Career transition to UX Design: Tips for Job Applications
By: Jean Saung
Tags: Product Design, Job Search, Careers, Job Hunting, Job Application

Career transition to UX Design: Tips for Job Applications

Job Search Part 3

From consulting for over a year, to applying to get my first full-time job as a product designer, and then a second time for my current role, I experienced first hand how exciting, rewarding, stressful, uncertain, and even discouraging a job search can be.

Perhaps you will only have to persevere for 1 week before your first full time job offer (unlikely, but possible), or you will search for 6 months to 1 year (more likely, but let’s try to shorten that, also consulting is an option). The questions are, “how lucky are you?” (Which IS NOT within your power), and “how can you increase your chances?” (Specifically with presentation and timing, which ARE within your power).

This is part 3 in a 3 part Job Search series:

Part 1: Tips for Resumes

Part 2: Tips for Portfolios

Part 3: Tips for Applications

Please Keep In Mind

Take steps to understand what kind of company you are looking for, what you enjoy doing, and how you want to grow as a designer. Try conducting a few informational interviews. If you have a good awareness about what works for you, then what remains is to intentionally make yourself available for when a truly good role matches your requirements. That role exists out there, hiring managers just need to know that you exist.

Also, companies often have a job posting just floating around out there, even if they have no immediate need for that role, or they suddenly don’t have the budget or bandwidth to hire for a designer at that moment. For these, and many other reasons, don’t take the silence personally, more than likely your application was never seen.

Job Applications

Cover Letters

The original purpose of cover letters was for companies to gauge a candidate’s enthusiasm and fit for the company. These letters still have a positive impact for other industries, like applied sciences, and for applicants to higher level positions. Unfortunately, that is not the case for entry level UX roles.

Do’s and Don’ts:

Don’t: My advice, don’t spend time writing cover letters. At this stage in your UX career, cover letters get you nowhere. I have yet to hear about someone getting their first UX job offer for an entry level role where they actually wrote a cover letter.

In this competitive climate, it is another way for companies with too many applicants to slow down the river of applications and find another reason to eliminate your entry. Or they may ignore your application altogether because out of the 200 applications for that role, someone with more experience came along. They require a cover letter? Thanks, but SKIP.

Do: You can still try writing a cover letter if it is your dream role. Just don’t be surprised by the radio silence. Frame the cover letter as a writing exercise that helps you think about your qualifications and better understand what you like about that role or company.

If an application requires a message of some kind, go ahead and compose a short introduction. Otherwise, focus your time and energy on rounding out your portfolio, adding portfolio projects that showcase your expertise, or looking for consulting projects that give your application more credibility.

Applications

Hiring managers need the budget to hire more talent. Once they get approval, they start looking for candidates within a specific window of time depending on the company and the projects they have in their roadmaps. If they operate hiring cycles on 3 weeks, they will aggregate all applicants, and try to time successive interviews to reach a final decision and make an offer to just one candidate. You took a 3 week break from applying? Well then, you just missed the window and you never even got on their radar.

Never underestimate the power of consistently applying, and applying by sheer numbers.

To really drive home the sheer numbers approach, I will be transparent about my numbers. During my first job search, on and off for about 15 months (during which I also worked on 4 separate client projects), I sent about 100 applications. I interviewed with 6 companies, got 2 onsite interviews, and 1 offer for a role that checked all of my boxes. I didn’t try for another offer because I was really excited about that company and the team I would join. A year and a half later, during my second job search over 3 months (during which I also went on 3 separate vacations), I sent in about 120 applications. I interviewed with 31 companies, had 7 onsite interviews, and 2 offers.

To some people this may seem like a lot of applications. To others, this will be old news or maybe not even that many applications at all. Whatever your perception of these numbers, it is easier for you to find one of the hundreds of companies looking to hire talent at the moment, than for the company to find you in the thousands candidates looking for work.

If you persevere, you will get interviews and only interviews will get you closer to an offer.

Do’s and Don’ts

Don’t: If you really want a full time job sooner than later, try not to take long breaks between searching for jobs and sending in applications, even if you are busy working on freelance projects.

Do: Send at least a few applications every week or aim to send 30 applications every month. Reduce your mental load by checking hiring platforms only once each week. Apply to all the postings that match your criteria for industry, location, salary etc. Try not to invest too much or treat each application too preciously. Look for new job openings again around the same time next week. Companies are pooling candidates, so consolidate them back.

Don’t: Rely on referrals. Your network of people who can make referrals is limited. The chance their companies are hiring for someone at the first stage of their UX career, at the same time you need a job is next to nil.

Do: Ask for the referrals, but don’t get complacent. A referral, no matter how enthusiastic, is not magic. They may advocate for you and sing your praises, but only your skills and experiences managing to pattern match with what the company needs at the right moment will get you the job.

Don’t: Rely on recruiters. They are not going to be very helpful at this stage of your career. When companies are working with recruiters, they are trying to hire for roles that are harder to fill, like mid-level or senior designers and directors. Unfortunately, entry level talent will continue to get the same feedback, that recruiters are looking for candidates with “more experience”.

Do: Feel free to talk to recruiters, they have a lot of insight, just don’t expect it to lead to a job offer. Initially I talked with a few recruiters, but the value I got was mostly a better understanding of what the current state of hiring is, a less biased opinion of what my prospects are and a few tips for my portfolio.

Don’t: Be discouraged from applying because of the multiple years of experience required in the job description.

Do: Apply anyway. Hiring managers will still consider applications from designers with fewer years of experience than written in their job description. I got to the final round of interviews when I applied for a role that said 5 years of experience required when I had 3 years of experience.

What a company needs can shift at a moment’s notice. Maybe they needed a senior designer, but then promoted a designer internally. Now they actually need an entry level designer to support that designer. Or they were hiring for one senior designer, then got more budget to hire a junior designer. Or one designer put in their 2 weeks notice and now they need to hire to backfill that role. All of these scenarios are possible, so get yourself into the running!

TLDR

This stage of your job search is about perseverance. Don’t focus on cover letters, referrals, or recruiters. Join multiple job sites and use the sheer numbers approach. Shoot for 100 applications submitted in 3 months. Regularly apply like clockwork to get on the radar of companies that are hiring. Companies can only hire you if they know you exist.

I hope you try these tips and discover, like I said in Part 1 and Part 2, your skills are a perfect match for a role out there!

Let me know if I have missed anything or if you would like further explanation. These are my opinions as a woman of color designer in tech. Although I like to think most of these tips apply universally, your experiences may differ.