How I Got My First UX Researcher Job as a New Grad

My learnings, interview tips and a UX research portfolio presentation template that works

Published in

University of Washington Human Centered Design & Engineering Alumni

15 min readApr 10, 2020

200+ applications, 29 interview opportunities and 14 onsite interviews. It was a year of diligent effort to find a position where I could learn and grow. As someone who just graduated from school with little industry experience, with the added hurdle of being an international student, finding that first job was difficult.

Now that I have finished a few contract jobs, and a year has passed, I can see the gaps between what industry is looking for and what I didn’t have. I would like to share my learnings with current students and early career alumni who are seeking opportunities. Note that I’m writing this article from the perspective of a user experience researcher, so some of what I’ve learned might not apply to other roles in the UX field.

The market is very saturated, and the industry has high expectations for a UX Researcher.

I never expected it to take a year to find a role. But if you have preferences for location (like me), it can take this long. The market in a city like Seattle is very saturated. Many companies are not looking for new grads or junior researchers with less than three years of experience.

But don’t be afraid to apply for positions with qualifications beyond your experience. If you understand how UX functions in a company, understand research methodologies and their constraints, and know how to collaborate with cross-functional teams (Product, Design, Engineering), there is a good chance you can get a job with only a few years of experience. Even when you don’t get the job, the lessons learned from unsuccessful interviews are definitely valuable and can eventually lead to the successful ones. Interviewing helps you think about how to talk about the discipline and your experiences.

So here comes the problem:

How do you understand UX in an industry context without industry experience?

The answer is: you probably don’t. Coursework can’t teach you how industry actually works. This is a constraint of all school programs, not just of my program at the University of Washington’s Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) or other UX programs. My engineering friends talk about difficulties adjusting to industry as well — project scope, pace, and priorities are different from an academic environment.

UW HCDE does a great job of closing the gap by soliciting company-sponsored projects, which allow students to work on actual problems, to speak with a company’s users, and to create solutions for them. I really appreciate this focus in HCDE and the department’s approach led the way to my first contract job out of school. But class projects are still isolated from the rest of the company’s day-to-day work. You learn about the problem, conduct research in the field, and present the results to the company, but then you have to hand it off.

What might your own gaps be? If you are interviewing for an in-house role, you will realize that being a successful researcher doesn’t just mean conducting research. You have to:

Make sure your research addresses stakeholders’ needs: this can include needs on a small scale (such as feature iteration) or on a larger scale (such as product expansion or pivots).
Choose a method that, while sub-optimal, fits your team’s timeline: For example, you don’t want to conduct a diary study when you are only given one week to do research. You need to find the balance between methods and rigor in real-world scenarios.
Choose the right participants: Understand who to talk to. Nothing is worse than talking to the wrong people and generating invalid results that lead the team down a rabbit hole. However, you also need to know when internal participants are sufficient. If you are doing concept testing for a team that wants to make a decision on a two-step flow immediately, finding internal employees who aren’t part of the product team can be sufficient. You need to be scrappy in industry sometimes.
Collaborate with others: Nearly all jobs require that you involve cross-functional teams in your research process, keeping them updated about your study plan and inviting them to observe research sessions. You will need to make stakeholders your allies when you present to a larger audience or seek to drive product changes.
Drive impact: When presenting the results to a large audience (who may not understand UX), you often need to use compelling user stories to back up research findings and present opportunities so that they address both user problems and business needs. Sometimes trade-offs need to be made when you can’t do both.

How do you develop experience when you are working on sponsored school projects and not working on-site with a product team?

The short answer is: put yourself into an in-house researcher’s shoes. Ask yourself (and ask your contact in the company):

Why do they need this research? What decisions are the stakeholders trying to make based on this research?
Who are the decision makers in the company and what helps them make decisions? This can inform the metrics you collect in usability testing, or the data you gather in surveys.
What might the results look like? Play out different scenarios to see how you might draw insights from data and how the team can act on your research.

If results show that the client’s product has low satisfaction and users start to switch to the competitor’s product, what are the underlying reasons?

Is the issue about price? (e.g. the competitor’s product is free and provides basic functions). The team could talk to marketing about providing a cheaper or free product that matches the basic functions of competitive products.

Is the issue about discoverability? When testing a design concept, it might be that a redesign of a product hides some commonly used features, and less tech-savvy users are not able to find them. In this case the team needs to re-evaluate designs or may need to conduct quantitative studies to see if the difficulties generalize to other user segments. If not, you might suggest that they include options for non tech-savvy users or an option to revert back to the previous experience.

Finally, it’s important to keep your stakeholders’ goals in mind when you are presenting the studies. Reporting a list of usability issues or tallies of problems is not interesting or informative for some stakeholders. Invest time in knowing what is compelling to your audience and focus your findings on their needs. If you present videos of users struggling, tie patterns to metrics that stakeholders care about (such as satisfaction, NPS, etc), you will get more traction and your stakeholders will be more likely to implement changes.

What are some other ways to get a peek into the industry?

The above is the starting point to think like an in-house researcher, but it is hard to know if your approach aligns with best practices in the industry, or to know what other problems you might need to deal with in an in-house role. It is a chicken and egg problem, so here are some other ways to get a peek into the industry:

Listen to podcasts and read articles on Medium:

This is a quick and easy way to get compiled information about the problems that people are solving in their workplace, and learn what challenges they face in their current career stage. Some may make sense now and some may make sense later. But it’s good to get exposed to them and start thinking about them.
You may not be able to talk to professionals all the time, so this is an alternative way for you to stay connected to the industry and stay updated with trends.
Podcasts I listen to include: Mixed Methods, UX Cake (the host is based in Seattle!), Dollars to Donuts, User Defenders, The Method Podcast from Google Design, and Awkward Silences.

Talk to professionals in the field:

Conduct informational interviews with professionals. Nothing is better than a 1:1 discussion with a professional when you have specific questions related to the space they work in or the company they work for. As I transitioned into the field, I found it helpful and inspiring to talk to alumni and other professionals that shared my background. I got great advice on how to navigate my way around challenges, how to transfer skills from my previous background, and where to keep developing my skills.
Seek mentorship. Some of the professionals you talk to will resonate with you so well that they are willing to make time to have regular check-ins with you. I’m very grateful for my mentors who share their experience with me, help me with questions at work and mock interviews, and most importantly, have faith in me and see my potential before I see it myself. Finding mentors is hard (time is the biggest favor you could ask someone for), but luckily organizations like HCDE and Hexagon Seattle offer mentorship programs geared toward students and alumni.
Go to informational UX meetups. Meetups are a place where professionals share their work and talk about challenges they face in their roles. I make a point to catch speakers after a meetup to talk about something that inspired me or left me with a question. I don’t like networking for the sake of networking, but I like to bounce ideas off of others who have ideas or demonstrate characteristics that I admire.

With a deeper understanding of how industry works, you will find yourself more confident and prepared for interviews. You will answer more questions to the point, and you will see more nods and smiles from interviewers (well, some may still show you a poker face, just to test you, but that’s okay). My mindset has switched from “OMG, what do I do? This big company is interviewing me! I’m so nervous and I’m so afraid to screw up!” to “Yep, I’ve done my best to prepare, and I’m going to go in and shine. I don’t care what the result is, as long as I do my best and leave no regrets.”

How do you convey all you know and how you think in an interview?

So, assuming you’ve gathered your confidence, you’ve learned to speak about your research expertise, and you are invited to an onsite interview, you are very close to getting the role. Congrats! People are busy in industry and interviewing candidates is a lot of work! Remember that they wouldn’t bring you in and spend 2–8 hours of the team’s time with you unless they felt you were capable.

Your onsite usually starts with a portfolio presentation followed by a few 1:1 interviews with researchers, research managers, and with other cross-functional roles such as content strategists, designers, and PMs. Having a decent portfolio presentation sets the stage for a successful on-site interview.

I iterated my portfolio presentation deck over the course of almost two months and consulted many professionals and alumni in the process. Let me give a special shout out to Frank, Jian, Mike, Crystal, Daphne and Irina who helped me with this! Over the past year of job hunting, I wasn’t able to find any UXR portfolio presentation examples online. I had to experiment with mine, try it out in interviews, and iterate it over and over. It finally got me through six onsite interviews and led to four contract job offers. Because I had to start from scratch myself, and because I know how daunting it can feel, I want to share my portfolio presentation template with you. I hope it can save fellow alumni and students some time and effort from going through the same trial and error. This is what I have found to be effective:

Slide 1: About me

One phrase about yourself
Briefly describe your previous work/experience
Talk about areas you have worked in
Outline methodologies you are experienced with
State what you are looking for in the next role (and tie that to the role you are interviewing for)

Slide 2: Project title slide

Slide 3: Project overview

Concrete research goals
Timeline
Team (your role and other role you collaborated with)
Methods used
Participant profiles
Impact of your research results

Slide 4–5: Product background

What was the product and how does it work?
What was the problem (e.g. low usage, low product awareness)?
Why was this important?
Where was the product gap?
How did you close the gap with this research?

You can lose people’s attention in this very important section if you don’t explain the product or problem clearly and concisely. This is crucial, because it sets the foundation of the problems you are solving and the rationale for your methodology.

I have failed interviews because people weren’t able to follow along, and I didn’t realize it until housemates who don’t work in the field asked me to explain it. Then I realized explaining the concept in a scenario and coupling this with a couple of visual illustrations can help so much. Here’s an example:

“Imagine you are a [target user], and you want to [perform a task] (e.g. look up information about x), you go to [product] and it’ll give you [product feature]. So basically it’s a tool for [user segment], it uses [technology] to help users with [these tasks]. It is a handy tool but it currently has these issues: [issue 1], [issue 2], [issue 3]. My research goal was to understand [e.g. user mental models, user behaviors, user workflows, user needs] and identify opportunities to improve the product.“

Slide 6: Research questions

Research goal
Research questions

Slide 7: An overview slide of research process

Understand research needs (addressed in the previous sections)
Identify the participant profile
Develop a research plan
Screening and recruitment
Conduct the study
Data analysis
Research share-out

The remaining slides:

You can address each of the previous bullets in one or more slides, but you don’t have to. I’m giving my examples below for your reference.

Slide 8–10: Identify the participant profile

Participant profiles are usually given by a Product Manager or are determined based on the current study interests. I spent a bit of time on this section because I encountered a challenge in this phase: my primary profile was too niche — <1% of US population, had high income, hard to incentivize, and needed extensive paperwork from their affiliated group to be interviewed.

In the interview I introduced the primary profile, talked about the recruitment constraint I had, and explained my rationale for using a secondary profile: they are not as rare as the primary profile but work in the same field and their interests and needs are likely to overlap with the primary profile. Because the team never talked to professionals in this domain, the insights from this secondary profile were sufficient to inform a broad product direction. Future studies with users falling into the primary profile can be conducted when time and resources are sufficient, and help refine and iterate the product.

I also described how I communicated my rationale with the team, so they were on-board with this pivot. In interviews, it’s important to show your decisions, but also how you communicated them.

Slide 11: Develop a research plan

I introduced my methods and rationale in this section —

What the methods are (never assume the audience is familiar)
Why you chose them
How they help uncover user behaviors, mental models, needs, etc.

Slide 12: Screening and recruitment

You can mention the key criteria from your screener, study timeline, the number of participants recruited. List a few critical traits from recruited participants and explain why they were picked.

For my project, I needed diverse roles within a profile, so I mentioned a few roles that stood out and the diverse perspective they were able to bring to the table.

Slide 13: Conduct the study

I talked about how I structured my sessions to cover different topics and activities. Based on the type of research you’ve conducted, here are some things you can talk about:

If it’s a user interview, what topics did you cover in the interview, and how does each topic address the bigger research questions?
If it’s a diary study, what did the timeline look like, when did you do the interview, and how did participants submit their entries. A diary study is expensive, so make sure you address your rationale.

Slide 14: Data analysis

Include the methods you used to do analysis — affinity diagramming, statistical testing, data visualization, etc.

Slide 15: Findings

It’s important to not just report out the findings, but “to put on your Product Manager hat,” since they are likely one of your main stakeholders. Think about: what will these findings mean to the team? If users say they don’t need something, can you identify the users’ fundamental needs and relate them to something that the team can offer? Illustrate problems by presenting opportunities. Make them actionable.

Slide 16: Opportunities

Show how you collaborated with a Product Manager, Designer or Engineer to develop opportunities. These stakeholders work closely with cross-functional teams and will provide perspectives that you don’t have, such as technical capabilities or constraints, product strategies, etc.

Some examples of product opportunities include: helping users streamline a complex task, or learning about user habits and helping them to complete tasks proactively. If a tested feature is not part of the user’s workflow, can you “meet users where they are” and create something in a product that they are already using?

Slide 17: Impact

Describe what your research has helped stakeholders do. For example, did you uncover usability issues that broke the critical user journey, uncover needs of a new user segment, or inform a product direction?

After talking about how the project went, I’d also be prepared to talk about:

Challenges: It’s important to describe issues that impacted your study. These can be about participant recruitment, team collaboration, or trouble identifying opportunities. No matter what you say, make sure you end with a positive note — how you overcame challenges, resolved conflicts, or made an impact despite adversity.

●What you would have done differently: You can talk about something related to the challenges you’ve described, could describe what you would do if you were given more time/more budget, or could talk about how you would pursue follow-up studies to generalize study findings, confirm assumptions, etc.

A few tips on the portfolio presentation:

Showcase projects that employed different methodologies. Usually the hiring team asks you to present two projects, I’d pick two different types of studies such as one exploratory and one usability, to showcase that you can do both.
Time your presentation. You are usually asked to present 2 projects in 45 minutes or an hour. Don’t take up too much time on one and only leave 5 minutes for the other. I have done this before in an unsuccessful interview. Don’t repeat my mistake.
Keep the audience engaged. Doing this well will show that you have good story telling skills and can influence a larger non-UX audience. Research presentations can get so technical that people lose interest. I insert a few question slides in my presentation to create turning points for the challenges I had to solve along the way, or to highlight findings that were unexpected.
Know your audience. You might want to elaborate on different parts of your research depending on who your audience is. Ask about the audience before you head to your on-site interviews.

If they are mostly researchers, its important to give rationale for your methods and go into a bit more detail about participant sampling, screening, and what your research plan entails. Describe how the study was conducted and how you did your analysis. Talk about conclusions you drew and how you translated those into actionable recommendations.
A more diverse audience might not inquire much about methodology. But they will care about what the problem was, what the findings were, what opportunities your research brought to the team, and how you collaborated with cross-functional teams.

On a final note, please don’t give up in the process. I know how hard it can be when you don’t get the job . But remember, sometimes it’s not personal. I have been rejected because the team did not have the budget anymore or the hiring manager preferred someone he had worked with in a previous company. Sometimes a rejection just means you are not a good fit for the particular role at the moment, but hiring managers can still be so impressed with you that they refer you to other teams or invite you back when more headcount opens up. So don’t beat yourself up for not getting the job. Learn from mistakes if you make any, and let go of all the others that you have no control over. In the end, what I felt grateful for was all the great people I met along the way and established connections with. I might have never met them had I not journeyed down this bumpy road.

It all takes time. Very, very few people start off a career in a role that is perfect (e.g. an exciting space, a great location, a friendly environment and high pay, etc). There’s always room for improvement and this will motivate you to keep striving to continue learning, to better yourself, and to make a positive impact that you weren’t able to make before.

Above all, I’d like to suggest to all UXers to remember why we were drawn to the field, and hope we all keep that sense of humanity in the things we create.

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Last but not least, I want to thank my mentors(Mike, Crystal, Frank, and Weijuan) and my friends who helped me along this journey, and want to thank the Alumni Board (Mike and Paula) and HCDE for creating this space that allows me and fellow alumni & students to share experience and learn from each other!