3 tips to finding the UX job that’s right for you
Finding the UX job that’s right for you can be overwhelming. You can love a company’s website and how their team is bursting with personality on their About page. You can stalk their LinkedIn and read all their posts to learn what type of content they engage with on social media. You can check out reviews on Glassdoor to see what the employees really think. But how much of this really tells you what kind of company they are?
Believe it or not, the answer to all your problems lies in the interview process.
Yep, I’m talking about that super scary thing where they ask you a bunch of questions about your life and work experience. The one where they test your skills with a “friendly design challenge” or even worse, put you on the spot to problem-solve a whiteboard challenge in real-time and in front of complete strangers.
Before you start to panic, it’s important to keep in mind that while interviews can be daunting, it’s also a great time for you to learn more about the company that you might end up working for.
As the company is interviewing you and your qualifications for the role, you can also take that chance to learn more about the company and see if they are a good fit for you. As a potential new asset to their team, you also have the leverage to ask questions. And if you find yourself talking to a company that discourages questions, that’ll be a good hint for you to run in the other direction.
So take advantage of this interview time by asking them all the questions you can’t find out by stalking their website and social media. Here are 3 quick tips that can kickstart your interview for the company.
1. What type of company are they?
As you’re deciding whether or not to apply, or you are about to go in for an interview, it’s always helpful to understand the company’s problem space. What industry the company is in. And how are they meeting their customer’s needs?
Typically, consumer products are more visual and design challenges revolve around maintaining the product, acquisition and retention, driving funnels, A/B tests, and tweaking the product to increase certain behaviors.
With enterprise-level products where you’ll be working on a web app, you’re more likely to be solving for dense information, multiple user types, and more complex flows.
So which type of company are you looking to join?
2. How big is the UX team?
Team size will change the way you operate in the company.
For example, if you are part of a smaller team, you will most likely be expected to be more of a generalist. This means you will be wearing all sorts of different hats in the user experience spectrum.
This includes initiating and executing user research, using those insights to create flows and wireframes, taking it to high-fidelity designs and prototypes with content, and conducting design QA to measure the success of the design. At times when the role overlaps with dev, it could also mean you being a part of design ops (documenting content strategy, component libraries, and anything that will make your design life easier) and UX project management.
On the other hand, the larger the team, the more opportunities you might have to play to your strengths and collaborate with others. You will be able to get feedback from other designers and maybe even begin to specialize in a few of those roles. This will give you the chance to go deeper with your designs and become a subject matter expert in a specialized design area.
You will also often have more space to innovate and participate in larger-scale, ecosystem-level changes. Then you can move up as a designer, mentor junior designers, or even find a mentor to learn from as you move up in your career.
3. In-house, Agency, or Contract?
The type of hire you are and where you’re hired can also impact the scope of your work.
For instance, if you work for an agency, you hand off the ideal designs without being there for any of the execution. Personally, I found this lack of control unnerving because I would return to something I helped design and see that my designs had been cherry-picked.
When you work in-house, you’re in it for the long haul. You’ll see the impact of your designs, how the support team navigates new feature launches, and pain points that may or may not have been addressed by your users. However, some find this too monotonous and get bored with solving similar problems over time.
Agency or contract work both lend itself well to trying a variety of projects, in different industries, with different-sized companies and platforms.
Working in-house, you only need to learn the product and users once, and depending on what you can work on, you may need to find other ways to keep things interesting.
When you land the job, don’t stop asking! 🧐
Answering these questions while interviewing can help kickstart your understanding of the type of work you might be doing, as well as what type of team you might be signing up for.
And finally, you may not know how to answer these questions yet. Any job will give you experience you can learn from. So, talk to folks who are working in the industry you’re already in. Try to get a feel for where you feel you’ll thrive, and get clarity on what type of role you’re seeking. Once you know your own preferences better, it will make it easier to interview the people you’ll be talking to, and see if they check the boxes that are important to you.
