#UX: January Job Search
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My Story. The long version:
I’m Kasey, a User Experience Designer in Palo Alto. I design ethical, efficient, and inspiring products and services. Before Designlab’s UX Academy, I acquired a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Tufts University and SMFA. I also attended pre-college at RISD for digital photography.
Then I moved to the West coast where all the tech and design was happening. I entered 8 hackathons. Won 1. With that same team, we got to final 7 out of 120 teams for YC Hacks. Built out a startup around that and got to Y Combinator interviews W15, but was turned down. I worked on some more startups for friends, then took a job at Minted as a visual designer, and worked here happily for a year.
Then I realized once again I didn’t want to make a product only look pretty — I wanted to make it work and I wanted to influence the business strategy. I’m proficient with Sketch, Adobe CC, inVision, and the full scope of the UX process from research, to architecture, sketches, wireframes, user flows, rapid prototyping, usability testing, and preliminary user interfaces. I also know enough front-end code to communicate with developers. I am now seeking a full-time role in the Bay Area in User Experience or Product Design.
The Search Criteria
For my job search criteria, I decided to look for Series B+ companies with over 100 employees, and through the month I broadened this to Series A+ with over 50 employees. What I was looking for was financial stability and at least a couple other designers on the team. I do not want to be a solo designer, nor a freelancer at this time. I want to go into a cozy office everyday with big challenges in a semi-collaborative setting.
My favorite focuses of interest are discovering business and user goals through research, interaction design, and branding. I enjoy rapid prototyping and uncovering key sticky insights. My main industries of interest are cutting-edge technologies, gaming, and products for children. However this can be broadened by my general design ethos:
My current design ethos is I believe design teams should be seen as a source of business strategy, rather than mere tools for implementing the business strategy. Secondly, I believe in ethical design — meaning, empathetic research, designing for diverse backgrounds, accessibility, and treating every employee, customer, plant, and animal well! This means considering their motivations and pains, then creating organic solutions.
The Data
January 2017:
- Applications submitted: 200
- First screen: 10
- Second screen: 3
- Last on-site: 2
- Offers: 0
Key Learning Along the Way:
- Predict if a robot or a human will be reading your resume, and send the correct file (Text for robots; visual PDF for humans). Here’s a helpful resource I found after noticing my resumes weren’t getting through: https://www.jobscan.co
- Seriously, get as many mock interviews as possible; whiteboard challenges, portfolio walkthroughs, 8-hour “take home” tests, design process based questions (“Design an ATM for toddlers” type of format), SAR (Situation-Action-Result) based questions, team-based questions, and curve-ball questions.
- Attend networking events, but don’t see them as the golden keys. Networking is a great way to practice presenting yourself professionally, and to practice following up.
- Hiring managers are busy, and it’s okay to nudge them after a week to schedule the next steps. Don’t be a forgotten candidate!
Program backup plans:
- I applied to Whitespace Design Program for UX Design (March)
- I applied to Designer Fund Bridge for Product Design (April)
- I applied to Adobe Creative Residency for this project (April)
Helpful Resources:
- Design Review — How to Plan Your Design Career
“Let people above you know what you want. Remember to ask.”
2. 5 Steps to Master a Whiteboard Design Challenge
by Zhenshuo Fang, Interaction Designer at Google!
3. 10 Questions You Should Ask in a UX Interview
There’s another great article about the questions you will be asked in a UX interview, but in practice — I found this one to be more valuable.
4. Salary Negotiation — Make More Money, Be More Value
Be confident in yourself! Mitigating against imposter syndrome.
More things that have been working!
- Keep a log with: Date posted, job title, company name, job URL, referrals if any, contacts, date applied, 1st interview, 2nd interview, 3rd interview, notes, and the answer. Even with a simple spreadsheet, I can CTRL+F as soon as a call comes in, and pull up the job description!
- Free month of LinkedIn Prime, plus LinkedIn Job app and alerts
- Setting up a good profile on Indeed and ZipRecruiter, plus job alerts.
- I always keep forward momentum. I assume everything is a mutual “no” — until it is a mutual “yes”. This keeps my battery level high, and leaves no time to dwell in waiting or worrying.
- Scheduled for a phone screen? Check their website, use their product on every device and take notes, check Glassdoor, Crunchbase, AngelList, LinkedIn, Quora, news, and the profile or portfolio of a few employees.
Things that have “failed”:
- Creating a profile on Hired.com — it didn’t even go through, nor approved for my high-end engineer friends. What are the pre-requisites?
- I had elaborate plans for guerrilla style or “bulky mail” or techniques. They kept getting more expensive seeming, and I was unsure about ROI.
- I have a couple of spotty parts of my design process in my portfolio. I could have spent time more time on re-fining, or on learning new skills.
Skills I want to focus on in February:
Branding and Identity:
http://atomicdesign.bradfrost.com
http://designguidelines.co
http://styleguides.io
Interaction Design:
http://principleformac.com
https://www.flinto.com/
https://www.axure.com/
Game Design:
https://madewith.unity.com/
http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-game-making-tools/
Or take pre-existing games and improve some UX/UI elements
I know people were highlighting information from my generalities of best and worst interviews, but I’ve moved that section over to Glassdoor reviews. Thank you for understanding!
UX February Job Search will be coming up next!
In the meanwhile, connect with me on LinkedIn and tweet me @kaseyjwang. 👍
