Dear Senior UXer, what's the one attribute that makes a jr. candidate stand out?

Junior researcher positions seem very competitive and it’s difficult to convince hiring managers to ‘take a chance on me’ because there always seems to be someone with more experience. What is one attribute or skill that would make a junior candidate really stand out for a role you were hiring for?

-Kerianne, Washington, USA

Hey Keriann,

It is indeed true that junior UX positions are hard to come by, organizations want proven experience over the unknown, and the amount of applicants for junior roles often exceeds the supplies.

One of the best ways to really stand out as a junior applicant is to create your own experience, be it through volunteering or creating your own side project that you’re actively working on to get to market.

The junior applicants I’ve interviewed over the years that have done this in a number of ways, but always stood out from the applicant pool due to the ongoing work they were doing to improve their skill set.

A few of the ways I’ve seen juniors create their own experience:

• Assisting a community outreach organization in improving the internal tools their field agents are using when updating case files
• Creating their own projects within a space their passionate about, for instance a site for connecting members of their cultural community with mental health services
• Volunteering with local UX groups to organize events, and tracking attendee feedback to inform future event content

The key point with all of the option options is the UXer was working on something with a connection to real users, as oppose to school projects that were more theoretical in nature. The other thing that helps them stand out is the ownership component, because the juniors doing these things are so involved in the work being done, they can often speak to the trials & tribulations of the entire process, including admission of what they could do better next time.

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