🍨The Inside Scoop — Jarell Alvarez🇨🇦

A Get to Know Experience with an ADPList Mentor! Learn about Jarell with me!

Inside Scoop of Jarell Alvarez from Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada🇨🇦

I had the pleasure to meet another fellow Filipino creative and ADPList Mentor from Canada, Jarell Alvarez, earlier this year. Previously a Product Designer at Copperleaf, he is currently a Career Coach, a Part-Time Pathrise Mentor, and the Community Founder of Vancouver Design Check In. He has also done other great things, such as being a Videographer and Photographer! During my fun discussion with Jarell, I was able to learn a lot about his personal life and the impacts of his own mentorship experiences that made him want to give a helping hand to other designers. He shared with me the great importance of mentorship and how it takes time to find opportunities by planting your seeds early. He wants to encourage his mentees that it’s okay to explore new opportunities and figure out if they’re a good fit for their personal career goals.

Check out his podcast, “Design Doesn’t Exist”, featured on Spotify! Learn about what gets unnoticed in the world of design and help you figure out what works best for you in your own design journey with expert advice from industry professionals!

I related to him a lot with not really having a one type of career interest before choosing the career field he ended up in, and with his own experiences, the obstacles were worth it in finding what was best for him, which was finding a career field that gets him to think and be creative! I am excited for you to learn more about him!

Enjoy the reading! 🤩

First, Let’s Know some Bite-Sized Facts about Jarell 🗣

• What is your favorite emoji? → 🤠 (mostly in Slack communities)

That one’s my favorite. It is the, it is the humble beginnings of my community, I just wanted to be so super casual is like a yee ha howdy we’re coming together to talk again . . . I like to define the emoji based on the context that’s been that’s given and I like to take something that’s what could be construed as something else, and then make it my own definition.

Runner-ups: 🥺, 😤, 🤧

Jarell talking about the cowboy emoji 😆

• What are you binge-watching right now? → This is Us (around the time of the interview — February 2022)

Jarell loves storytelling, and as he shared his favorite shows, he currently watches or has watched, he likes light shows with meaningful values that demonstrate different cultures.

It hits you where you least expect it and then it just becomes like this. I didn’t expect this show to just be family and like straight up. Good family values.
Has good writing and strong characters and like you just feel you feel that pain, or you feel this struggle really heavily.

Previous shows he has liked watching as well: Single’s Inferno, Terrace House, Queer Eye

For me to commit, [to watch a new show] I need to see if people are talking about it first (especially on social media).

Would you rather . . .

→ be forced to SING ALONG or DANCE to every song you hear? Sing Along

Because if I do dance along, I mean, if I’m in the car, right? It’s not as accessible to dance. . .

→ never be able to go out during the day or never be able to go out at night? Never be able to go out at night.

I could go out, I would go out only during the day.

→ have a PAUSE or REWIND button in your life? Pause

If I was able to just pause and just watch everything as it goes by, and just really like pause a day and just bask in the sun for like ever or just have that perfect day. In whenever I feel like it just by pressing pause that would be ultimate bliss for me.

• What’s a pandemic hobby that you picked up?

Oh God [making] Sourdough . . .yeah I spent three months making Sourdough. I reached out to this guy on instagram that make sourdough I look he’s a chef and like he was teaching me over instagram for several months. I was extremely passionate and I was extremely driven by, and this helped me in my core values, he’s helped in my conversations with recruiters because I was looking for work . . .

Jarell with an office corgi from a previous job.

So Jarell, can you share a little bit about yourself? 👨

How I started this career was not knowing I wanted to be in it in the first place.

I was in high school and I was kind of all over the place. I was creative, but someone who didn’t want to put in the effort to channel all that creativity. It was very an overthinking mind, like all over the place, one one thing

I always wanted to do was my goal was just to be happy that was it and I remember imagining myself in like a cubicle doing mindless work, and that was enough for me…

And I was late to the game when it came to like applying for programs at schools and stuff. I was very late and my mom and dad were you know, I love that they weren’t pressuring me super hard.

But they were like oh, you know you need to choose, something you need to choose something. They didn’t say specifically what, I mean my mom obviously wanted a lawyer, a doctor, but it was more of like a running joke, so it was like nothing too scary.

But yeah, so my aunt came one day from Winnipeg. She hasn’t visited us in like four years. She’s my mom’s sister. And then she’s like, hey, my nephew is doing web design, and makes this amount of money. And then honestly, we were going for brunch, I don’t remember exactly where we were when she said that. And the light bulb kicked into my mind. Like, what? You make money. That sounds livable what? Manager, like the sound that Ooh. And I was like, Ooh, you can be technical, you can be thinking. I like thinking, I want to think more. I’m not thinking enough where I’m currently doing and you can be creative. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. So that was the light bulbs that flickered on my mind in one second. As soon as she said that, I was like, wait, you know? Oh, that sounds like something fun.

So then I looked at university BCIT (British Columbia of Institute of Technology) where my dad always recommended me to go because it’s well, well known in the local area, well known in Canada for it’s really fast paced environment. That’s two years. It’s in a course a day, two years very condensed, but like, really hands on. And so I looked online, and I found the course called d3. And I was like, oh my God, I like all of these courses. They sound fun, like I can do this. It’s not too difficult. But it was just enough where it can be creative. And it was a mix of things where I can just try things. So there’s business, there’s development, there’s design, so I can get my hands, or I can get my feet wet in all these areas that and then specialize if I wanted to. So yeah, I didn’t get into the program, because it was full. I took a not a gap year, but I took a year off into a different college just taking random courses to, like philosophy.

And I took some design, I took development, while mostly just development, and then the, and then in my high school experience, I thought I was gonna become a web designer. Turns out, I got very confident with my developing skills, too confident whereas I wasn’t paying attention to class at all. And then I fell behind. I was like, Okay, well wait, developing is actually hard. And then. So I started to like, double down a little bit more on that. And then I read Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. And that opened up my eyes to what UX was. And that was like that. I remember exactly where it was. It was a Chinese restaurant. It was a buffet was a family friend’s birthday now and remember who family friend’s birthday that was, Oh, my God, a long time ago. And I was reading that book. And I think I finished that book in two days. And I couldn’t stop reading that book.

From your experiences, what makes an excellent product designer in your own words? 📝

I think someone who is, oh God I have very generic things in my head right now. . . So someone who’s able to bridge the gap, as I said, between human related. Uh huh. I want to say empathy. I want to say empathy. But like, that’s the most lamest thing I can say right now.

No, it’s it, I guess, someone who understands humans, and can make it in a way that whatever process whatever they doing is always centered on the goals of the company, the goals of the users, and lives within the constraint bubbles of developers. So marrying all of those key roles is super crucial, as not everyone can do that.

And to do it really well to work with others , communication is the biggest key, how do you communicate everything that you do? . . . communication is the biggest key.

• how do you tell the story of the user?
• how do you tell the story, how do you communicate that in such a way that is human centered as well?

And then, using all of this, how do you communicate the data into the human centered package, and I like to coin this, well I didn’t, I wasn’t acquainted, a friend did, how do you tell how do you talk about things that you learned how do you talk about things that you gathered, in a way, that an eight year old or a six year old can understand?

So when it comes to standing out in the job search, do you have any advice on how to approach standing out? 🌟

So this is also my favorite topic, and this is another rabbit hole I can get into, but, the biggest key difference that I found when I was job searching two years ago . . . it was at the start of the pandemic,

I started to realize that there is no way to stand out until you stand back.

What does that mean? When you sat back and you observe what the industry is doing, where people are applying, how are they applying? Why are people getting calls? And what their processes like so empathizing with the hiring managers processes like, and the recruiters processes like, when you look at how many applicants they get. And how you can make their lives easier. It’s simple, but also a bit more complex. You need referrals and you need to talk to people.

You need to strap your boots, get on the ground, and start talking to people in your network so i’m talking to people that you know who knows this, who knows that. Who knows this, who knows that, who can get you to the hiring manager, who can get you to a person to talk to, to have a quick coffee chat. You can show that you’re a cultural fit and that you’re a good person that just having a simple conversation about the role that they’re trying to look for what troubles they’re having in the company, what they value, what they need help with when you can identify those needs, you can be the person to step in.

…when you get all those referrals or when you start planting those seeds, people start knowing you. You start being known it gets easier to reach out to people because you’re reaching out to them. You’re trying to figure out how you can help them. In any case, or you can just be curious about them, people like to talk and people like to talk about themselves. It’s human nature.

Jarell’s job searching/networking tip: Really, as soon as you see that one job, reach out, start doing your homework right away minute one. Just start doing it, you have to start now and then you see another position do it there. I use a job template tracking up the template notion.

I had every single thing organized every every company that I was searching for I had like eight or nine companies that I was talking to one or two people to get a conversation with so I always had multiple companies juggling. I always had weekly conversations with different people who can lead me somewhere just for a chat or like it was never static.

If you have social anxiety, maybe you have to do certain things to force yourself to talk to people because you will end up talking to people, you will end up in these uncomfortable situations, there are no avoiding meetings or no avoiding conversations, it is not you’re not in that the industry that is fortunate, so you have to train yourself. And it sucks and it sucks at the start, it always sucks anything that’s new will always suck at the start.

What kind of mentorship do you wish to provide and why? 🙌

When I started mentoring, it was in December last year, and I was kind of forced to do it. I just got rejected from other places, and then I was, like all right, so I talked to we know and a lot and then she kind of really pushed me to do it, and I was like okay I’ll do it. And so I also connected with a lot of mentors in Canada, because that was my first thing i’m like Okay, how do I utilize this platform to really help my career let’s connect with people that are new me local so Vancouver connected, I tried.

Getting a lot of mentors from Canada, I noticed, there were things I didn’t like as much a lot of people kind of treated it as I want to tell you about me I’m not as interested about you. I want to tell you all about my perspective, I’m not here to listen about yours. And that made me frustrated.

So how I understood that is that if you if you take yourself out of the equation, and you put up a big mirror in front of someone. And you allow them to speak and you allow them to reflect based on what they’re saying, and you allow them to work through their problems, the way that they want to, through their perspective, through their learned experiences and you provide more of a, like I said a mirror to what’s going on with them.

You can have them really figure out what works for them, and you don’t push your perspective, you don’t push what you think is right or wrong, you become more of a guide, a sounding coach to identify what where they could be what something if something doesn’t make sense if there’s a gap if if there’s some struggle, that’s the core.

What are three common questions you get as a mentor?

• Can I have my portfolio reviewed?
• Can you tell me about yourself?
• It’s either something along the lines of like how did you get started in design? . . .which is about the kind of someone to tell me about yourself.

Some videos I leave that resources and I usually do try to if someone like in my community will have an ad hoc conversation me I’m like okay before you get started, I probably know you’re going to ask and here’s a couple of podcasts to get you started or here’s a couple of videos.

View Jarell’s Resources of Interview Videos/Podcasts

View the rest of Jarell’s UX Resource Hub

So all from the questions that were asked to you (from mentees), do you usually answer them similarly or you just like change it up? 👀

I don’t really change up much of it anymore. Before, it took me 45 minutes to tell you about myself, and now I can finally compress it to five minutes, or at least 10 minutes because I’ve done it just so many times. And so it’s like where do you want me to start is more of the question versus where what to say, and then I just get into my thing. That’s why Roots (A Podcast for Filipino Designers), is nice because I talk about it a bit but then it gets to interesting elements that I didn’t foresee.

But yeah I have like okay, I have the best practices, in my opinion, for portfolios that’s always focus on empathy of the person who’s reading it, I always think about scannability, I was thinking about accessibility, I always think about storytelling, the headings, the imagery that you do. I don’t like to get into the weeds unless if you send it to me beforehand or later, so I can review. Even that is tiring for me like I now I’ll just throw in a vimeo. I’ll record my voice like this and then to like talk about the portfolio just do like a video thing because that I find that a lot easier than typing. And then you get my first impressions because I only have 2 or 3 minutes to review it anyway.

Jarell’s last pieces of advice 🙌

• I mean the biggest key that I started to realize is showing up for others, because once you show up for others still show up for you.
• Start early and figure out what you want . . . you can start with a dream company or a dream, or like a value or a goal that you want, for example, me I love video games, I love the creativity behind it, so that was just one thing I was like to do, yes, why not, and then I was like okay, what kind of area would have the most impact for me and like really meets my core values. So just aligning yourself with your core values and your core tenets to industry that would be my key.
• … if you do choose something that you might feel stuck in, just know that there’s other opportunities outside of that. There’s other opportunities in the organization, even if it’s small, to do something that you’re more passionate about, for the time being, until you know that you’re ready to jump out of that ship and get into an organization that exists where you can get your design team, you can get your mentorship you can get your best practices, because that will come eventually.
• … if you can take little steps to helping their goals or whatever they’re trying to achieve like I said, you will create an army, you will have people come in droves, for you, if you need them at any point because you’re constantly trying to figure out how to make other people’s lives better and it kind of is like a recycle effect. (examples: liking someone’s post on LinkedIn, tagging them in posts when they’re looking for a job)

Thank you for reaching the end of this inside scoop and thank you Jarell for this in-depth conversation and sharing your story👏

I hope you found this insightful and enjoyed reading. If you’re interested to book a mentor session and also have a fun conversation with Amazing Design Mentor Jarell, check out his ADPList Profile here!

You can also connect with Jarell on LinkedIn here!

And on that note, have a Happy Holidays🎄 and a Happy New Year🎇 See you soon 2023!