Lost your UX job during COVID? Look at the opportunities it presents
At the time that I am writing this article, the economy both in the United States and across the world is in shambles. We are experiencing one of the worst recessions ever experienced since the Great Depression that started in 1929 and extended three and a half years. Currently, over 13% of workers here in the states are unemployed. Even tech giants like LinkedIn are feeling the effects of the recession, as they laid off almost 1000 employees.
If you are reading this article, chances are your job has been negatively affected by the job market. I myself was laid off just a week ago, and like a lot of Americans and workers across the world, I found myself back on the job hunt a lot sooner than I was anticipating.
So it’s all doom and gloom, right?
As crazy as it sounds, I believe this is actually an incredible opportunity for all of us, in so many ways. Tech jobs are still abundant, and some companies are doing exceedingly well during the pandemic.
- Netflix and other streaming services are the go-to source of entertainment for people stuck in their homes, especially during lockdown.
- Amazon has reported near record-breaking business, especially during lockdown.
- Nintendo can hardly keep up with the insanely high demand for Nintendo Switch consoles, leaving store shelves bare.
- Twitch has experienced record-breaking streaming since COVID hit.
Oh, and the amount of insanely successful companies that were born during an economic recession? Don’t get me started.
Even Warren Buffet, one of the wealthiest men alive, told investors to “be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy”. I believe this applies to other aspects of our lives as well, including the job market.
Mindset is a huge part of seeing the opportunities that present themselves during times like this. There are obvious negative sides to losing your job, especially during a recession. But it all depends on where you set your focus.
For example, if you are in a stadium full of people and you are asked to look for everyone wearing a red shirt, you will only see red, even though there are a ton of blues, greens, yellows and other colors that you didn’t see.
When you approach the recession and losing one’s job (or not being able to find one) with fear, that is all you will experience, because that is where your focus lies. And you will be completely blind to so many opportunities that are also present.
I If you are unemployed, especially as a result of COVID, I believe you may be in a much better position than you give yourself credit for. Here are some reasons why:
It gives you time to decompress and reset
Whenever you are laid off, there are a lot of emotions involved, and you would be forgiven if you had a thought that went through your head along these lines;
- “Why did they decide to lay ME off, of all people?”
- “Did I do something wrong that contributed to their decision?”
- “Why are companies not loyal to their employees, even after I busted my ass on numerous occasions for them? Don’t they appreciate, or even recognize anything I did?”
- “I never had the opportunity to prove what I am really capable of”.
- “I feel betrayed”.
Being laid off (or fired) creates a nasty molotov cocktail of anger, fear, resentment and depression. I would be lying if I said I never experienced any of these emotions throughout my own career, including my recent COVID related layoff. It definitely took me by surprise, and it took awhile for me to finally come to terms with it and admit to everyone, ranging from close friends and family members to my LinkedIn followers, that I recently joined the ranks of one of the unlucky Americans who lost my job during a recession.
But this is the perfect time to reset your emotions. Go out of town on a camping trip. Visit friends and family (while taking COVID related precautions, of course). See a new part of the country.
If your job was hyper stressful and you were running around 24/7 with hardly any work/life balance, this is a good time to shift gears and move into something more relaxing before you move forward.
Taking a mini vacation after all, is not just a nice thing; it is strongly recommended that you do it, for your own mental health.
Of course, after you take a personal vacation, we get into some of the fun parts of all of this…
You get more valuable (ie expensive) every year
It’s pretty natural that the more experienced we get, the more money we make. So if you started at a company with two years of experience and you were there for three years, that means that you are on the job hunt for a UX position that needs five years of experience, and you get to command market value of your experience you have, right now.
At your old UX job, you were paid for whatever amount of experience you came in with, which is clearly lower than your market value now. Sure you will get small pay bumps here and there, but chances are good that your company was not paying you your current market worth, but instead was paying based on your market worth when you first started, plus adjustments for things like cost of living and small bonuses.
Related to that, I know jobs seem like they are tight right now. There are A LOT more unemployed UX designers right now, which means that companies have more options to choose from.
But never, and I mean NEVER accept a job that does not pay you fairly out of fear for lack of jobs. Thoroughly research your market value for someone of your experience level, in your part of the country (or world).
Identify your strengths and thoroughly highlight what you bring to the table for your future employer, and how it will increase their ROI. And don’t be afraid to negotiate your salary; it’s a vitally important skill you need to master in the job hunt!
For salary negotiation tips, look at this article on Harvard Business Review and this one on The Muse.
You have the opportunity to make a lateral move
One of my favorite quotes related to perceived loss and bouncing back comes from Obi Wan Kenobi, when he was dueling Darth Vader and decided to surrender so he could ascend into his more powerful, eternal form.
“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” — Obi Wan Kenobi, Star Wars Episode IV
While Star Wars is a total fantasy soap opera, I found the message behind it to be quite true in my personal life. Whenever something unexpected has happened in my professional career, I always bounce back stronger than I was during my previous position. Forcing myself to find a new job almost always results in higher pay, better team, more responsibilities, etc.
In addition to millions upon millions of regular people who bounce back stronger than ever after losing their job, there are lots of examples of celebrities who lost their jobs (and subsequently became far better off as a result):
- Michael Bloomberg
- Mark Cuban
- Steve Jobs
- JK Rowling
- Oprah Winfrey
- Robert Redford
Sure, you likely had opportunities to move up laterally within your own company. But you likely have the experience to qualify for a higher level role that you did not get while you were at your previous employer, and you can take that opportunity nab a mid/senior/lead/director, etc role at a different company.
New team and new challenges
Stability is nice, but the downside is stagnation. If you come in to the same office and work on the same projects day in and day out, things can get a bit dry and repetitive. You are likely specializing in the medium of choice your company has set aside (such as mobile apps, websites, software, etc). Changing to a new opportunity allows you to diversify your skill sets.
In my case, I have worked (mostly) on marketing websites, and this opportunity allows me to diversify and build my skills in a new realm, such as UX for software or voice interactions.
It also gives you the opportunity to diversify into another business model. So for example, if you have been an in-house designer, it can allow you to switch over to an agency, consultancy group, freelance, etc. And vice-versa.
Or if you have only worked in one industry (in my case, marketing), you can now switch to something else like healthcare, finance, entertainment, nonprofit, etc.
And speaking of which…
Change forces us to adapt
On an episode of NPR’s “How I Built This”, founder of Samuel Adam’s brewery Jim Koch drew an analogy to what we perceive as dangerous vs what is safe when he described why he left his $250,000/year consulting job in order to found one of the most iconic beer companies in America.
He presented the analogy of being in a wide-open field next to a snow-packed mountain on a sunny day, painting the picture of the scenario appearing safe, but actually being quite dangerous; the risk of an avalanche burying you before you have a chance to escape is quite high.
Meanwhile, he illustrated that rappelling off of a steep cliff wall a few hundred feet off the ground may feel incredibly dangerous; after all, one of the instinctual fears we have from birth is a fear of falling. However, your chances of falling to your death are incredibly slim; those climbing ropes and anchors are strong enough to hold a car without even budging, after all.
“And it’s the difference in life between things that are scary and things that are dangerous and there are plenty of things that are scary but aren’t dangerous and there are things that are dangerous but not scary and those are the things that get you.”
— Jim Koch on NPR’s How I Built This
I view stagnation at jobs the same way; the average time people in their 20s and 30s spend at a job hovers around three years. People who stay in a single job for a very long time are likely going to fall into the same habits and routines (including bad habits). They will work with the same platforms, use the same methodologies their company uses, and not need to keep their skills sharp for other high in demand skills they have not needed to work with previously.
Identify the work environment you want to be in
Maybe you are burnt out from startups that try to entice employees with an office that feels more like a frat house offering ping pong, video games, beer on tap, etc. Or maybe you were working in a seemingly stale corporate environment or government agency, and you want a more relaxed and fun environment.
Perhaps you were a one-person UX team, and you wanted more collaboration from several UX designers and researchers.
Or you were working with a company that had a mission that did not quite align with your values, or who had a business model that you supported with your work, but in reality you couldn’t care less about why the company exists in the first place.
Whatever you experienced in your previous jobs that you would like to improve upon, you now have the opportunity to narrow that down with your new job search.
I recommend getting a journal and writing down what you have experienced in the UX world, both what skills you used and what platforms you executed them on. Also write down the environments you have worked in. What did you like? What did you not like? What would you like to branch out into? These questions, if thoroughly and thoughtfully answered, will give you clarity on what your next UX job should look like.
And while you are on the job search, but sure to…
Level up your skills
Not every UX job is the same, and each job will have a nuance of responsibilities depending on the company’s maturity of their internal UX team (assuming they have one), resources they have available, etc.
For example, you may have not needed to use any HTML/CSS or Javascript in your previous role. However, you may be seriously considered by a position that, for it’s own reasons, requires that expertise from their UX team. Or some roles want a strong understanding of UI and visual design. Or maybe it requires a deeper understanding of UX research.
While I agree that these roles would be clearly separated and well-defined in an ideal company with a strong understanding of what UX is and how to implement it, not every company is like that. Some will expect you to have a more broad (or specific) range of skill sets, which you can build upon while you have all the free time in the world on your hands.
And the best part is, these educational resources do not have to be expensive. For example, an account with the Interaction Design Foundation costs $13 per month. Courses on Udemy can almost always be purchased through a flash sale at around $10 each. And LinkedIn Premium (which costs $25/month) not only allows you to network more effectively, but it also has a wide array of courses you can choose from from within LinkedIn Learning.
Here are some suggestions of resources you can use to level up your professional skills:
- LinkedIn Learning (comes with your Premium account)
- Treehouse (if you want to build your skills in coding)
- Udemy (more general, but they have excellent UX, UI and coding related courses, as well as more general job hunting and professional courses)
- Coursera
- Interaction Design Foundation (one of the best UX resources out there, in my opinion)
- Sarah Doody’s UX Portfolio Formula (Excellent for getting your UX portfolio up to speed; it is worth it’s weight in gold, in my opinion)
- Mike Locke UX Academy
- Give Good UX with Joe Natolli
- Career Foundry (while being a bootcamp, they also offer advanced classes geared towards industry professionals on helping them level up their existing skills in programming, UI and Voice Interaction)
And in addition to learning, you can use this time to further beef up your professional experience and portfolio. You can use these resources to volunteer your time to do UX work for your resume and portfolio. I recommend finding opportunities that do not require an NDA so that you can show the work publicly. But choose what works for you!
Here are places you can go to build your skills
- Devpost (great resource for finding hackathons)
- Xprize Foundation (they are always posting cool, ambitious challenges)
- Conservation X (where tech meets environmental conservation)
- Help with COVID
- Volunteer Match
- Find nonprofits, early stage startups or anyone who is willing to let you do non NDA protected work that you can show on your portfolio
Of course, when it comes to professional work, skills will only get you so far. That is where your personal connections come in, leading to our next point…
You are reminded that your personal branding and networking skills matter A LOT
Before I dive deep into this subject, it is crucial that I emphasize WHY we need to advertise ourselves to the world, make connections and not rely on our resume or job boards.
Do you know the most common way people apply for jobs? Yup, it’s through job postings.
However, this is by far, the LEAST effective means of finding a job; according to author Richard Bolles of the famous job hunt book “What Color Is Your Parachute”, resumes have a 4% success rate.
You read that right; they have a 4% success rate. And to make matters worse, did you know that it is estimated that between 70% — 80% of jobs available are not advertised on job boards?
Just let that sink in for a second.
Job hunters are often left fighting for the very few jobs that are advertised, often having to fight through applicant tracking system (ATS) bots, update their resumes, and face rejection email after rejection email.
That is where publishing content that positions you as a professional UX designer comes into play. Because this is an in-depth topic in itself, I wrote a separate article on it, which you can read about here (open it in a new tab and read it after you are done with this article). Just remember that LinkedIn and other mediums are going to be your saving grace when you are on the job hunt.
Being unemployed without a strong network to fall back on forces individuals like you and me to gauge how effectively we are networking on LinkedIn and establishing ourselves as industry professionals.
If you have a weak, or non existent presence on LinkedIn, or at least other platforms where UX professionals are very active (such as Twitter), this is a good time to step back and evaluate HOW you can present yourself professionally.
The silver lining here is that it is forcing you to evaluate HOW you are approaching the job search, which in itself is absolutely worth studying.
Is your job hunt approach not as effective as it could be? Now you can force yourself to change and be a complete LinkedIn and content badass, and ATTRACT your ideal jobs to yourself, rather than chasing for scraps.
It’s also worth noting that as much as I encourage people to get on LinkedIn and produce content regularly and show your work and value, I will admit that I myself have fallen in the trap of being in a cushy job, and not feeling the need to regularly market my skills through LinkedIn, writing Medium articles, interviewing experts in the field, and so on.
That is a mistake, and complacency can be one of our biggest enemies, as more and more people each day are realizing that our jobs are not as stable as we would like them to be. And it has come back to bite me when I needed it most, hence why I am so adamant about being active on LinkedIn and establishing a strong online presence.
Because this subject dives very deep into personal branding and how you can do it effectively, I created a separate article, which you can read here (open it in a new tab and read it when you are done with this article).
Remember, Google is your actual resume. How you present yourself online determines how effectively you will be seen. And being unemployed allows you to gauge the barometer around how effectively you are finding jobs. So use it to your advantage!
You (may) have the opportunity to move somewhere you have been really curious about
Maybe you are living in a city that you happened to wind up in due to circumstances that you feel fairly indifferent to. Or maybe you moved to your current city for a reason that is no longer relevant to your personal life. Or maybe your current location does not have the best tech scene.
The great news about UX work is that you can find it just about anywhere, especially in large cities. Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas, Austin, New York City and Boston are cities with their own unique, and quite predominant tech scenes available. Similarly, there are moderate sized cities and even towns that also have tech work available; for example, I have always dreamed of living in Santa Barbara, California. Turns out there are UX opportunities there, too!
Of course, one of the most exciting perks of all of this is that remote work is now become widely mainstream for those of us who can do it as a result of COVID, and that of course allows for ultimate freedom of where you want to work and how you want to work.
This is good news if you want to apply for work out of state and move there on your own terms, as you may get higher consideration if you prove to your potential employer that you are extremely skilled, since geographic boundaries are no longer an issue as we transition into working fully online.
Which leads to my next point…
Remote work has never been easier
Tech workers have now been forced to adapt to remote work. While some people are only able to work in small offices or bedrooms that are nowhere near the size and comfort of our open office spaces, the possibilities of remote work across tech have become more and more feasible. So while travel may be difficult for COVID related reasons, this does allow you to be a lot more mobile, if you have the luxury of being able to do that in your personal life.
And I don’t believe remote work will be a temporary thing either.
I genuinely believe that the prolonged effects of COVID are waking up both companies and employees to the realization that remote work is not only feasible, it can be quite beneficial for employees who need that lifestyle, such as parents raising young children, tech workers who want to travel the world, and people who may have health problems and need to work from home.
Want to invest in startups (or build one yourself)? Now is an amazing time for that
Humans are creative beings by nature. We all crave recognition, achievements, and contributing to a better, healthier, more sustainable world. And it’s no secret that tech is by far, one of the leading fields to be in that is swarmed with entrepreneurs who created Facebook, Lyft, Airbnb, Amazon, Tesla, Twitch and other tremendously innovative companies were born from the tech space.
But here is the wild thing; did you know that a lot of tech companies, including some that are extremely successful today, were created during a recession?
“When I grow up, I want to be an average, boring adult who lives a life of pure, bland mediocrity where nothing spectacular ever happens” — Said no child, ever.
The Founders Institute highlighted some reasons why startups actually have an ADVANTAGE during a recession, such as large companies letting go of highly talented employees that are now available on the market, being able to solve problems caused by the recession, being able to move faster while larger companies are reorganizing, etc.
A friend of mine and long time LinkedIn connection Tim Salau is in the middle of launching his education-based startup, Guide. Did he wait around for the economy to get better?
No.
In fact, he sees tremendous opportunity that comes from acting now while the economy is suppressed, and there are many more startup founders like himself who are in the same position.
If you have had an idea for a company you want to launch, this is a great time to do it. And similarly, these tech companies will always need funding, especially during a hard hit economy. So whether you have been interested in angel investing, building a startup or both, now may be an excellent time to scratch that itch.
“Be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy” — Warren Buffet
In conclusion
There is a silver lining in every situation, no matter how bleak it may seem. And it is more critical than ever to see these possibilities, so you can really make the most of your professional opportunities during COVID.
If you would like to connect with me on LinkedIn, feel free to send me a request. I thoroughly enjoy expanding my network and meeting UX designers from around the world!
