this video is made for anyone who's working hard to become a ux designer it's not going to be easy
and that's exactly why i'm making this video hey everyone aliena and welcome back to my channel
i learned ux design through taking the google ux design certificate courses and i landed my first
part-time design contractor role three months after that and a full-time ux design role four
months after the part-time role i made so many mistakes in the process and then making this
video so that you don't make the same mistake when it comes to entering the field of ux what i see is
that there are two groups of people for the first group of people maybe you have a design degree or
maybe you have some design background in visual design or maybe you came from a design bootcamp
in which the bootcamp provided you some opportunities to work with real life clients
if you are this group of people you already have real life project to showcase in your portfolio
and you can move to the next section now for the other group of people which definitely includes me
you're probably learning ux design on your own trying to make a career transition while still
working on a full-time job and probably taking online courses by yourself i don't suggest you
to jump directly to look for a full-time role because that's going to be very difficult in
this extremely competitive field and you might be really disappointed by the rejection letters
what i suggest you to do is to first look for an opportunity to work in a real life project
this can be a short-term internship a freelance project or a part-time design project
for me i did a part-time design project for a startup
and that really helped me to get a sense of what it's really like to work within a team
what it's like to have actual design constraints and how to work around these constraints
there are two application materials that we can leverage resume and portfolio now remember that
recruiters are not ux designers let's talk about resume first i learned it in the hard way and if
you have job experience you probably already know this first make sure to build your resume either
in microsoft word or google doc don't use a design tool make sure it's one column not two columns the
resume that's made by fancy design tools will not pass a resume scanning app i learned it
the hard way okay make sure you're throwing as many keywords as possible related to ux design
make sure each bullet point involves a number it can be the number of months you work on this
project or just try to estimate whatever you did increase stakeholder stratification rate by 10%
or something like that and if you work on a design system that speed up the process say
increase delivery efficiency by 5% and for each bullet point that you put down
make sure to start it with a different action verb you can find it from this action verb box
now for the portfolio i suggest you to build your portfolio through squarespace behance or notion
the benefit of squarespace is that it gives you a domain name so yourname.com the benefit of the
other two platforms is that they are free and it's way easier to edit and when it comes to portfolio
make sure that the real life project is presented on the top and my biggest tip is
actually to improve the visual presentation of the portfolio use a great banner don't make it like
too fancy and doesn't even highlight the content anymore highlight the content but present it in a
way as if it's an iphone ad or something like that and here's a resource to check out good portfolios
so i'm not going to show you a one-size-fits-all template but here are some key things that you
can include in your portfolio that will be very helpful for me i found it helpful to
stay the problem at first and then directly show my solution and then go through the process most
of the explanation when it comes to this project will be explained through your work during the
actual interview instead of during the resume or portfolio scanning process people won't read much
but they will definitely see what you did and check out this video if you need more tips to
get started when it comes to the case study just make sure the first one is really really good
the second and third one you probably won't present in your interview at all and you just need
to make sure they are there and follow the similar template doesn't have to be perfect now let's talk
about actual application make sure the first thing you need to do is to understand your strength
this is not something that everyone talks about but understanding your strength
is so important i did it the way where i would do it which is just sending out applications without
connecting to people on linkedin but you can definitely play the linkedin game if your strength
lies into digital networking linkedin didn't work out to me focusing on quality instead of quantity
didn't work out to me applying to large companies directly through their website didn't work out to
me what really worked out to me is applying on indeed what i did was that i applied to 15 roles
every day for the entire month and i only spent 30 minutes on my application per day
so two minutes per application and that's actually helpful and here's the secret when
you apply to a company on indeed are not just applying to one company you are also sending
your information to a recruiter and usually the recruiter has more than one design opportunities
so whenever a recruiter call back to you he or she can link you up with more resources or more
opportunities that fits you better and sometimes the recruiter is working in a staffing agency
and in that case your information can be sent into their agency and their agency will help
you to find a full-time role and that is what actually worked out to me i got linked up to
around two agencies and they have a lot of contractor roles ready and all the
contractors are well paid full time and that's how i got my full-time role through the agency
my first suggestion when it comes to interview is to accept every single interview
because it's always better to learn more about the company and it's always better to practice
before you go into the interview you can try to talk through your portfolio but don't make it
too stiff because i definitely over practice my portfolio before some of my interviews and i feel
like i was speaking not so natural i think it's so much better to be natural another thing is that
research their company thoroughly if you understand their product so well then
they'll be impressed by how much homework you've done and that will give you a much better chance
another thing that works so well for me is that i made sure to ask everyone in the room
to introduce themselves first well first of all this make people feel like you care about them
they have some words to say and second of all you understand the background and the context a little
bit more not everyone in the room are designers some people might ask questions from let's say a
marketing point of view or an advertising point of view and knowing a little bit about them
can help you to prepare a little bit while you are you know having an interview final advice
when it comes to design interview is to ask a lot of questions especially ask questions about
them what was it like when you first entered the company and is it different from today's work if i
get this position who would i be collaborating with what product or project management framework
does your team use do you use agile do you prefer email communication or do you use slack how do you
handle design constraint especially how do you handle constraints from the engineering side and
how to work with the engineers and the pms these questions will give you a lot of insights about
the company allow people to have time to talk and definitely help you to kill a little bit of time
that's pretty much it for the advice yeah i got some final thing to say in the end
again it's not going to be easy to enter the field of ux design simply because right now
the supply is much higher than the demand i sincerely wish the world has more ux designer
because i understand the value of ux design and i'm sure you do as well i went through
a period of time where i was losing hope of me becoming a ux designer getting a role at all no
matter part-time or contract and for me the worst time in this entire process is when i feel like
i am a full-time job seeker because that's not the work i want to do i hate sending applications
i was only spending 30 minutes per day focusing on application
and other than that 30 minutes i was learning something else and you probably
think from my channel i finished two other certificate courses i was working part-time
in another room and i'm working on my own youtube channel trying to share what i learned in design
make sure you don't stop design while trying to apply for a design role i'm a firm believer that
if you can improve a little bit in design every single day then there's no way that you cannot
find a design role so i really hope that this video helps you and for anyone who wants to become
a ux designer i believe you can do it and let me know if you need anything else honestly right now
it looks like the world is collapsing but i hope that you don't collapse see you next time