2019 is the year for junior designers.
So many roles out there, but a sheer lack on job boards and LinkedIn.
Why?
Because when a company posts a junior role on social media or job boards, they get bombarded from under-qualified candidates as well as people in countries they can’t sponsor from which creates an awful experience for candidates who apply and don’t hear anything.
I’m not saying you can’t find a job applying on a job board, but these are some of the cool ways to find a job as a junior:
- Get a good education behind you or leverage your existing commercial experience. If you are from a financial background, getting into a UX banking job could be a lot easier as you’ll have domain knowledge.
- Get yourself out to meet-ups. But, don’t rely on them to find you a job. Use them to keep your motivation levels high, and meet a few people. Always follow up with people that week.
- Get a mentor. Maybe someone who’s just got a job in UX, as they can guide you and share their experience.
- Don’t rely on recruiters. Most of them don’t care about you until you’re at-least a midweight and can make 6–10k on you. The rare ones who do, are amazing. Lean on them for advice, but don’t expect them to find you a job.
- Use LinkedIn. Connect with hiring managers, peers, recruiters both internally and externally. The sweet spot for connections in your industry should be 3000–5000. I think it’s mad not a lot of people fully utilise LinkedIn. There are currently 400+ people in London with the title “Head of UX” and that’s not including other titles for people who hire. That’s 400 opportunities to get yourself in front of them for a possible job in the future.
- Sign up to WeWork or a similar workspace community and post you’re looking for a role.
- There are so many companies based outside of the cities such as London, NYC and SF that are doing top design work. Expand your horizons, think outside the box, move to a city which isn’t saturated with people. The best example I can give of someone who did this was Bevin who moved to Dubai, gaining fantastic experienced and excelling his career very fast.
- Join a Slack group full of people in the same boat. Get rapid response time to your questions and iterate every day on your job hunt. I’ve heard Candles is very good! ;)
Do you have any tips for someone to be creative when starting to look for their first design role?
Let me know :)
