is overlap often between those two things. Some common deliverables for a product designer include competitive analysis and experienced map in annotated designs. A few other designers you may discover along the lines are a Cx designer conversation on designer and service designers. A visual designer focuses on the interface and the overall visual aspects of the design. Typically includes color palette, topography, components such as form fields and their corresponding states. This title also can mean UI designer at many different companies. To make sure you really need to read the job description, ask those probing questions to understand some of the tasks and responsibilities you may have in the role. A few typical deliverables may be mood boards and a wide scale or very narrow. They tile styles or style scapes showcase specific elements of design and direction. It can also be visual design systems or component libraries, as well as presentations. A UI designer tends to focus on interface design and design libraries. This includes the visual layouts, prototypes, and someone with this title as well versed and current UI patterns such as user inputs, type styles, forms, as well as other elements that tell a story visually. As Beth mentioned, they are very similar, enroll in function. But the main differences you may see is visual designer were made me stick to what was traditionally known as graphic design. So the fonts and typography, color, and UI design. It really brings that to life collectively with buttons, form fields like how it lives together within your concept. User researchers are focused on uncovering how users think, feel, and what they struggle with. They conduct and synthesized user research. They collect all contextual data and use it as a guide for designers to properly address user goals and pain points. A Cx designer is a customer experience designer. They're responsible for the entire experience that the customer has with a business. This includes both digital and non-digital platforms. They ensured that the customer has an experience that is aligned across all touch points within that company. A few deliverables. A Cx is then responsible for our customer experience, blueprints, data visualizations, and ecosystem maps. Some companies use all or combination of these job titles. The reason being is they may not accurately understand the roles and responsibilities within each role. They may combine them and have one UX designer to tack them, all of them. But a really mature company will have established rules and systems. You can stay focused on your expertise and your line of work. We suggest looking at current job titles and job posting to understand what tidal best aligns with your skill set. These titles and roles will evolve over time. So you want to set yourself up the best way possible to suit the type of work that you want to do long-term. At the more junior levels, you will be focusing on improving your craft and execution. As an associate or junior designer, you are considered an entry-level designer. You will be executing work, but we'll be working closely with senior level designers for sign-off on design decisions. In this role, you will be focusing on getting your feet wet and really learning. All there is to know about UX. As a mid-level designer, you're going to execute the designs under the guidance of senior designers and leads. You have more responsibilities and freedoms than a junior designer. Still make decisions after being approved by those in more senior roles, you, there's less focus on strategy here and more on executing designs and documentation. You progress to this level once you start asking the questions of how things work versus just executing the work, you're really focusing on improving your critical thinking skills here. As a senior designer, you are providing strategy and executing designs, but you will often review the work of younger designers and delegate certain tasks. You often will act as a mentor to these more junior designers. To get to this level, you should have the what and the how mastered. You really want to focus on your influencing skills and mentoring others more junior on your team. Senior level designers are also very good at storytelling and presenting work and supporting rationale for their solutions. Lead designers provide strategy and execute designs minimally. They focus on leading projects and possibly leading a team. They are the top level of individual contributors. They will be the point person for other stakeholders and disciplines. Large decisions we'll go through them for sign off and the tactical success of the project rests in their hands. To advance to this lead UX designer, you should really understand the why they often dive into user research and business considerations to develop a strategy to design against lead designers. Think about the big picture. Principal designers are expected to execute design and be the leader of decisions within both net new and existing designs. They work on maintaining libraries and managing projects and may possibly be leading teams from a technical perspective. There are focused on creating high-quality designs over managing people. They are focused more on the craft. To become a principal designer, you should have a lot of experience working with cross-functional teams on a variety of different solutions for clients in different industries. You will have mastered UX best practices to understand what it takes to be OE. Additional roles. You will see our management and leadership, Associate Director and Director. This chart outlines the hierarchy of different design positions depending on the company's size and structure, the levels may change slightly when prospecting a company to work for, it's a good idea to understand the roles covered within your team. Ask about the team structure and that'll give you the best understanding of how your role fits within the hierarchy. You could ask, what is the team hierarchy? Are the researchers, are their content strategist. If not, am I going to be taking on all that work? There is a good chance you may have to wear many different hats within UX. This means you will be taking on more responsibility. But depending on your comfort level, this could really accelerate your growth. Understanding the team structure will paint a picture of what it will be like to work with that company. On the other hand, if you're one of five UX designers within an enterprise company, you may be tasked with working on one very focused part within an experience of a whole application. One of the biggest hurdles when searching for jobs is knowing which rules to apply for. Now that you have an understanding of what you may be a best fit for in the design world. Let's start looking at applying. Follow us into the next video. 6. SECTION 2 | Full time vs freelance: You might be wondering what the main differences are between full-time and freelance work. You will find the biggest differences and how you go about finding work, how you get paid, how you deal with taxes, and the interview process. In this section, we'll break down the differences and the pros and cons of each. So follow us. Freelancer, consultant contract or, oh my god, there's so many and they all sound very similar, but they're not quite the same. It will break down with beach. What those mean? First, there's a freelancer. This person usually does a particular scope of work for a client for a shorter amount of time for an agreed upon contract and rate. Consultant is an expert that kinda comes into accompany it gives them advice for UX practices. They may not necessarily do the hands-on work, but the really guiding the company and the direction they should take. As a UX contract. Or you may come into a company for a set amount of time and assume the roles that a full-time employee would, but it's for a shorter period of time for certain amount of rate agreed upon. Now that we've covered a bit about freelancers, let's jump into the benefits of both freelance full-time. 7. Benefits of working as a full time UX designer: As a full-time UX designer, you are insured consistent income retirement plans that your employer often contributes to. Discounted or free insurance options, PTO, and other benefits such as stock options, your taxes, or streamline as a full-time employee. So you only have to pay taxes annually, which allows you to not think about them as often. You will be part of a dedicated team where you'll be able to build many professional relationships and be surrounded by others. You can share your ideas with. You typically only have to work 40 hours a week, which allows you free time in the evenings. 8. Cons of working as full time UX designer: Some of the cons include when the workload gets heavy, you may end up working extra hours beyond 40 hours a week. And this does not equate to more pay. You are a salaried employee, so you are working for the same pay. You can often encounter office politics, which will bring interpersonal stress. The projects that you work on can become stagnant or repetitive over time. This can limit your ability to learn and grow in a diverse way. If the team structure or internal processes are not ideal, you can get stuck learning in a way that isn't optimal or in a system that is not efficient. As a full-time employee, you may find yourself going back to the office and a post-COVID world. And this could equate in long commute, which will reduce your free time. You may be located in a city that's not ideal for you. So that's something to think about when you're considering full-time or freelance. 9. Benefits of working as a freelance UX designer: Working as a freelance designer allows you to quickly get your feet wet and learn about the practice and work with a company without a long-term commitment. Typically, these jobs tend to be a little bit easier to get because there's less competition for those who want to get into full-time versus a freelance opportunity. You get to work with a variety of clients across a variety of different applications, different platforms, different experiences. So you can see what works best as far as best practices. You can see what internal processes work well from one company to another and also translate that as you move on to client, client. As far as getting work and my experience as a freelance designer, I've gotten a lot of referrals as well as leads from my website. Another great thing that's really appealing about freelance work is due to set your own hours and decide where you want to work. Now that COVID times happen, that's not quite the case anymore, but it's definitely a great blur. 10. Cons of working as a freelance UX designer : Some of the cons of working as a freelance designer is that you have to find balance between cells, marketing, accounting work, as well as doing the actual work. So you got to make sure you have time in each area to make sure your business grows. You are also responsible for paying your taxes quarterly. So tracking all that and making sure you're putting enough 30% of each of your income to save to give the taxes at the end of the year. You're also responsible for lining up work as one ends to make sure you have no gap in income. You also have to seek out your own retirement funds and insurance. So that could be a little daunting. If you're not familiar with that area. As a freelance designer, you may come into a company and work on one project with one team and then, or you may be the expert in the field and not have a team to learn from. So that could be limiting in your growth if you don't seek outside networking resources and opportunities for education. All in all, freelance is a hustle games, so you get out of it as much as you put into it. Now that we've discussed the options, let's get into how to apply. 11. SECTION 3 | What you need to start applying to UX roles: There are a few things you will need to have prepared before you can confidently start applying for roles. The first is a resume. The second and most important for UX designer is a portfolio. Your portfolio, you will need a personal bio case studies and a way to highlight your strengths slash brand. In this section, we'll cover resume do's and don'ts as well as portfolio platforms to consider. Now let's dive into the nitty-gritty and build out your resume. 12. Resume dos and donts: Having a well-written resume is an important tool in your arsenal. As a UX designer, your resume will be the first impression that employers have you and you often only have 20 seconds to capture their attention. It's really important to be articulate and explaining your skills and experience and your resume. You need to be very careful about the keywords you use for particular number one is SEO and searchability. When you upload a website to a platform, they're scanning for particular words and they're pulling up that resume to you want to make sure you clearly articulate what you did in previous jobs to match the job description that you're applying for. So being well spoken is a crucial skill that a UX designer needs to have. A lot of your job as a UX designer is articulating your thoughts, your ideas, and your rationale for your solutions. It will benefit you to put a lot of thought into how you communicate about your previous roles and accomplishments, especially how they translate into the role that you're applying for. You can browse jobs that you're interested in and mimic the words that you see in the job posts on your resume. Create a list of skills that apply to you and put them in the description in a way that makes sense for you. Do your best to quantify the work that you did by using statistics and numbers. For example, I saved the company thirty-five cents by streamlining the users checkout flow process. This is also a time to brag about your accomplishments. So make sure you're really selling yourself to a potential employer to showcase that one you can do the job, but two, you're also fun to work with. When it comes to the visual design of your resume. Layout matters for a few reasons. The first reason is most resumes softwares can't read the multi column layout. They scan from left to right, top to bottom. However, you still need to show off your design chops. To address both of these opposing needs, it's best to have two distinct copies of your resume. You should have one that is simple Word doc for the resume processors. And the second, as they visually stunning artifact that you can share directly with hiring managers, recruiters, and people in your network. This would be something you could print out or have a nice pdf. Finally, keep your resumes received one to two pages max if possible. Make sure you've highlighted the most relevant experience for your previous roles. The people reading your resume don't have much time. So keep it simple. If you don't have experienced that lens to UX design, think about your other roles in some of the skills that we mentioned earlier and how you might apply those skills from previous jobs and relate them to the job you're applying for. Where you are good at listening, empathetic to your customers. We really good at presenting. Are you highly skilled and research analysis? Those are all things that you can lend into the UX career path. Okay, So we've done a lot and I think the hard part is over, but we're just getting started. The next video, we're going to go into your portfolio. We're gonna go through the outline of everything needs to go in there. And how do you create the best presentation of your skills and your work? 13. The importance of a design portfolio: Regardless of where you are in your career, a portfolio is an indispensable tool no matter if you're an established designer or contaminate your work, it's going to be always up-to-date and make sure you're showing your latest and greatest work for the work that you want to attract. It's also the first impression you're gonna get with potential employers. So you wanna make sure you have a good first impression within those first 20 seconds. You want to make sure that your portfolio is cohesive in both style and writing. It should showcase your style as a designer while remaining clean and modern, you should try to mimic the style that employers may want you to continue while working as their employee. As a UX designer, you will also want to make sure that your portfolio has good usability. You want to make sure that you are showing who you are without the style of your portfolio, overtaking or over shining your work. So design is different from art rather than it's not about self-expression, but problem-solving and critical thinking. You want to make sure you keep your end goal in mind. What makes a good UX portfolio website is that you are actually paying attention to who your users are. For example, you're applying for jobs, so you have employers looking at your site. What do they really want to say? Can you do the work? Is it articulated well? Is a design nicely? Do you have a clean system? Makes sure that you understand that you are really targeting employers. You should seek out other designers that have strong portfolios that you can take inspiration from as a guide. Don't rip other people off, but it's okay to do a rendition that is adopted to your style. There are many ways to build your portfolio and making that decision can be daunting. Thankfully, we've broken it down for you in the next video. 14. Building your portfolio website: Platforms you can use to create a design portfolio. We have listed out a few of the most popular. So you can get an idea of what some of the best options, maybe. Squarespace is very user-friendly, offers a lot of great templates right out of the gate for professional looking website. It isn't very reasonable price option. It's known for all the tools and things like email marketing, logo design, and cover page creation. It also stands out for its award-winning website templates and SEO, which is site enhancement optimization. Wordpress is an open source website platform with a lot of options and plug-ins. To create a customized experience, you will need to know some basic coding to get your website to shine. Because it is open source. There is limited website support for anything that may come up. It's known for being highly customizable to meet all of your needs, which is a good basic website builder that's easy to use. The price is reasonable as well, but it does lack of flexibility. You might have come here to Squarespace or WordPress. It is known as an excellent drag and drop builder for creating small websites. Be hand is a free social media platform included within Adobe subscription. Designers can showcase our work amongst a feat of others, as well as having a dedicated profile page to include a bio and external networking links. If you're familiar with Behance, editing will be a breeze. Godaddy site builder is a newer option out of the others listed. It is easy to set up and you can pay all in one domain inside hosting, which makes things more streamlined on the financial end as well as book-keeping. It offers a free version among other options. It's known for automatically being able to set up your site based on your field so you don't have to do the heavy lifting. Carpet made is a CMS platform that is geared towards creatives to show off their work. It is home to many portfolio sites of photographers, designers and entrepreneurs. They have many well-designed themes to choose from that are a notch above the other platforms. It is known because there's no coding required and unlimited layouts and uploads. They also have very high-quality templates. Cargo is recycled or that has alternative layouts geared towards creators, the themes or bolt and attention-grabbing. They are more visually interesting and some of the themes available for other site builders, but it may be viewed as unconventional. It's really known for that edgy style and you also have full control over CSS to get high levels of customization. Options could be good for you. You just have to keep in mind what your goals are. Take a peek around and see what best suits you once you've had your site platform established, the next step is setting up your work. The best method to showcase your work in your portfolio is through a case study. You should include a case study for each project you want to showcase in your portfolio. So what exactly is a case study? A case study is a report that looks at one project from start to finish. This report will look at how the project started, what you learned about the problem, how you arrived at the solution of what the final outcome was. In the next video, we will go through a step-by-step process of building a case study. So let's get started. 15. PROJECT | How to build a UX case study: A good case study engages your readers, tells a story and makes them want to find out more. You should share as much details as you like without overpowering your reader, get to the points and make it scannable. So you might be wondering, how do you build a good case study. You should start by verbally telling the story of the project as you would to a friend or a colleague. This will help you highlight the important parts of the story and weed out the unimportant ones. It will help to record yourself as you tell the story so you can go back and listen to it. You can then take that information and write it down. And this will be the start of your outline. Next, we're going to create an outline for your case study. This will have a blueprint of where your copy goes and where your visuals go. It's best to follow this outline structure just to make sure you're hitting all the crucial points in your case study. Here is an outline example that includes storytelling elements that you should include in your narrative about your project. Setting, the context, the title of the project. A problem statement, which outlines negative points of the current situation and explains why it matters. A team structure, your role and responsibilities, your impact. How you got that data. This example, we have a way to find business value is research findings. By the business impact equals the cost. You will collect metrics from usability testing or other research that measures the experience of your product or service. You can calculate the impact by finding the cost of the resulting business impact, such as lost productivity, wasted development time, lost revenue, increased expenses, et cetera. The timeline, key learnings. Next, the project overview, which should include project goals or research summary and why you chose each method. Who the primary user is. Details of your approach and your process, which should include an explanation about the way the project unfolded and assumptions and if they were proven true or false throughout your research. Next, the solution, you should include a before and after, if applicable, the evolution of the solution throughout the project, such as how the project started and how it ended, the outcomes of the project, and what was delivered, as well as constraints, challenges. Finally, the wrap-up. You should include next steps and reflections. Shout outs to any key players on your team, and quotes from users. Even if it shows from research. Next, gather all of your artifacts you have for your project. Find visual mock-ups, videos, prototypes, documentation, sketches, and wireframes. You will likely have to create a few visuals and addition to what you've gathered from the existing project. Once you have your content and visuals gathered, wireframe the layout of the case study. This will save you time when you build the case study design on your portfolio site. Once you're satisfied with the layout as a wireframe, you can start building it out on your site. After the layout is complete, you can drop in the content and visuals as you have planted in your wireframe. So the final step is to have someone more knowledgeable to review your portfolio. You might be working on this for awhile, so might overlook a few key details. So find some peers or some mentors to kind of give you some guidance on what's working and what's not. Hurray, you have your first case study. Some of you might be thinking, wait a minute, I don't even have any work. Don't worry. In the next section, we're going to be covering how you can find work to create a case study. 16. What to do if you don't have any work to showcase: If you don't have work to put in your portfolio yet, you should go out and just find some opportunities where you can help solve problems and where do you find this? Just look at websites needing improvement online, final area of interests for you. Do it as a passion project and maybe redesign it for a better experience by offering to help a local business you can be a little more creative in this project and showcase some rad work on your website and also help a company grow. Who could you ask? Maybe that bike shop that you get your inner tubes from that hasn't been updated since 2001 or maybe the massage company that can't figure out their online booking system. You can even go to a hole in the wall restaurant that you frequent. If they don't have a good ordering process online, these are all great candidates for problems that you could tackle. So let's get started in building your case study. You can even work on your case study as you're working through your project just to make sure you're not losing any of the key information or rational as you go down the line. This makes everything is really easy because it's fresh in mind when you're building out your case study, try not to get stressed. You might not know all the answers as you go, but don't worry, we'll get there. And if not, you always have Google. If you want professional advice about your case study or anything UX related, you can find a link in the course description to ask scheduled time with pausing UX, Beth, and myself for any advice remaining, you will want to make sure that you're managing the relationship with this company were providing services to as if they're your client, even if you're not getting paid. They can be a reference to you or refer you to other work that may be paid down the road. Your reputation matters. So make sure you have a positive outlook with both your peers as well as your clients. You never know when you're going to find a lead from someone that you worked for in your past that may follow you in the future, people will always remember how you made them feel when thinking about what type of work you want to target, keep in mind what your interests are. You're probably going to want to work in a similar industry so you can apply the expertise to your next role. When you're thinking of things you're interested in, think about stuff that you'd like to occupy your time with in your day to day. Are you really into crypto? Do you really like fine dining? Target those types of companies to get work into your portfolio that represents a type of work that you want to do. Companies are looking for those who are familiar with the problems they're needing to solve. So if you have examples of those in your portfolio, that gives you a leg up in the interview process, you can bring a unique perspective to the space and innovate. Make sure you do your research and establish UX patterns. Try not to make things that are too novel. You don't want to confuse your users from patterns that they're used to from different experiences. It's all about balance. Is your work under NDA and you're not sure how to showcase that work. An NDA is a non-disclosure agreement. And our next video, we will navigate how to include this type of work in your portfolio. 17. How to highlight NDA work: It is really common for most designers to have work that is locked under an NDA. Some work maybe permanently locked under an NDA if it's internal facing, while some might be time-bound until it's released to the public to avoid legal action being taken against you. These are a few ways you can work around this issue. Most designers that password protect projects, so they're not searchable or viewable without credentials. Most designers take it a step further and change all logos or mentions of the company that the work has been done for it. So none of the work is identifiable. One approach to showcasing work in a portfolio is to ask for testimonial for someone in your team that you worked with previously, preferably someone higher leadership roles. This gives insight to how you approach the project. How did you solve? What was it like with team dynamics? This goes a long way in building up your reputation and gives potential employers little peek of what it'd be like to work with you. So when asking for testimony and get a little specific about what you want to pull out at the testimonial. Awesome. Can you comment on what the deliverables were like? Can you comment on how I approached the presentation skills, any kind of specific information you can request ahead of time might help you as you build out your case studies or work on your website. This is a unique way to showcase your strengths from another person's perspective. Now that we've walked through the steps to build out an awesome portfolio, join us in the next video where we'll talk about building out a bio that screams, you. 18. Writing a bio that screams YOU: Having a well-written bio is important to help others get to know who you are. You will want to display this on your portfolio, typically in your About Me page. When writing your bio, you want to aim to differentiate yourself from other designers. So let your personality shine. What makes you unique? What can you bring to the table that's different from other, other potential UX designers. Show people what you are like and what it may be like to work with you. But keep it short. No more than two paragraphs. You want to capture the attention of your recruiter and keep them engaged. You'll want to include some elements that convey your personality. But primarily you want to talk about your work accomplishments, areas you focus in specific types of work that you want to do. Here's the formula for building your bio statement. For example, AI solutions service expertise for audience user. By method execution. You can also say, I'm title expertise, that solution and service for audience and user. The order could change as long as you hit these three main areas. Once you have this anchor statement, you can interject some personality. Remember that keywords play a large role in the searchability and rankings of your website on different search engines such as Google. Consider what keywords you'd like to be recognized for and be sure to interject them into your copy. The more you use those keywords throughout your website, especially in headers, the better. Now that we've gone through all the things that you need to include in your portfolio to build you up as a strong candidate for a UX role. In the next video, we're gonna help you get your foot in the door. 19. SECTION 4 | Getting your foot in door: We're glad you're still along this journey and made it to section for getting your foot in the door. There are lot of things that come into play here to really push your candidacy for recovered, roll down the line. The first is leveraging recruiters and understanding the pros and cons of that working relationship. Next is the importance of networking, which Beth and I cannot stress enough. You never know where connection may take. You were in the people business and should first and foremost, connect with humans. From there we discussed the ways you can apply for UX roles and even how you go about finding a mentor. We break down each of these points in this section. Let's get into it. 20. Recruiters, pros and cons: Recruiters can be a wonderful resource for getting your foot into the door. Recruiters have generally worked with and staff for different companies and are familiar with their hiring manager. They know what the current company culture is looking like. They know what the ideal candidate would be. So they can really gauge if you're gonna be a good fit or not. A large part of what recruiters do is find great talent like yourself and try to place them where they might be the best fit possible. They are great at understanding strengths, weaknesses, and goals of candidates that will be a good fit for the role. And my experience as an independent UX designer, I've had a lot of jobs come to me through my recruiters. We built up a strong relationship. They know exactly what I want, they know what my strengths are. So they really help leverage me and put me into positions that would be best suited. When a client comes along to my recruiter that matches my skill set, they quickly pass me along to the company. Sometimes I only get to have two interviews or sometimes I don't have to interview at all. Companies generally trust recruiters candidates because they worked with them, often, trust their opinion and they've done all the heavy lifting and screening upfront. On the other hand, there are a lot of recruiters that could potentially spam your inbox with roles. And you're not really sure at the beginning who you can trust and who might be sending you a role that will be a good fit for you unless you've worked with these recruiters before, it can be really difficult to know which ones are worth your time. If you're looking to get a freelance work specifically, I suggest working with the same ones frequently and often to build that relationship. If you're looking for full-time roles, you will likely work with a different recruiter that represents each separate company. You are less likely to build relationships with them over time unless you are interested with one company over a long period of time, working with a recruiter can be a huge advantage on getting your foot in the door. They can help you get your candidacy recognized. The next video we're going to talk about networking and how that's gonna be a continuous habit that you should follow throughout your career. 21. The importance of networking: Don't underestimate the power of connections. People want to work with people they know or people there people know. For example, Beth and I met at a networking event years ago. And here we are creating a Skillshare video course together. It's so much easier when someone says, Hey, I need a higher UX designer, do you anybody, do you know anyone? Someone says, Yeah, I have beth Johnson, she's great. It can really simplify the stresses of finding someone for a role, both posting the job and interviewing candidates, having someone that you connected to you really simplifies that process. In some instances, you can network in-person thanks to COVID accommodations. But in other scenarios, you may want to try it not working digitally, whether in-person or digitally, you really want to think about the people's attention, but you're trying to capture like mine stick together. So think about where those people might be found. Go where those people hang out. You can network digitally on different channels such as Behance, Dribble, LinkdIn, even Slack channels. You might even find jobs there. It can be difficult to be equally active on all these platforms. So go to the platform that best aligns with the company you're trying to apply for and post they're more regularly. Just like anything else. You'll get out of it. What you put into it, be active social media is a two-way street. There's a new and emerging digital space now they're called metaphors. It's kinda like a virtual world for networking different, you can go there for different meetings or different conferences and events. So watch out more as a space emerges, could be opportunity for networking. Now that spaces are opening up again, you can potentially engage in networking in-person. That's right in the flesh and outside of Zoom, real people we exist. Just remember, go where your people are. Look for industry events, design groups, and conferences that are part of your community. Try to consider these places as both a way to find jobs or connections to specific companies, as well as the place to make friends. Just like Gemini, you never know where your connections might take you. So definitely play the long game. If the company you want to work for is having an event, go to the advent. You can meet people in network and figure out what the company culture may be like as well as make new friends. You never know if one of those conversations can help push your resume or portfolio along down the line. This is a two-way street. You want to make sure that you're a good fit for the company and the company has good fit for you. Now that you have the groundwork for getting your foot in the door for your next UX role. In the next video, we're going to discuss how you might apply for these roles. 22. Applying for UX roles: Now it's time to apply for those jobs. You can do so through LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and websites like that. But you can also apply through the company's website. When you apply, make sure that your website and all your social media profiles are consistent and match. Additionally, you want to make sure that you are customizing your application to the company you're working for. They don't want to see that you're blasting to everybody. And they want to see that you're really interested in them and the role that you're applying for at their company. If at all possible, try to get connections with people who work at that company dies you're interested in before applying. They could connect you directly with a recruiter at that company or even as high up as the hiring manager. Having those connections will push you further along and the application process and save you a lot of time in late work. This will give you a much better shot at actually getting an interview at that company. After you apply, it's best to do your own personal project management. Keep reaching out and make sure you continue to network with those at the company. Let them know you've applied and have you spoken to, see if they have an insight on the role you are seeking, see if they can make a recommendation for you. Do they know the team or the current problems that they're facing? Getting as much information as possible will help prepare you for the interview to come. Also reaching out to connections at the company will help to create some internal buzz and get your name floating around. Try to follow up within one week if you haven't heard anything yet. You can also try different channels. Aside from the application portal for that company, you could try directly emailing the hiring manager or reach out on LinkedIn. As Beth mentioned, you should reach out if you haven't heard anything after week. The rule of thumb is someone needs to hear from you about three times before they pay attention, but space them out, maybe every three or four days. When you're waiting around for that enol to pop up in your inbox, make sure you look at your junk folder just in case something slipped in there. If your company's email address isn't saved into your address book, it might be good to include that just to avoid anything from going to spam or junk folders. Another way to get your foot in the door is through a mentor. In the next video, we will discuss the importance of mentors and how you can find them. 23. Finding a mentor: Having the gardens and shared wisdom of a mentor can be invaluable in your career growth. They can be a great resource and sounding board and give you answers to questions that can feel impossible to get answers to you if you don't have the experience yet, they should be established in the industry and viewed as trusted experts in the space. They can also be a great source of inspiration. We've all had that imposter syndrome every now and then. Sometimes you need an extra boost from someone higher up are in the position that you're trying to be in to say, yeah, you're on the path and you're getting it done. So you might be thinking, that sounds perfect. How do I find a mentor? Step one is networking. Look for someone that you admire or maybe in a place where you aspire to be in. When you find that person, just reach out and be genuine, let them know of your intention, that you admire them and that you would like to get some advice from them. That will be the first step in building a relationship with a potential mentor. People are generally willing to help others as long as you are formal, concise, polite, and to the point, don't forget they have a lot going on as well on their own lives and they're doing you a favor. When asking for advice, please be very specific on the feedback that you're looking for. Say, can you look at XYZ? Is it accomplishing ABC? Beyond leaning on mentors in the space, you can also look to your peers for advice and feedback. Sharing knowledge within the field of UX is vitally important to help us all grow together. It is so much easier to ask someone for advice on how to navigate a problem versus trying to solve it on your own, especially if they've done it before. Collectively, we can grow faster and stronger by sharing knobs, which in the UX space, well, I feel like generally the community is always really open and willing to help each other out because that's what we do. We're empathetic for other users. 24. SECTION 5 | How to land a job in UX recap: We've taken you through quite a lot on this journey, everything from eBucks foundations to building your resume, creating a strong case study, getting the foot in the door, as well as applying for that job. We hope that you feel confident and knowledgeable about the space you're about to get into. The next course, we're going to help you prepare for your UX interview process. We will cover everything from building a portfolio presentation, how did you act? Critiques, whiteboarding exercises, and additional design challenges, all of which will likely be part of your design interview process. We hope to see you in the next course. Thanks for watching. Until next time from Beth and John with Pasi UX