Fearless Stories — Firefighting to UX design

Tiffany Neo is a UX Engineer at Allied World, a global insurance company based in Singapore. She graduated from General Assembly last year and landed her first design role six months later! She is one of our most active community members in Singapore and she is full of energy and passion, it was so much fun to meet her!

Intro

Hi Tiffany! Could you tell us more about yourself and how you became a UX designer?

It was a very long and winding road to go to UX I think. I never intended to do UX design, as I only heard about it a couple of years ago.

My background was sport science back to my university. From there I joined the Singapore Civil Defence Force, where I worked as a firefighter for seven and a half years! I worked in a fire station and then in the Emergency Call Operations Centre for about a year or so. I came across the word “UX” when I was working on IT projects for the Civil Defence. I was wondering why people were not happy about a product, even though we gave them what they wanted. And when I asked them why they said, “you did not ask me”. I thought, there must be a way to deliver better products that actually people want! This is when I attended a user experience workshop at General Assembly, and after a couple of hours — Wow — I had a huge aha moment. Why has nobody ever told me about this before?

I did some more research, and I thought that would be something I could do, full time. So I quit my job and signed up for a UX design immersive class at General Assembly.

How was your experience at General Assembly?

When I started General Assembly, I first thought that we could not fail, because it was an adult course: You pay so how can you fail? In the first two weeks, to my horror I realized that not everybody passed the course.

But I could not afford to fail! So in the following months, I was like “I cannot fail, you can do it”. And then when I asked questions to my instructor, he would just answer: “It depends.” (laughs)

I think the difference between class and real life are the users. When we are doing our projects, we tend to interview each other which is different from interviewing real users. My first usability test was challenging, I was interviewing people from Hong Kong, but I could not speak Cantonese, so one of my colleagues translated for me. I was sometimes a bit lost in translation.

Applying for the role

You are now a UX Engineer at Allied World. How did you land your first role?

Another long story! (laughs)

All in all, it took about three and a half months after my graduation to land my first job as a UX designer. I graduated mid-June last year, at the worst time to look for a job in the middle of the COVID situation.

As I spent seven and a half years at Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) as a firefighter, I knew that my Linkedin profile and connections would be related to SCDF. When switching careers to UX design, I knew it had to change. Linkedin is such a powerful networking tool. I decided very early that I needed a total facelift, from head to toes. I was trying to connect with other UX designers, not just through cold connections but also through webinars. The good thing about COVID is that most of the webinars were online. Some of the sessions were quite small, and if you came early, people started to see your face. During the session, I always made sure to learn something, and when I learned something very interesting then I would connect to the speaker. Little by little, my Linkedin wall started to change, I would get to see what designers were talking about, what made the buzz during that time.

I think I worked quite hard to make my Linkedin profile friendly for reading, highlighting my past experiences to make it more tech-centric and UX design related.

As I got a government subsidy for General Assembly, I had to document every position I was applying to. After 50 job applications, I realised that nobody was replying, so I realized that there must be something wrong.

Finally I was contacted through Linkedin! Someone asked me if I would be interested in a role. I first thought it was a catfish on Linkedin as I have never heard about the company before and I had no common connections with that person!

What did the interview process look like?

I first had an interview with the hiring manager who contacted me on Linkedin, then an interview with the Vice President of another region and then with the Human Resource officer.

My hiring manager thinks that it makes sense to train someone with a good attitude with hard skills, than try to fit a triangle in a circle. This company is also relatively new to UX so they were happy to give me a chance to prove myself.

How was the interview process for the other jobs?

I had a take home exercise whereby I had to analyse the website and give suggestions for a redesign, a second one was a UI redesign of the website, another one was a heuristic evaluation of a website. And I also had a portfolio presentation.

Also talking about interviews, a lot of people complain that they don’t get feedback after an interview, which I can totally understand as I also wanted to have some feedback so desperately. Why didn’t you like me? Just tell me, pull me out of my misery (laughs). But I can understand that on the other side, there are so many applicants, hiring managers don’t have time to give detailed feedback to each and every one. And if they do, they are freaking awesome, and you will forever remember them. Like I want to work for you one day, you may not want me now, but I will remember you, I’ll be back (laughs).

In the second half of last year, the discussions were a lot about giving a chance to junior designers. Come on, you can do it! But when you looked at the job postings in Singapore, I have seen less than five junior designers role openings during the three and a half months I was searching. It is a vicious circle: I cannot work because I have no experience, I have no experience because I have no job.

I think this is not an issue specific to the design industry. When I graduated from sport science studies in Singapore, I remember there were not many entry level jobs in sports science either.

So on Linkedin I really tried to put a lot of effort in asking senior designers which value junior designers can bring, and how I could contribute to the conversation. Junior designers have to show their process, but everyone is doing that so how can we stand out?

Then your portfolio is like craft beer. Some people like it and some people hate it. Your portfolio may match the company’s values but if it does not match the vibe of the hiring manager, then some people may find that there is too much information, they don’t have time to read, and some may think there is not enough process.

Before I could do a complete overhaul of my portfolio, I got a job. But if I had to do it all over again, I think I will give options. Just present a summary of the project and then give access to the details.

So back to Linkedin, how do you actually connect people using Linkedin?

I think Linkedin it is quite powerful these days. And also, I think the more that you connect with people and you try to interact online, you get more visibility. People will think: ‘who is this person?’ And you know, they click on your profile. ‘Oh, cool!’

So during that time, I had a Linkedin premium, so I can see who saw me. And then I sent friend requests to them to say ‘hello!’. Creepy(laugh), but that works. Sometimes they’re nice. you know, other times, they’ll just ignore me. But like, you know, no loss.

Usually when I try to connect with people on Linkedin, I will start the sentences like ‘oh I saw that you used to be…, and me too!’, ‘I am trying to expand my network’, and ‘ I see that you’re also a fellow UX designer, I really like to connect.’ For me, if I send the connection request with those messages usually 70 to 80% of the time people will accept.

Shifting to the real work

How is your work in the current company? Are you the only designer in the team?

We have a VP in London, but in Singapore I am kind of like on my own here doing UX, which sometimes is a bit scary. But I like it.
My first two projects were not too bad because I came in like midway. What the company needed more is prototyping and usability testing. But now I’m working on a totally new project. So it is a bit challenging to balance all business needs, but I quite enjoy it.

So it is quite different compared with what you have learnt in General Assembly, right?

Yeah. I think General Assembly gives you a base. I know a lot of people always think : how can these bootcamp people be a UX designer after 12 weeks of study? I’m like, well, I tried my best. So I think if I didn’t get a job at that point I would try to find places that can volunteer my design services in Singapore.

Helping Future Generations

Which advice would you give to junior designers looking for a role?

Yeah, actually, there was one thing I failed to mention previously is my job hunting process. So my first 50 jobs I realised I wasn’t getting any hits. Then I realised Okay, maybe I didn’t send out a cover letter. So I started sending out cover letters. And my cover letter was written in a very traditional way at that time. After sending out about 25 cover letters, again I realised I was not getting more replies as I thought. So after that, I did another infographic version of my cover letter. And this new cover letter got me an interview with Airbnb back when I was applying for a different position. And a lot of the recruiters did respond to me that is something that really caught their eyes. So the cover letter with infographics is very, very different from traditional ones which are just texts.

And I mean, your resume can not be very creative, right? So the cover letter is the only place we can try to make it stand out. And when I created this infographic version of my cover letter, I told myself, just send it out! If I don’t get a reply, then that is fine. I’ll just go back to the traditional ugly words. But the good news was, I started getting quite a lot of calls. I think it was about a 20% return rate, and you know, I had the opportunity to talk to people inside companies.

Another point I want to add is that I will actually focus on my portfolio first before rushing into applying for jobs. Because at that time I felt like I needed to apply to everything so I did not put a lot of effort into my portfolio. If I were being more focused on the portfolio, you know, do that well first, and then after that, send out resumes, I think my journey might have gone even a bit smoother. I did get some interviews fast and furious, but I felt that some of the ones that I got, I wasn’t prepared well for them. So I feel I probably would suggest putting more effort into my portfolio and practice more presentation skills.