Tips and guidance for entry-level UX Design CVs and portfolios
A couple of Birmingham-based Kainos UX design colleagues and I recently gave a talk to the UX MSc students at Birmingham City University to give some insight of our day-to-day experience as designers within Kainos.
As part of that, we offered some advice around what we look for from applicants for our graduate roles — in their CVs, portfolios and when talking about their work and experience.
I realised those tips may be useful to a wider audience, especially if you’re thinking of applying to one of our open graduate roles for UX Design or User Research.
I’d be keen to hear if you find them useful, so leave a comment below. Or if looking for any other advice on how to improve the presentation of your CV or portfolio in search of your first role in the industry.
Show your workings
When presented with a portfolio showing only polished designs and screen-flows, our typical reaction will be ‘so what?’
Without knowing the constraints and limitations you were working within; how can we objectively assess the end result?
It’s not (just) about the shiny end product, but how you got there. Show us the design journey, and what you learnt. Tell us about the compromises, U-turns and revelations along the way!
What is UX without the ‘U’?
Who are your users? How did you learn about their needs and reflect them in your design process?
This is perhaps an obvious one; after all, the clue is in the name. At Kainos Design we tend to have a relentless focus on the users — almost obsessive.
Our colleagues in engineering and product management are really good at keeping the user in mind, but in the product development lifecycle it is typically down to us to be the voice of the user and articulate their needs based upon research evidence.
We need that weight of evidence to place ourselves in the users’ shoes, otherwise you may find yourself having to justify your opinion against another, which can often be tricky — no matter how experienced or qualified you are.
All me, me, me!
While it’s important to show that you can work as part of a team and collaborate effectively, when you’re talking about a project or group assignment — we also want to be clear on what YOU did.
- What was YOUR responsibility?
- What was the impact YOU had?
- What did YOU learn?
Really key to communicate your specific contribution as part of a team; not to the detriment of your team-mates but recognising everyone will bring something different. So, go ahead and state what WE achieved as a team, but also be clear what your part was in that.
Technique > tooling
Fireworks, Director, Dreamweaver, Flash, Freehand, Blend, Sketchflow, Illustrator, Photoshop, Axure, Omnigraffle, Figma, Marvel, Sketch, InVision, Mural, XD, Miro…
All of these are tools and technologies that UX and Interaction designers have been expert in over the last 20 years, there will be a whole other set of products and brands in another 20 years.
Competency in the industry standard tools is important, yes — but don’t make the mistake of promoting that over problem solving and collaboration. The key to longevity and adaptability in the industry is your investment in the process and the practice of design, not just the tools.
It is worth saying, that of all the tools and tech — the one that has stood the course of time is HTML/CSS and the ability to understand and/or craft an interface for exploration, prototyping or development.
Breadth over depth
At an early stage in your career, versatility and understanding of complimentary disciplines is more valuable than highly specific in-depth knowledge (see also technique > tooling).
Empathy for your team-mates and the ability to talk the same ‘language’ enables easier collaboration. For example, we don’t expect people to have achieved an expert level of front-end development, but a good understanding of how an interface is built will equip you to be better able to design around a technology’s strengths and limitations, resulting in a better outcome.
Likewise, understanding user research techniques mean that even if you aren’t necessarily leading on a piece of user research, you will be better positioned to feed into the research screener and discussion guide, and be more confident to assist in observation and analysis
Apply!
So, if you can demonstrate a breadth of interest and practice along with some of the other things we’ve looked at — you may stand out among the CVs we’re receiving in application for our graduate roles.
We’re recruiting 4 UX Designer and 2 User Research graduate roles, with a focus on Birmingham as a base location. Interviews are taking place in late January to February with a start date of late August, early September 2021.
