what's up everyone today I'm gonna be talking about how I landed my first UX design job two
months coming out of a UX bootcamp program by the way my name is Wesley Hong and I have been a UX
designer for two years now I attended designation which was a six-month bootcamp program located in
Chicago I began the program back in October 2017 and then I finished in May 2018 so this
video is mostly going to apply and be relatable to all those who just recently graduated from
a UX bootcamp program so to those who just recently graduated from the program first of
all congratulations guys you guys took a gamble on a program not knowing exactly what to expect
spending probably a good amount of money on the program itself and you did a lot of hard work
through your three to six month intensive program so now that you're finished with the program
you're faced with another stressful challenge which is to basically find your first UX job
out there and along the way I'll also share some tips some feedback insights which might help you
guys in your guyses journey to land your first job as well I'm gonna break down my personal
experience into three specific talking points number one preparing my resume and portfolio
number two applying for the job positions out there and number three going through the interview
process so let's begin you'll need to spend a good amount of time updating your resume and
then also building out your portfolio website now most bootcamp graduates will finish their program
without having their resume and portfolio ready and that's perfectly fine it will usually take a
person about one to three months to have their portfolio and resume ready in order for other
people to see it's easy to finish your boot camp program thinking that you're finished and done and
finally you can take a break but it's so important to keep your motivations high remember finishing a
boot camp program doesn't mean you're done it also doesn't mean that you're guaranteed a UX
design job right after the program there's still a lot of work to do so make sure you keep pushing
forward and do what you can all the way up until you've land your first job for me it took me a
little less than two months to have my resume my portfolio and one case study done again take your
time make sure you that you have something that you feel 100% comfortable sharing with your job
recruiters with UX designs specifically it's so important to have a portfolio website so that way
people can take a look at your work through your case study specifically so on a usual
portfolio you'll have your resume a bio and your case study on there for people to see now there
are two options for having your own portfolio website you can either build it and code it
yourself if you have the coding experience or you can use a website template provided by a website
building platform if you have the extra time and the coding experience then by all means go ahead
and build out your own website since I didn't have any coding experience and I don't want to
waste too much time building out the website I decided to go with Squarespace which is a very
popular website building platform that has a lot of beautiful templates you can use and it's also
very very easy to use as well so after I finished my bootcamp program I came out of the program
with two client experiences so basically I had two case studies that I could have ready for my
portfolio now the best case scenario is probably to have two case studies ready but for myself
I decided to go ahead and apply the jobs with just one case study just make sure you're able
to really showcase your work your design process and your storytelling as well those are all very
important things to remember when you create your case study all right so resumes I would say that
it's very important that you describe your mock project or client project on your resume in a very
descriptive way it's easy enough to say that you attended an intensive boot camp program so spend
most of the copy and the verbage talking more so about the client experience that you went
through some of the things that I described on my resume was what boot camp program I attended
and how long the program was what clients I got to work for what problems I was tasked to
solve on my client and what product I ended up designing a desktop or mobile app so now that
my resume and portfolio was ready and finished there's time for me to start actually applying
to different jobs out there so as most of you guys have noticed during a job search it's really hard
to find entry-level UX design positions I know guys I feel your pain it can be super annoying
and it can be very discouraging as your job search continues I remember applying to at
least 50 different job positions all across the United States that were labeled as entry-level
it's even harder and difficult if you're not open to relocation you narrow down your search if you
want to stay in your home city or even if you're narrowing it down to a couple of different cities
that you're looking to go to for me personally it was a matter of beggars can't be choosers
especially when you're a beginner and a hole a different field and career you really can't
pick and choose where you really want to go so I basically applied to almost every single city out
there that had a UX position open but sooner or later I even got tired of applying to different
positions all across LinkedIn Glassdoor indeed and I decided I had to think of a new way to be
more successful in my job search then I remember something that I learned during my career phase
during my buicks boot camp program one of our instructors mentioned informational interviews
and how that can be helpful in your job search an informational interview is an interview to learn
about the real life experience of someone working in a specific field or working at
a specific company for example if I wanted to become a UX designer at Google I would probably
interview someone who's currently working at Google and is a UX designer there or you can
even interview someone who used to work there as well so I'm actually gonna do a separate video on
informational interviews talking a little bit more about that in details but also giving you guys
more tips and feedback on how to navigate that so I decided to give the informational interview
route a try during my job search I saw a company that I was really interested in and saw that they
had an entry-level UX position open now I did not apply to that position right away now LinkedIn can
be super helpful in this specific scenario all I needed to do was search for the company name
in UX design and through that search I was able to find one specific UX designer who used to work
for that company previously I'm gonna give her the name Katie just for privacy reasons after I found
her profile I messaged Katie both on her LinkedIn and also on her portfolio email in my message I
wrote something like this hi my name is Wesley Hong and I am a new UX designer coming out of a
UX bootcamp program I saw that you used to work for this company and I'm looking to apply there
as well if you have some time I was hoping to see if I could pick your brain about your experiences
working at that company maybe through a video call or a phone call please let me know and
thank you very much honestly I wasn't too sure if I was gonna get a response back especially
from someone who I've never really met we don't have any mutual connections and I wasn't too sure
if she would be receptive to the idea of doing an informational interview now if you guys are
going to do your own informational interviews expect some no responses so a couple days after
I sent that message out to Katie I surprisingly got a response back from her she responded back
to me letting me know that she would gladly talk so from we basically scheduled a time in a date
so we did a 30-minute video call and on that call I got to talk to her about her experience working
as a UX designer and also talked to her about her experience working for her former company
and after all the questions that I had for her I briefly again just mentioned at the end that I was
looking to apply to that same company she used to work for at the end of the interview she mentioned
that if I was really interested in applying for that position in that company she would actually
connect and refer me to one of the UX directors that are currently working at that company now
and after having that conversation with Katy then I decided to apply to that open position
now this is where the interview process starts usually a first interview will consist of a
screening interview with HR just to see if you're an initial fit for the position that's available
but my first interview ended up being with the UX director instead of with HR for privacy
reasons again let's give the UX director of the name of Daisy so Katy ended up reaching out to
Daisy letting her know that I was interested in a position that was open and she also sent her my
resume and portfolio assuming that my resume and my portfolio all looked good Daisy then reached
out to me for my screening interview now on that call Daisy basically just had a lot of questions
regarding my background why I decided to become a UX designer recently and why I wanted to work for
that specific company also on the same call Daisy gave me a whole bunch of information and details
regarding about the company what it would be like there working as a UX designer what the technology
department and the UX team looks like and also what I should expect if I were to work at that
company after having a great conversation Daisy told me that they would look through my resume and
my portfolio with other designers one more time before they decide to actually move me to the
second process of the interview so after waiting about a week I was emailed by an HR from the
company letting me know that I was moved forward to the second part of the interview process now
surprisingly the second interview was actually gonna be an in-person interview on the email I was
informed that the second interview would consist of an office tour a couple more interviews and
also a design challenge now what was amazing about this interview was that I was gonna get flown out
to the company headquarters for free the company was gonna pay for my flight and they were also
gonna give me to and from the airport as well so on the day of my interview I got to the company
headquarters the first thing that happened was an office tour I got to check out the different
workspaces within all the different departments got to check out the gym the cafeteria which was
all very cool to see and after the office tour it was time for the design challenge so the goal
would be to show your entire design process during the design challenge but sometimes it's very hard
to fit all that specifically within an hour or 50 minutes if you feel like you won't be able to
showcase your entire design process make sure that you're just thorough and detailed with everything
else make sure that you speak out loud make sure to utilize the designers there for role playing
and then also use the whiteboards in the materials around you just to show your entire design process
throughout the time after the design challenge I was given one more set of interviews specifically
with the VP of Technology and then also a software engineer and after that my entire in-person
interview was done and complete I flew back home and all I had to do now was just wait for
that phone call to let me know if I either got the position or I got rejected from it in a week later
I got a call from the HR letting me know that I received the position and the rest is history so
that's how I landed my first UX design job coming out of a UX boot camp program just a reminder that
there is no certain timetable for when you're supposed to land your first UX job right after
your boot camp program ends for some of my other cohort members it took them about a week a month
to six months or even a year for them to land their first design position well I really hope you
guys enjoy that video I hope it was informational and helpful for you guys I'm hoping to do more
u.s. content on my youtube channel pretty soon if you guys have any specific questions or a
specific topic you want me to cover please let me know in the comment sections below if you want a
quicker reply you can always reach out to me on my Instagram with your questions as well please
share this video with other people who might be interested well liked the video and also subscribe
to my channel to see more similar contents like this so until the next video peace out guys see ya