UX Designers: Your LinkedIn headline sucks, and it matters A LOT. Here is how you can make it better!
As I write this article, we are in the midst of the worst recession since the great depression. And there are always UX designers looking for work, but now it is absolutely more dire than ever to have a strong LinkedIn presence, network and brand yourself to your best ability.
Chances are you are one of those who have been negatively affected by the dampened economy, and I feel your pain. I myself found my position cut as of last Thursday, despite many signs indicating that our company could weather the storm without cutting jobs.
I realize this article may come off as a bit brash, but please know that I am saying this from a place of love and empathy for everyone who is unemployed, especially right now. But I see this issue happening in the UX design community on LinkedIn all the time, and I want to address it, as I have noticed so many UX designers list their headlines as:
“unemployed UX designer — available for hire”
“UX designer seeking new opportunities”
“Open to new opportunities”
So what is the problem with these?
- First off, they aren’t selling your skills, accomplishments, and past experience. Instead, it is only stating that you have an issue and you want someone to solve it (ie, hire me)!
- Secondly, there are tons, and I mean TONS of people on LinkedIn, with nearly identical headlines. Trust me, I see them all the time. It’s a fantastic way to help yourself blend in with everyone else, when you should be doing the exact opposite.
I view headlines like that as about as effective as a panhandler walking around asking for money. Sure, you might talk to some people here and there. But there are thousands upon thousands of UX designers, often with almost the exact same headline, in the exact same rut as you.
If you are not advertising your specific capabilities and accomplishments as the hook to get people interested in talking to you, you are not being nearly as effective as you could be.
If you have a headline along those lines, I really encourage you to re-think your opening title. Yes, all of those things may TECHNICALLY be true.
But remember, we are here to SELL our skills and abilities to our future employers. Your opening headline is the second thing your prospective employers see (your picture being the first of course, so get that nailed down and looking professional too).
Imagine for a second, that you are walking through the grocery store, looking for a bag of chips (or “crisps”, as they say across the pond) that you plan to take to that housewarming party you are attending to celebrate overcoming the post-COVID challenges we are all facing now.
There may be a huge variety of brands you can pick from, but how do the most appealing brands stand out among the others when there are so many options and you may only give them a few second cursory glance, at best?
Appealing product packaging, strategic use of color and design, excellent product photography, and other strategic marketing decisions are what usually make you decide to grab one brand over another; even if the brands you didn’t select were nearly identical in quality, texture, and other key points that make the product appealing.
It is no different from how you present yourself online, and you really have to make sure you have a solid hook.
Let’s say you are hiring for a UX position, and you came across someone’s profile with the headline:
“National award-winning UX designer, accomplished public speaker and Medium author of over 50 articles on the UX Collective blog. Available for hire!”.
Holy crap! What do you think of that person? And would you be more interested in learning more about that individual than someone who states “UX designer looking for new opportunities”? Or worse, “unemployed UX designer”?
Yes, I have seen that last title too, believe it or not (or I wouldn’t have mentioned it). It may be true, but it does not look appealing, especially on LinkedIn.
I listed both because I have seen A LOT of the latter, and yesterday I came across someone with the former title (I didn’t re iterate it word for word, but it was along those lines). You would think this person has been in this profession for over 20 years and is a total UX badass, right? Turns out that individual has been in the field for only about a couple of years and graduated design school quite recently.
And yet, the personal marketing was DYNAMITE, and it stood out profoundly more than people I come across with a weak headline, even among those UX professionals with way more experience.
So how can you come up with a better headline?
You can get really creative with this. For example, did you accomplish something really cool lately (hackathons, passion projects, etc)? Were you a part of a really innovative company that did a lot of cool things? Is there some unique skillset you have that you could talk about for days (VR/AR, Gaming UX, Voice interaction, etc)? Did you give any recent talks or mentor other UX designers?
Even if you are a student or a career changer with little to no experience. You may think you have nothing of particular value to share, right?
Wrong.
You can ALWAYS create unique selling points for yourself. If you haven’t accomplished anything noteworthy in your UX career, make something happen. If you are unemployed, the positive side is that you have a lot of free time on your hands, so make some cool shit happen!
Here are some ideas, based around things I have done:
- Start a Youtube or podcast channel focused around some UX topics you are interested in, and interview experts in that field. If that sounds daunting, it shouldn’t be. You may be surprised at how nice people can be and how many of them will say yes to your request (and even be flattered by the interview request)!
- Sign up for an account with some sort of online learning resource, like the Interaction Design Foundation (https://www.interaction-design.org/) and take classes related to a particular UX topic that fascinates you. Then, you can talk about what you learned on LinkedIn, Medium, Youtube, etc. Teaching a subject matter is the best way to learn, after all!
- Find some opportunities to support a cause with your UX work that is really a big deal right now that you also deeply care about. As I write this, COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter are very prevalent, and they definitely need creative minds to help solve these very complicated issues (and volunteer projects, as well as virtual hackathons around these causes are BOOMING right now, and need lots of UX help). But that does not mean that other problems that may also be of interest to you, like global warming, gender inequality, lack of education and clean drinking water around the world, habitat loss in the rainforests, etc are not still in dire need of help, too. For that, there are NUMEROUS projects, opportunities and causes you can get involved with. Sites like Xprize (xprize.org), Conservation X (https://conservationx.com/), Angel List (angellist.co), Help With COVID (https://helpwithcovid.com/projects?skills=Software), Volunteer Match (volunteermatch.org) are a fantastic place to start. Even looking up these opportunities that interest you on Google is a good start!
- Attend hackathons; you don’t have to be nearly as technical as one would think to be of value to a team, and you may create something really cool from it! For a full list of hackathons, Devpost is a great resource (https://devpost.com/)
- Go to colleges, high schools and bootcamps, and ask to be a guest speaker so you can share your experiences as a UX designer. While everyone is working remote, you still have the opportunity to present yourself as an authority figure, and you should!
The point is, your LinkedIn hook is pretty important. If your photo is blurry or low quality, be sure to update it. Professional photos are always king, and you can usually hire a pro photographer for a couple hundred dollars off Thumbtack. And make sure you are using a solid hook for your LinkedIn headline. It’s there to ATTRACT people to learn more about you, after all!
As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter :) and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn!
