How to Build A UX Research Resume That Stands Out (In 7 Steps)

So, you’re trying to get a UX Researcher job, but your resume isn’t grabbing their attention? There might be a number of reasons why.

Three reasons why your current resume is not catching attention

1. One reason could be that you have no UX key terms in your resume for recruiters and hiring managers to scan for. When I say scan, I mean literally look at for less than 10 seconds! Did you know recruiters spend on average 6 seconds looking at a resume! (Source: The Ladders)
2. Another reason your resume is getting rejected is that you are competing against hundreds of other applicants that have similar-enough backgrounds to you. How are you supposed to beat out hundreds of others?!
3. Lastly, your formatting might be too hard to scan. Many job postings use an ATS (applicant tracking system) which scans your resume for keywords relating to the job post before any recruiter or hiring manager sees it. If your application is formatted in a way that’s hard to scan, it might be rejected.

So where do you start?

Seven simple tips to get the interview offer

1. Quality over quantity

We’ve all heard this before… quality over quantity, but what does this mean in the UX researcher job search? It means focus on fewer jobs to apply to so that you can give more quality effort.

To narrow down, think about

1. What industry you’re interested in
2. What size company
3. What type of research interests you
4. Do you want to work in a research team of one or many
5. Do you want to work in an agency, corporation, etc

2. Keywords are the Key

Now that you’ve narrowed down your search instead of applying to 50 jobs a day, you’ll have time to focus your resume for each job.

To use keywords

1. Find 5–10 job descriptions that interest you and highlight words that are used in each
2. If you don’t know what some words mean, look them up. Some good resources for UX term definitions are Career Foundry and Curiosity Tank.
3. Now go through your resume, and see where you can add these keywords
4. Don’t lie. If there’s a skill you keep seeing in these job descriptions that you don’t have, try to practice that skill so that you can truly say you have it

Example: Let’s say you are an elementary school teacher who is interested in a UX researcher position at an education technology company. You notice that multiple ed tech roles say they are looking for someone who is a good communicator, works well with a cross-functional team, and who has conducted contextual interviews.

You have good communication skills and you’ve worked with a cross-functional team with your teaching aid, principle, and gym teacher. However, you’ve never conducted a contextual interview. Not a problem, you have ⅔ of the top skills needed. And now, you can put together your own research project to practice contextual interviewing.

Let’s say you’ve noticed that parents have been having a hard time helping your students with remote learning. You want to understand their pain points and how you can help. So, you conduct interviews with these parents. And there you have it! Now, you can put contextual interviews on your resume!

3. Every job needs a tailored resume

You might have heard this before, but I can’t stress this enough. Since the ATS and recruiters just scan your resume, they are looking for keywords that fit the job description as closely as possible. So make sure you read the job description and insert keywords from it into your resume where they apply.

Bonus tip: Remember not to undersell yourself. Bullets under job experiences should highlight your accomplishments, including metrics where relevant.

4. Format your resume for scanning

There’s no need to have a flashy, pretty resume to grab attention. It’s best to follow a format that’s familiar to a recruiter so that they can scan it easily. There are sites like Monster, Google Docs, and others that have easy standard templates to follow. The main thing is to have your name, portfolio link, email, phone number, work experience, education (including bootcamps and certificates), and skills (soft-included).

Bonus tip: Please, do not have progress bars next to your skills! This is not helpful info, and they are essentially meaningless.

5. Schedule informational interviews

Remember the question of how to beat out hundreds of people who are applying for the job?

How do recruiters narrow down their choices when there are so many applicants? And within those applicants there are at least 20 that would be a good fit. And most likely, they want to have less than 10 interviewees. One way to beat out the other applicants is to make yourself seen and known.

Steps to scheduling an informational interview

1. Now that you’ve narrowed down, you’ll be able to focus your efforts on a few companies. Do a quick LinkedIn search at the people in that company that have a similar job title to UX researcher.
2. Write these people a note asking if they’d be available to chat for 15–20 minutes about the company and the role.
3. Be prepared for the informational interview with productive questions, such as what the team is looking for in the applicant and what kinds of research projects the team works on.
4. Let it be known that you’ve applied for the job (or about to apply) and you’re very interested. If this person is comfortable, ask if they can get you in contact with the recruiter or hiring manager for you to learn more about the role.
5. Send a thank you note afterward.

6. Apply to roles with less applicants

One of the greatest features on LinkedIn is that when you look at an open role, LinkedIn tells you how many people have applied to it. If something has 500 applicants in the last 24 hours, you’re less likely to get an interview. If something has had 10 applicants in the last 24 hours, this is more promising. Try to get in early as well, because some recruiters only look at the first X amount of applicants, especially when it’s a popular company that might have 1,000 applicants altogether.

7. Play the long game

Let’s say you have one or two companies that you know you really want to work with. Make sure you find someone within that company that you get to know before a role opens up. They can become a mentor or just someone you catch up with over time. So, when that role opens up, they’ll mention it to you and might even refer you. It’s not to say that you completely abandon applying for any other company in the meantime, but maybe in a year or so, once you’ve been working somewhere else, a role opens up at your dream company and now you’ve built a relationship within that company that can help you get hired.

In conclusion, play smarter, not harder! There are plenty of open UX research roles out there and one of them is for you. You don’t have to apply to hundreds of jobs per week, hoping someone will notice you. And you don’t need to exclusively apply to the “top companies”. If you apply these 7 tips, you’ll be interviewing for a role in no time.

For more UX research job tips, stay tuned for my course UXR Hired (a course that walks you through networking, the UX research portfolio, the UX researcher interview, and many other tips throughout the UX research job search).