Professional Visibility in Tech & Design
Q&A
I answered a survey about professional visibility in tech and design. This is an expanded reflection upon my answers.
What are you currently doing to build professional visibility / a public profile?
(e.g., submitting talk proposals to events, joining local networking groups, participating in open-source projects)
I am in the process of submitting workshop and talk proposals based on the workshops I have run internally. This is in addition to writing on Medium which I have been doing for about 2 years now, and connecting with as many UX professionals on Twitter as I can.
Why are you interested in being professionally visible?
(e.g., do you want to get a promotion or expand my network/be a more desirable candidate? Do you feel a calling to share knowledge with peers?)
The short answer: To get a promotion.
The long answer: To get a promotion internally, externally (a new job), or personally (build a new company). To move up the promotion ladder within my company, it required to have external professional visibility to eventually get promoted to "Principal." Listening to others who are actively working on that next step, I’ve learned that it’s easier to get started now than to scramble later. Externally, I need more non-confidential material to discuss outside of work. It’s hard to build a portfolio when most projects I work on are confidential. Finally, to build a network as a co-founder so I can eventually quit my day job and build a company.
Is there anything that has been difficult so far as you’ve pursued opportunities to be visible? Anything that feels mysterious about it?
(e.g., don’t know where to start, getting rejected for talks, etc.)
It’s my first time summiting workshop talks to conferences, so the first hurdle is figuring out how the whole process works. Where is the cheat sheet to dates? How do you know which conferences treat their speakers respectfully? To look out for yourself, I’ve read that you should always get compensated for speaking. To look out for others, I wonder how I can support diversity and inclusion (Inclusion Rider for Tech Conferences).
Side Note: I discovered the FieldTrip.io tool by Joakim Norman to help with this. However they currently have a limited number of entries for the UX and design calls for speakers.
With writing, I got lucky to have an article I wrote added to a popular publication on Medium, which still gets reads a year later, compared to all my other writing which gets crickets. Without that one popular one I might have felt more disheartened about writing. The continued interest in that article is also why I’m motivated to submit a workshop talk that expands upon that methodology.
Have you received any training that helped you build this profile? What was it? Who paid for it?
(e.g., attended a writing workshop, took a presentation skills course)
No formal training per say. I read lots of articles and try to learn from others who I see as role models in the design and tech community. Support from my colleagues has been invaluable in keeping me motivated to keep trying.
Has your company helped you build your professional profile? If so, how?
(e.g., providing training programs, receiving feedback on presentations from your manager, using work time to write an article, receiving funding to attend a course, etc.)
Not specifically. While it is required for that eventual promotion to Principal, most of the company training I’ve taken is focused internally and on a more narrow scope of career development. Recently the company had taken a greater interest in helping me on the leadership track, so now I do hear more talks about why networking matters and they’re sending me to a conference where the primary benefit is for me to network. However, I would rather get help with professional visibility — that would develop my super powers when it comes to networking. It would give me something to confidently talk about and enable me to give something valuable when I meet new people.
Your Turn
Grab the Q’s and Write Your Own A’s. Share a link to your professional visibility article in the comments.
Saara Kamppari-Miller
Design Strategy, User Experience Design, Interaction Design
- LinkedIn Kamppari
- Twitter Designer Geeking
- Medium Designer Geeking
