This is a brief story about a journey of the problem-solving process for my job application improvement.
After deciding to move to a new team, I’m currently looking for a new Pre-seed/Seed level small-sized startup where I could work with more ownership and leadership on my job.
Back to early-mid 2022…
During the spring and summer of 2022, with an ambition to get a job in the UK, I applied to more than 100+ companies(literally), and like other candidates, receiving continuous rejection response from the companies were so painful to experience.
So I asked one of my UK friends for some feedback about my CV, and the below was the first lesson I learnt from him.
Job application is not a love letter, so try to show yourself as a proficient candidate rather than a human being.
That’s true. And now even when I provide a bit of consultation to fresh/junior designers for their application, I always tell them ‘try to focus on the goal for this document — Job hunting!’
And that actually worked. Thanks to his advice, I met a huge turning point in job application work.
Based on some feedback, I improved my application, especially cover letters in a way to show a bit more about ‘what value can I deliver for the company’.
As a result, that CV made me earn almost 10+ times of interview requests in the initial step. It was a huge success for me, especially considering that I had interviews in Seoul, with a +8hrs of time gap from London.
To recap, with more goal-oriented improvement,
Before — Only 1~2.5% of interview request rate in total applications
After — Hit 10% of interview request rate in only a couple of months.
As a result, I was able to achieve 2 final offers from two companies.
But soon, I met a very heart-breaking moment and had to keep moving forward.
I won’t tell you in detail about this because it’s not the point of this article.
After a tough season, I had to face a tougher Hell. Burning job market even with fewer job openings than in the spring & summer.
Hold your breath and jump into that fire hole again.
After a few invaluable lessons I learned from former experiences, I started to re-write job applications and cover letters. I wrote slightly different cover letters every time, and constantly check if there was any lack of components in my application to show my capability and potential to recruiters and hiring managers.
Since I already have some successful experiences that led to interview request, I was pretty confident. I kept applying with the same type of applications.
And I bombed.
So far, I think I submitted applications to the companies after thorough reviews of JD and long time thinking every time, but somehow my former strategy didn’t seemed to work well like before.
Let’s define what is wrong with my applications!
I asked for some feedback from the friend again and to reduce the possibility of a subjective perspective, I tried to get some advice from broader people. Even though that person is a junior, it didn’t matter for me. What I need was to get some tips and advice to improve my current application so that I can successfully transit my career from UI/UX designer to the product designer. And he recently succeeded to get the same position, it could be also a valuable piece of advice for me.
Although it was only two people I got responses to, through their advice I found a few common aspects they’re pinpointing.
You might expect that there would be an elaboration on that here, but before, I think it would be more important to share what position and level I was targeting and what conditions I had.
I had…
1) Not much numeric data to introduce with regard to my projects
2) Not much project that can show iterative and constant product development
3) etc…
And now, here’s the feedback, especially from my friend, a senior designer.
1) Lack of ‘what exactly you did(contribution)’
2) Can’t find ‘What did I impact in that role’
3) The content in the career didn’t give a strong(impactful) impression
4) Add your authentic add-ons concerning my capability and skills
Etc…
And yes, I have to admit that some of em were quite heart-breaking, but I think that might make sense from a different point of view because so far my application seemed to go back to one of K-application(like a ‘K’ for K-pop) versions rather than my actual situation.
And there were also one of the possible problems that might cause low interview request— Tons of Texts.
Problem definition about my job application
To recap, my applications were so focused on ‘I’m able to do A, B and C’ than showing what they might expect. Yes, I should admit that I approached it in the wrong way with a too strong belief in my former strategy and the good old days' memories.
Ideation — How might I improve my job application to become more engaging?
I build a strategy based on found problems. And in this phase, I accepted from a junior designer’s advice more.
- Elaborate based on the framework — what did you do in what works with more specific elaboration than just an ambiguous definition of my works.
- Make my strength as a person, and designer more stand out and fast to catch all in a short time, with pill component.
Actually, this is my new approach so deffo need validation. But I thought keywords are better engaging than long-novel. - Make it concise as possible.
Imagine that you’re facing a tiny scroll bar when you visit someone’s website. Would you start from the beginning and read with patience no matter how much time would it take? I doubt that. It’s unlikely to happen and I don’t want to give others the same experience. (This could be also User Experience Design from my POV.) - Rearrange the layout based on the priorities.
I’m pretty sure that including myself, many job seekers want to introduce themselves as much as possible, to become a ‘chosen’ one in the market. However, actually just pouring tons of content inside the document is not a good idea. And that is actually one of the key pieces of advice I provide to the fresh/juniors when I mentored them about the portfolio. “Be brief for god sake!!!!” And yes, we’re all humans, sometimes we made the same mistakes when we’re in a pretty desperate situation.
So…. You’re almost there, readers!!
To show my as-is, my former CV was well-organised but looked like this👇
And now it’s changed into this👇
In this to-be design, I also try to make connections between content only for one goal — don’t make anything on this CV wasted or meaningless. If it would become useless, remove it.
If you see my new CV, you might find out that I tried to connect the keywords below my name to make more natural connection with each of my careers and activities.
First, if there’s any actual product link I can provide, I embedded the direct link to it so that reviewers can find out more about me easily by simply ‘clicking’ the text.
Secondly, I tried to more focus on introducing more important content even among the important content! That was hard, but prioritisation is one of the key skills as a pragmatic designer, so I tried my best.
Lastly, I described my past careers in more connecting with the keyword pills so that a hiring manager can check details through my career history after seeing the brief introduction.
Now I keep searching for a job with my new CV.
If I approached with the correct strategy, I believe someone would get in touch with me and the number of them would be higher than the past days. This is my OKR for my application.
When I saw my new CV, it was also a bit heartbreaking because it recalled past failures and regrets, but the past is the past, I believe what’s more important is the present and future.
