How I use ADP list for my design career & growth
By: Arshla Jindal
Tags: Portfolio, UX, Resources, UX Design, Mentoring

Hey there! I’m someone who is a UX Designer and User Researcher, presently making my full-time transition from Engineering to Design. Though my journey has just begun and there is a long way to cover, I have used some resources along the way so far, which I wish should be made more accessible to other budding designers.

One of those magic wands to my growth has been adplist.org.

For those of you hearing it for the first time, it is a free mentorship platform, where anyone registered, can book a time slot to e-meet with industry professionals from the tech fields — Design, Development or Management. And all this help is voluntary.

In the past 7 months, I have spent the majority of my days’ hours preparing my design portfolio and polishing it and being interviewed almost every other day. (I am still doing both of these things, because I have started enjoying it so much).

So straight to the point, how I have used adplist for above things and more. I would try to mention my personal anecdotes wherever possible to support it:

For portolio

User testing of my portfolio website : It’s true that your portfolio is your product and as a designer you have to do its UX right. It’s a project in itself. So after I built the first version of my portfolio, I booked slots with 5 different mentors and asked them to go through my portfolio like an interviewer at his own office. Asked them to share their screen and keep speaking aloud about everything that comes to their mind. (Some of them giggled but the trick worked). All this while I used to sit completely quiet and just take notes (practicing a good user testing session myself). After having views of some five or more mentors, I could see the patterns in their reviews and I could make better decisions to work on improving things that didn’t feel like they were subjective. I know that feedbacks can sometime feel daunting and demotivating, but this trick is a good validation for things that really need to be changed. New case study reviews : I used to do a similar user testing of my new case study. There was one particular case study in my portfolio, which I reviewed with around 10 mentors (yes that’s crazy) and I have done 4 iterations to improve that case study. And by the end of it, two mentors complimented me that they really liked the idea and would definitely want to use the style for their own project. That was really a day-making validation coming from industry experts. (Wish to check out the case study? See here) Learning from their techniques and way of thinking: I have been lucky enough to find a few mentors at adplist who were considerate enough to share their approaches to storytelling and articulation at big companies like Google, which I then applied to my own case study. And that particular case study (after being improved with mentor’s feedback) has won me so much appreciation in every portfolio review interview round. So just learn from experts how they present their story and adapt the pieces of it to your work, you will see the magic happen.

For Interviews

Mock interviews (Feedback on how to solve for the feedbacks got in the interview rejections) : Giving a lot of interviews, also means a lot of unprepared for rejections. And they can be really rocky at the start and by the middle. But the real growth lies ahead of learning from these failures. I identified a few patterns from my failed attempts in interviews and was also prompt enough to ask interviewers for feedback and reasons for rejection with an intent to improve myself. And then practise for those lacking skills in these mentorship calls to learn and improve. One such example: During interviews, I struggled with presenting my approach to solving an impromptu design problem in a 20–30 minute call. After getting past the stage of self-doubt, I did sessions with many mentors and asked them to give me one such problem statement to solve and we should analyse my responses by the end of the call to see what went well and what could be improved. I feel a lot more confident now to face these types of interview rounds.

For Networking

Making new connections on LinkedIn: At the end of each call, I make it a point to ask the mentor for permission to connect over LinkedIn ( I rarely do this before the call). By the end of the call, you and your works would have built a good rapport with the person and they would be genuinely interested in staying in touch and be of help in future as well. From my mentor connections, I have applied for referrals (be very considerate when requesting this), I see posts from them and their connections which have been such wonderful resources to me in ample ways. You might never know, when you turn into their colleague one sunny day. Networking plays a key role in your career growth and learnings. Connecting with designers from across the world and not just your own country: Adplist gives you the country information of the mentor upfront. Initially I used to be in my comfort zone to only connect with ones from India (some intrinsic biases and unease). But then I started connecting with some overseas mentors, with whom my timezone could sync. At the start of the call, I used to feel that they might not be helpful to me understanding the design arena in India and I might have a tough time putting across my point. But those conversations have always been the most uplifting ones. Their perspective helped me see some of the pitfalls that I might encounter in interview processes in India and it also gives a peek into where Indian design industry is headed. Added bonus, few of these interactions also motivated me to apply for some of those open roles outside of India, though I had no intentions of moving out of India. These opened up a new direction for me to think. (None of those applications came to fruition as of now, but as I said, it’s just a start of the journey :) )

And for Motivation

Learning from their design career and journey : Whenever I used to introduce about myself in a call, there often were common pieces in my and my mentors’ journeys that used to strike the chord for both of us- transition from engineering to design; designer by the day and artist since childhood; self doubts about changing careers, etc. And these factors made the conversations very personal. Take time to hear your mentor’s personal journey so far and you would realize that they have hustled the same way as you are doing right now. They were never perfect and they paved their path. These are real motivations to keep doing your bid and imagine a successful journey for yourself. Keeping yourself on track when you feel a designer’s block : Aren’t there days when you know you should be doing something to advance your learnings, but you feel drained out? Yes we all have that. I used to be worried when I had no interviews scheduled for a day or for the week. I didn’t feel like starting a new personal design project. Everything used to feel like falling apart and all months of work going into vain. Imposters syndrome used to creep in. After a few days of this repeating pattern, I used adplist to schedule some calls that got me back pumped up. What you talk in such calls- ask about the books to read, useful problem statements to solve, ask about what all you should consider while joining a company, ask about how they fight these blues, request them to share their portfolio with you, ask what they do to grow from here. Or just simply present your case study again, trust me this will pull you back to track with a bottle of gatorade.

Best part is that, adplist is now adding a lot of new features, like attending the group sessions, asking questions, rescheduling, and a lot more. Make sure to respect the time of your mentors and use it judiciously to learn. Measure the change in you in few months, you will see your own success metrics falling in place.

Got more creative ways of using adplist? Let me know and I would be super excited to hear and use it…

**This post is purely intended to share my experiences with anyone interested and not promote adplist in any way. It would be a happy moment for me if this can add value to anyone’s life and growth.

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