How I applied design thinking to my job search
Lessons from a 3 week sprint. 🏃🏽
At the end of 2016, I took a year out to do some travel. When I was ready to get back to work I had the luxury of returning to the world of work with fresh eyes.
To find the perfect job, I did a 3 week sprint applying an iterative approach, as I would any other ‘design’ project. This is what I have learnt about getting hired in 2018…
(By the way, this is work in progress, I am still looking for the perfect job!)
UX/UI recruiting trends 2018
At the end of 2017, I realised some distinct trends have emerged:
More defined verticals
- New verticals emerged as companies make the digital gold rush – the clearest emerging market being Fintech. Existing verticals have become more stratified.
- Companies want UX Designers with experience in those specialised verticals, e.g. ecommerce, b2b or b2c.
Design evangelism
- Companies of all sizes have realised the value of user-centered design. But they may not have found the best way of implementing it, nor do they fully understand the UCD process yet.
- Companies need designers with leadership experience, especially those who can evangelise UCD within the wider team.
Yet more startups
- There are a lot of startups! Some really interesting ones.
- Many of these startups want ‘generalists’ – it is common for them to call these people ‘Product Designers’. But larger, established companies are still hiring by specialism, I.e. UX Researcher, UX Architect or Interaction Designer.
Data-driven design
- Much of UX practice now revolves around data-driven decision making.
- Lean UX has gained a lot of influence: Now UXers are expected to validate their assumptions and hypothesis with real data.
- In real terms, this means talk/test with users regularly and iterate.
Technological developments
- Biggest trends are automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning. They sound big and scary but really, this is business as usual. It has been happening for a while.
- Augmented reality and virtual reality appear to be hot topics, although still a niche interest for actual consumers in my opinion. It’s still a gimmick and people need to find the value outside of gaming.
- Professional Services will be the most affected area in coming years as the digital sector seeks to automate the traditional ‘safe’ roles.
UX/UI Portfolio Advice
Getting in front of someone and talking to them is still the easiest way to land a job you want. It’s still about networking! Therefore, it’s important to have a flexible portfolio that you can use to target companies you like.
Website or PDF portfolio?
A portfolio website is a nice to have but it’s a real time sink.
A keynote or PDF portfolio is preferred these days and I think recruiters are less impressed by websites now anyway. The benefit is portability, and you can customise the deck to suit your audiences. This is actually essential and is a massive timesaver.
Copy short URL
Sketch is ideal for building a deck, simply build your artboards at 1920x1080 and export as JPEG.
I built this automation script to build a PDF from a folder of images, it saved me tonnes of time:
Structure
Structure
After testing with recruiters, I found the best structure for my interview deck was:
- 3x slides about you and your background. Make it personal but professional, with some kind of short personal statement.
- 1x slide showing you entire skill set — just a list.
- 2–3 project case studies demonstrating the problem, solution and your results.
- 1x Closing slide with your contact details.
20x slides maximum.
This is my final interview deck:
Case studies
It is important to present your work well and show your process. You must be able to demonstrate joined up design thinking and good communication.
- Show the most recent and relevant work, now is the time to drop some of those old student projects from your portfolio.
- When emailing your deck, just include the top level highlights as a teaser. Reserve some of the more detailed, process-oriented slides for the in-person interview.
- Results can be quantitative (how you increased sales or adoption) or qualitative (a LinkedIn endorsement or praise from your boss).
- Another key factor is how you used data to validate your ideas. Read a book called Lean UX by Laura Klein or watch her videos.
Work on closing your skills gaps
It’s competitive these days with many people wanting to get in on an exciting career in design. Therefore you need to stand out by having experience and skills.
- Identity you weak points and find ways to fill your gaps in your knowledge.
- Do some online courses— I did a quick diploma course in psychology and user research because they are my weaker areas.
- The Interaction Design Foundation do excellent value for money for courses and you can use this link to get 25% off.
Get 25% off online UX courses at Interaction-design.org with this link:
Build your Linkedin profile
- Spend time building your LinkedIn profile. Make yourself look professional, organised and sell yourself.
- Think about your message and put that near the top.
- What are some ways you can grab attention? This is an animation I posted, it got a few more recruiters talking to me.
Build your CV / Resume
Even in 2017, you still need to have a CV/resume!
It is far easier to build a resume after you have completed your Linkedin profile.
- Provide a very short 3 sentence personal statement at the top. Tailor this to targets if possible.
- Keep the design simple—Use black 11–12pt text in a nice font.
- Some employers are put off by pictures or overly designed resumes.
Approaching recruiters
Whatever you think of recruiters, I have found them to be most helpful to discuss opportunities with and see what roles are out there, but also they are a great barometer – a means to gauge my skills and see where I need to improve.
Test and deploy your portfolio
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- Get your a friend to check over your Linkedin, CV and portfolio to catch typos and give you confidence.
- Host your Portfolio/Resume on Google Docs or Dropbox because large email attachments are often blocked.
- Your file should still be <10MB.
- Use a link shortener on the URL for dropping into messages. https://goo.gl
- Maybe post your portfolio on your Facebook feed for additional feedback. Actually I got a couple of leads through doing this!
Connect with recruiters
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Recruiters will all be on Linkedin — you can find them through your connections, by searching or ‘following’ the activity of other people working in your field. Many contracts can be found this way.
I received a free trial of Linkedin premium and it turned out to be well-worth it. You’ll get special stalking powers like viewing other people’s activity.
Develop a personal message
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Connecting to recruiters is simple, use the same techniques they use find people—spam them! Don’t be long-winded and be direct about what you want:
- Say you’d like to connect, what you do, a piece of relevant experience, and then ask if they’d be happy to chat about opportunities on the phone.
- Many good recruiters will call you there and then. Be prepared for a mini interview. This is actually a good opportunity to refine your message. Think on your feet!
- Also be aware that recruiters are collaborators and they will be looking to match you with a good role for your skills. Just be clear about what you want.
A good recruiter will be very eager to get to know you and show enthusiasm about getting you hired at the right gig.
- I found many recruiters put me forward for roles that were not appropriate for my skills. However, have faith, be persistent with them – they can help you. But maybe work more closely with the good ones.
My ‘invitation to connect’ example:
Hi (name),
I’d like to connect with you. I am a Senior Product Designer in London with 10 years experience in UX/UI — with leadership experience. I’m currently looking for contract opportunities.
Would you be free for a call to see if I’m a good fit for any opportunities?
Peter
I tailored this message according to the recruiter by changing just a couple of words, e.g. “b2b SaaS experience”. My success rate was around 80%, usually getting at least a reply on Linked in, and around 30% set up a call that day. 99% at least connected with me.
It’s quite important to stagger this over several days or you can quickly become inundated with calls.
Do some mock interviews
I needed to build my interview technique – this is what really helped:
- Ask a friend or partner to do some mock interview questions with you. They can be simple questions like, “What are you strengths and weaknesses?”. You will be surprised at just how unprepared you are, and its a great way to hone your pitch.
- Think about your key messages, you should have around three points—try to weave those into your answers.
- I did a test interview at a job I didn’t really want as good practice. Actually the mindset of trying hard without actually wanting the job resulted in them making an offer!
- Tailor your pitch deck to match the business.
Questions by interviewers and how I answered them
Introductions: Turn it into a conversation
I found the most success by spending the first 15 minutes listening to the interviewer give me a background on the business. This is a good opportunity to feel out their needs and design requirements. This then allows you to deliver a strong pitch based around those needs.
Portfolio review
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The conversation should move smoothly to your portfolio, or if not, offer to show it.
When presenting, a deck of slides on an iPad was highly successful and many interviewers commented in how effective it was. I used a great app called Minimal Folio which allows you sync JPEGs (made in sketch) as slides. It makes the experience much more intimate and tactile.
Ultimately, I think employers were looking for a cohesive story here. It’s as much about how your communicate your thinking as the ideas themselves. Relevance to the company’s project area or mission was of key importance.
Be prepared to get questions like, “why did you do it like that?”. This is where show your critique skills. If you feel you could have done anything better be honest about it and name the limitations… This shows both insight and humility – you’re human!
Do you design with data…?
Your data-driven design story must stack up. Use real data to substantiate assumptions about your users.
The emphasis for designers now is to ensure they are capable of making the correct design decisions by validating ideas with data/research.
Data is a scary word for designers, but whenever an interviewer asks you about it just say you “did research”. It means the same thing: data can be quantitative or qualitative user research.
Getting to know user needs and pain points is the cornerstone of user centred design (UCD) and lean UX. So much so, that Laura Klein renamed UCD to PDD: pain-driven design.
Are you UX or UI, what percentage?
Even some recruiters and employers still struggle with the definition of UI and UX.
As you will know, UX and UI are different things, they are specialisms and you have to think of them as layers of a larger process.
UX/UI Generalist or Product Designer
If you sit on the fence, I.e. you are a generalist, you may have a hard time. Recruiters will want to pigeon hole you because that makes you an easier sell to their clients. If you are truly an end-to-end, full stack designer you need to show you have a good amount of expertise in all the right areas.
Junior generalists are really suited to start ups because they need your all-in-one capability. Bigger companies tend to hire specialists.
If you are a generalist at a senior level, you may be suitable for a leadership role at a medium-large company.
UI Designer / Interaction Designer
If you are UI focused you need to demonstrate that your a more than just a pixel pusher. How did you work through a problem? In what ways did you own the process and work with others? Your visual polish needs to be top notch.
What tools do you use?
This is a housekeeping question but still a chance to sell yourself.
From my understanding, most teams are using Sketch and InVision. For UX, I Axure, Balsamiq and Omnigraffle are still popular.
But also talk about research tools like Typeform, Usertesting.com usabilityhub or other means of collecting data.
Do you code? Then now is the time to drop that into your pitch.
What else did you do? Did you build a particular automation to capture data? Have you built your own tools? Then even better. (Check out this plugin called Butter I made for Sketch).
What’s your salary expectation?
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Recruiters are a good source of info on this and it’s worth asking around for guidance. Once you have been given a salary recommendation by a recruiter you will feel less sheepish discussing this in an interview – you can also say your figure is backed up by people who know.
Conclusion: Thoughts so far
So far, in these three weeks I have been made two formal offers but have not yet found the dream job. Its good progress, but now I need to iterate and scale it up. How will I achieve that? Find out next time.
The quest continues… I hope you’ve found this useful, and please follow me to see how this adventure unfolds in Part 2…👞👞
If you are hiring for a UX/UI Designer in London, I’m available! Please get in touch.
