The Surprising Reason You Can’t Break into Product Design (Despite Your Skills)
Its simply because people are not seeing your profile. Here is how things are from the view of a person who hires for this role:
Recently, I conducted interviews with a lot of freshers trying to break into product design, which meant I got to look into a lot of resumes and portfolios. There were over 900 applicants.
I was able to go through at least 300 of them, This means that if you were one of those who applied, the chances of me seeing your application are quite low.
Why is that? Why are a lot of profiles not being seen?
The problem is that only a cetrain amount of candidates can get Visibility!
There are a lot of aspiring designers like you trying to get this position and you might even be the best among them all but we won’t know that unless we get to see your profile
There is the obvious human factor of me or anyone being incapable of going through 900 different profiles, making us miss a lot of profiles.
As a firm, our goal would not be to hire the #1 candidate that is available, but instead to get a great candidate to fill the role, and this person could be the #2 or #3 best candidate in the pool; it doesn’t matter.
The truth is that we do end up finding our candidates through other means outside of this applicant pool too, and the people who reach us through these channels have much higher visibility than the rest.
- Linkedin works:
Most people who reached out to me or my team got their profile viewed at least once, and that is all it takes sometimes to get you into the interview process.
But this is more widely known these days, and still, the people who go out of their way to reach out find themselves at an advantage over the others who don’t.
2. Referrals:
They may or may not work, but they are a good means to approach people through LinkedIn, as they will have an incentive to take your request forward as well.
In our company, we considered referred candidates the same as any other candidate but this might vary in other cases
3. Emails are dependable.
This is a known practice; sending cold emails works, and the more personalized it is, the better!
This was an effective email that was shared with me, and the personalized message did grab my interest and make me give their profile a closer look.
Some more unique or rare cases:
These unique cases are cases of high effort and high reward. I will only recommend trying these cases after trying the ones above to a significant extent.
- Networking events:
I went to a design networking event while hiring was in place, and there were a lot of potential candidates there. It was a really easy way to impress any potential employers who were hiring. The best part is that you can show off your communication and personality in these cases!
I mostly followed up with people whom I met there, and this could be what gives you visibility.
2. Sending a personalized video message:
This has worked for me personally too. Once I recorded a video for a company I really wanted to work with, I sent it to them through LinkedIn, and within the same day, I had an interview aligned with them.
One advantage I felt with this method was that you would be able to get a glimpse into your personality and communication that text messages don’t.
3. Agencies that help hire designers for companies:
There are talent agencies that are beginning to show up more frequently that connect designers with potential companies that are hiring. Getting in touch with one of these firms can help you get visible as well.
4. Announcing it on social media:
I would recommend this as the last method to take. It is essentially preparing a custom video or a project for the one dream company you want to join. Tagging them on the post and adding them to social media or a platform like LinkedIn.
If your post gets enough traction, it might reach the hands of the recruiter, who can then proceed with this.
It’s a very high-risk, high-reward approach, with you eliminating most of your options and going for one. But there have been many success stories using this approach as well.
But please don’t go too far for visibility.
There is always a line that we should not cross in any situation, and one of those lines is to try and reach hiring managers through personal messaging and phone calls. This is taking things a bit far, and I would not recommend against it because it sets you up with a bad impression.
Final thoughts
Just by applying one or two things from this checklist, it can easily set you apart from the rest.
Making you stand out among the top 10% of candidates.
Even if, after being visible, you find yourself not being able to get into the interview process, I will recommend asking for feedback on your work so that you can bring it up to the level that is expected.
I am in for an interview; what now?
But this is just the first step in the process, and I have noticed many candidates who seemed to show high potential do not make the cut when an interview is scheduled with them.
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You will be notified in my next article, where I will be going into detail on how certain candidates fail during product design interviews and some of the magical questions that can help you out.
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