Applying for a UX Research Job
You’ve done the research, read the books, and you feel ready to start applying to jobs. Great! Now you need to have a solid resume and portfolio as well as start preparing for interviews. To be honest, we both don’t have online portfolios — we’ve just used old-fashioned resumes and made/tailored portfolios for in-person interview presentations. But it’s not a bad idea when just starting out to have a portfolio online that demonstrates your research skills more tangibly.
What are Hiring Managers looking for?
There is already a wealth of information out there about what hiring managers are looking for. Understanding their perspective can be really valuable as you go through this process. Dollars to Donuts Podcast by Steve Portigal is a great way to hear this in their own words (link).
Go on sites like indeed.com, LinkedIn, etc and search for job postings. Be creative and use a bunch of different terms (e.g., “UX Research” “User Experience Research” , “Design Research” and any other specific skills you might have like “ethnography”, “surveys”). This can help you get a sense of what kinds of skills and terminology to emphasize. You can also learn a lot about a company from their job descriptions and application process!
- Keep in mind, not all job descriptions are well-written (some are downright silly or unrealistic), but it should give you a good sense of what hiring managers want.
- It’s important to reverse-engineer job postings when tailoring your resume / cover letter so that you can a) know how to frame your current experience in a way that addresses these requirements and b) have a clear sense of what potential gaps you might have as a candidate.
- This article provides an interesting analysis of job descriptions and how they have changed over time.
The Resume
- Don’t try and be everything to everyone. It is better to show expertise in a few specific areas than claim you are master of all research methods. For example, we’ve known folks who don’t know whether or not to call themselves a designer or researcher. If you’re applying for a research job, call yourself a researcher and emphasize those skills, but say that one of your research super powers is design. Depending on the company, a recruiter might not know what to do with you if you call yourself both.
- Along the same lines, don’t feel you have to put each and every accomplishment on your resume. Being brief, direct, and emphasizing your impact will be more valuable.
- Make sure you tailor your resume and cover letter (if applicable) for each position you apply for. Speak to the things that are mentioned in the job description.
- If you are applying to a tech or design-focused company, you can be a bit more creative in how your format your resume. If you are applying for an opening at a more traditional company, no harm in being a bit more conservative in the style.
The Portfolio
- Highlight your best projects, not all your projects — be succinct and visual.
- Chunk your portfolio in a way that’s easy for the reader to parse through it. Typically people looking at portfolios have a very short amount of time to spend, so get right to the point!
- Explain your methodology and what the tradeoffs were. The main goal of a portfolio presentation is so that the company can get a sense of your thought process. What decisions did you make? What were the tradeoffs? What might you do differently next time? What challenges did you encounter and how did you adjust? Don’t be afraid to mention that something didn’t go as expected and you had to be flexible.
- Show the impact of your research. What change was made because of your research? You might not have the same kind of metrics if the research wasn’t done in an industry setting, but how else can you demonstrate impact?
- Rule of thumb for what you can show in your portfolio: only show designs if they’ve been launched and are available to the public. If it’s not public, focus on the process you used (that’s what interviewers care about most anyways!) but avoid talking about the feature/product. We’re not lawyers and when in doubt be conservative!
- Nielsen Norman has a list of 10 recommendations for UXR portfolios, with some good advice. Their advice to really think about your audience is worth emphasizing.
The Interview Process
What is your story? Stand in front of a mirror and practice answering out loud:
- So, tell me about yourself…
- Tell me about your research experience…
- Why are you interested in UX/UX Research?
- Why are you interested in this company?
You are almost guaranteed to be asked these questions in some form or another so why not have a good response ready to go? Try not to be too scripted, but make sure you can answer smoothly and confidently. If you really want to take this to the next level, record yourself answering these questions and play it back to yourself. You will learn a lot about how you come off to an interviewer.
In general, most companies are looking for the following in research candidates:
- Strong methods: Do you understand the different biases involved in research and how those affect findings?
- Collaboration skills: How do you work with cross-functional peers? How do you include them in your process? How do you do with difficult stakeholders?
- Communication skills: Is your research storytelling style compelling? Can you communicate your findings in a concise and understandable way? Think about your visual, verbal, and written communication styles.
- Strategic thinking: Are you able to think about business goals along with user needs? Do you think about trade-offs when making recommendations?
If you want more insight into how the typical hiring process works, this is a great article by Grace. A lot of tech companies follow a fairly similar set of steps, so it is great to be prepared and know what to expect. Nikki Anderson also has some great insights for how to approach the interview process. Keep in mind each organization runs their process a bit differently, for a perspective on what an interview at Google might look like, check out this comprehensive series by Noor Ali-Hasan (part 1, part 2, part 3)
Final thoughts…
Keep in mind, you should be interviewing the company as much as they are interviewing you. It is always best to come with several specific questions that you can ask the interviewers. Laith knew a PM at a company and when he was interviewing researchers he just said “You are the researcher, what questions do you have?” and expected the candidate to fill up the 45-minute meeting with questions and follow-up questions. Always good to be prepared!
This article was written by Laith Ulaby and Grace Vorreuter as part of a series on getting started in UX. If you would like to see the rest of the articles click here.
