Landing your First UX Design Job with 0 Industry Experience
By: Tiffany Eaton
Tags: Self Improvement, Design, UX, Life Lessons, Startup

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The question of searching for UX design jobs as a new UX designer gets asked a lot and I receive these kinds of questions a lot to the point where writing a blog post about it might help eager designers search for their first UX job. A question I received out of many pertaining to this topic is: “How can I advance further towards the UX/UI industry as a rookie? How can I land actual UX/UI jobs with 0 experience in working at real companies?”

Get an internship

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The demand for UX designers is growing but this means the competition is as well. If you didn’t do an internship in college or don’t have too much job experience, getting an internship may be a better choice for you than getting an actual job because an internship exposes you to how the design industry works. It makes it easier to transition to a full time position as you have learned how design works in real time and how to apply the skills you learned in school in real situations where your design and the people matter.

An internship allows you to learn and make as many mistakes as you can before working full-time. You also learn about how to find and interview for jobs in the process which is an important skill to have if you plan on transitioning from and to different places.

Overall an internship allows you to understand your role and duties surrounding your position as well as any expectations and assumptions you may have about working. I have a few tips that have helped me get my first internship here as well as another post about the unspoken expectations of your design internship here.

Recruiters are your friend

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If you have a Linkedin account, refine it and when you feel like it showcases all of your skills and experience, reach out to recruiters on Linkedin who are hiring and introduce yourself. Do not just message recruiters your resume and portfolio without giving them context. Just like meeting a new person for the first time, you need to be thoughtful and honest about yourself to them. Also, first impressions count.

From messaging a recruiter perspective, you need to know exactly how you can help them and how they can help you. Tell recruiters about how your skills and background would be a good fit for the company based on what they are doing. If the company has any problems they are currently facing, what can you do to help them? By messaging recruiters about how you can contribute to the company shows them that you have done your research and that you are very passionate about tackling challenges and opportunity. Even if they don’t currently have UX positions, by making a memorable impression, you never know what could happen in the future.

Overall, it is good to do research on the company and how that might be a good fit for you. After all, people hire based on how they can help you as well as whether or not you have the potential to grow. Also link them to your portfolio and resume which will help them pass along this information if they are interested.

Build a network

Find UX networking events around your area that you can to go to and talk to designers. Expanding your design network is key to connecting with awesome people, making meaningful relationships, learning about design and finding people who may be able to refer you a place you may want to work at. Going back to my previous tip, if you have any second connections who know someone (i.e. recruiter) from x company, ask them to intro you. That never hurts and people have gotten jobs through secondary connections because that person knew someone from a company who was hiring.

In general, use your connections (friends, professors, Linkedin) and ask them if they could connect you to anymore or a company who is hiring.

Don’t wait till you get a job; work on projects!

If you have school projects and hackathons, be sure to have a project section on your resume where you can highlight those projects! Side projects are a good way to starting a conversation and an article from Tanner Christensen, a designer at Facebook, did just that despite not having formal design experience here.

Once you have projects, curate your portfolio

Along with your resume, a portfolio is crucial to applying for any UX design job. It showcases your skills and thinking to people who don’t know you personally. A strong portfolio with well articulated thoughts and design goes a long way and is one of the major factors to getting the job. I have tips on what not to do when designing a portfolio here.

It also helps to ask other designers for feedback on improving your portfolio because it is one of the first things recruiters will see and get you through the resume screening. Feedback is not just an important part of the design process, but in real life. It allows you to improve and learn. :)

If you have any questions about design, message me on LinkedIn and I’ll write about it!

To help you get started on owning your design career, here are some amazing tools from Rookieup, a site I used to get mentorship from senior designers:

Links to some other cool reads: