Landing my first job in tech as a Visual Designer
By: Aria Todd
Tags: Career Paths, UX Design, Career Change, User Experience, Visual Design

Photo by Domenico Loia on Unsplash

In April 2021, I took my first full-time role in tech! I’m currently a Visual Designer at an agency that specializes in Data Visualization called The DataFace. I started this transition to tech back in February 2020, leaving my job as a Technical Designer at a Children’s Apparel company to go back to school for a full-time UX Bootcamp with CUNY TechWorks.

The pandemic hit in the midst of my transition, which hindered my journey but didn’t completely derail it. Getting my first role took a total of 10 months after graduating from the program in June of 2020.

I thought I would write a bit about this journey.

First off a disclaimer: Everything I’m about to write about is only what worked for me and doesn’t guarantee that if you do the same things it will land you a job. I’m sure some things are specific to me, my career experience, and factors I can’t control for.

Portfolio, Portfolio, Portfolio 💼

You probably have heard this a million times that one of the most important things a designer needs to have before applying to jobs is a portfolio (though there are some ways to get around that, that wasn’t the case for me.)

This was where I focused first. I ended up teaching myself WordPress with Elementor (via good ol’ YouTube University), did a ton of research on web hosting services (I went with DreamHost at the end, not sponsored haha), and started the slow and arduous process of building my personal brand (I really like purple and old school web aesthetics 👀)

Let me start by saying, I redid my portfolio at least 8 different times through this whole process.

This is normal, not ideal, but normal.

What I will say in hindsight is that it’s better to get your content down first before jumping into any website builder, design tool, or codebase.

Content before design, y’all. Say it with me.

But being who I am, very excited about the shiny new design tools and my personal aesthetics, I did not follow my own advice.

Don’t be like me.

So I backtracked to writing out all my website content in Notion (any documentation tool will do, I just really like Notion, again not sponsored!) This included my landing page introduction, my bio, and most importantly my case studies.

Once I got them to a good place (at the time at least) I made them live on Version 1.0 of my portfolio website in October 2020 — this whole process took me 4 full months.

But it wasn’t all rosy from there…

My first projects? Didn’t cut it. 🙅🏽‍♀️

Thankfully, I learned this early on when I applied to my first job using portfolio 1.0. It was for a Junior UI Designer position.

I got rejected right away.

My first two case studies were a complete wash. Both were Bootcamp projects (more on why your Bootcamp projects aren’t enough in a moment.) Neither were very good design-wise. It was very obvious that they were novice projects.

And that’s okay. I had to start somewhere, right?

I saved the constructive feedback from the hiring manager actually…

I’ll share it (company and their name kept anonymous):

Thank you so much for applying to the UI Design position. I appreciate you taking the time to show us your work. At this time, we will not move forward in the hiring process due to insufficient quality of visual UI design examples. This will be a fairly large portion of the work on day one. Keep working at it! Thank you again for taking the time to apply. We wish you the best of luck ahead.

When I first read this, I was devastated. I thought I was a strong UI Designer. I was always praised for my UI design skills among my Bootcamp peers. How could this be?

But I calmed myself and worked up the will to respectfully reply:

Thanks so much for your time and consideration, and for your honest feedback. It really means a lot to me as I know there is something actionable that I can improve upon! I plan to add some new projects and better quality of work to my arsenal soon. Take care and good luck finding the right fit for your team!

To which I got another response:

Of course, Aria! And thank you again for taking the time to apply. You are clearly very creative and an impressive thinker as well. Refining the visual UI output would make you a major force for this type of position. Best of luck to you on your journey…though I don’t think you’ll need it!

This lit the most massive fire in me to do better and be better because I knew I could succeed with time and effort. 🔥

Building Personal Projects 👷🏽‍♀️

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

So I want to really push on this, Bootcamp projects are not enough to land you a job. I feel like I’m beating a dead horse by saying this, but again, Bootcamp projects alone will not get you over the finish line. This is only the beginning of your journey. It’s those personal projects that get you noticed (better yet if they go live in some way too, bonus points.)

In October 2020, I got accepted to a mentorship program called Out in Tech U. It’s a program that pairs LGBTQ+ job seekers with seasoned professionals in their industry or related industry for several weeks to guide them on a personal project of their choice.

My mentor (Lexus, a Software Engineer) and I embarked on this wonderful journey together. I’ll skip to the best part by saying that it was this project that had a huge hand in getting me noticed by recruiters and ultimately landing my first job.

Thus the Fashion Study Center project was born.

Two key things that set me apart with this project:

Lexus encouraged me to learn Webflow on this project. While interviewing, with my now current employer, they needed someone who knew Webflow for a client project they were about to start. My proficiency in it gave me an edge. Knowing Webflow was a huge value add for the small team.

on this project. While interviewing, with my now current employer, they needed someone who knew Webflow for a client project they were about to start. My proficiency in it gave me an edge. Knowing Webflow was a huge value add for the small team. I was able to fully flex my design eye, interests, and creativity. I’m passionate about Fashion and Education. That passion shined through when I presented my work both online to recruiters and live with hiring managers.

It’s important to put your best projects front and center, and craft the story around them effectively.

2–3 strong projects are better than 5–6 mediocre ones.

I also designed random things all the time, from design prompts, to one-off screens and things. Even if it was bad stuff (most was) I just kept designing stuff. It sounds basic, but it’s helpful in the long run.

Presenting The Work 😎

I made sure to highlight the best and most eye-catching details at first glance. Most recruiters will only spend seconds scanning your portfolio before deciding if you are eligible for the next round. Capturing their attention is key, and I did that through strong visuals at the very start of my case studies.

Don’t make them work too hard to get to the good stuff.

However, this is not everything. Proof of your design and problem-solving skills gets the attention of hiring managers, so the content of the case studies is important too.

I won’t get too deep here as there are countless resources available on how to structure case studies on the web (and I’m sure you, like me, have read or watched too many to count.)

In addition to my online portfolio, I made presentation decks for my live interviews (all Zoom interviews for me.) Aesthetics matter there as well, but I think being able to speak to your work with an air of expertise and excitement is half the battle.

Practice makes perfect. It gets easier after the second or third interview, at least in my case it did.

I was nervous every time though, that doesn’t go away. 🥲

Experience Working with Teams 👏🏽

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

The last piece of the puzzle for me was volunteerism. I joined two volunteer projects that allowed me to work with developers and other designers to solve problems in the social impact space, another passion of mine and a sector I wished to pursue in my career.

When on calls with recruiters and hiring managers, as well as in my case studies where applicable (this portfolio project for instance, where I designed an application to assist caseworkers to house homeless youth) I was sure to speak to the fact that I have experience with collaborating with a team, handing off designs to be built, and learning from my peer’s skillsets.

Though I was still very new, the fact that I managed to work collaboratively at all was helpful in some of the interview stages.

So don’t be afraid to do a bit of volunteer work, so long as it’s not exploitative and the value you will get from it speaks to your greater career goals. Do what’s right for you though, and be tactical about the projects you join.

Carving a Niche ✂️

So some people advise not to niche yourself down too quickly, and while I agree with that sentiment, I do think it’s important to find things to set yourself apart.

It’s important to be really direct about what kind of designer you are and want to become.

For example, my landing area currently says:

“I’m a Product Designer who is passionate about iterating and innovating for Social Impact and optimizing Accessibility. I dabble in code and thrive with developer collaboration.”

The idea here is to paint a picture of who I am as a designer, where my strengths are, and what I strive for.