- How do you list previous work
from a career that you were transitioning from?
Hi everyone in today's video
I'm going to go over my design resume that got me
my first full-time UX design job.
If you're new here, I'm Christine
and I'm a full-time UX slash product designer,
working in San Francisco.
I don't have a traditional design background.
I studied chemistry in college, found my way
into design and tech in the past few years.
And so in today's video, I'll be going over
how I framed my past experiences
that weren't design-related, my freelance projects
and my design projects, to get my first design job.
I'll also be sharing with you some
of my old resumes from my marketing job.
So if you wanna see the evolution
of my resumes from being in marketing into design,
make sure to watch until the very end.
This is my resume from 2016
I had just graduated from General Assembly's UXDI bootcamp.
Someone asked me what software I used
to come up with this template.
I use Figma or back then I used Sketch,
but now I use Figma.
If you wanna see how I use Figma
and get a basic understanding of that tool,
make sure to watch this video here.
I made a rookie mistake back then
but I wouldn't put a profile image here
on your resume because it takes away the focus
from the content of the resume.
Your resume should be concise
and to the point because recruiters
and hiring managers are probably looking
at your resume for five seconds.
One of the top questions that I got was,
how do you list freelancing consulting UX work on a resume?
Do you list in first or after corporate work?
Because I was transitioning into UX design,
I wanted to highlight my design projects.
So I put my design projects first before my work experience
but everything is in chronological order,
which is really important, someone asked me that
and here I have contractor next to my title, UX designer.
And I put all my freelance, pro bono design projects
from bootcamp as contractor positions.
I never got paid to do any of this work but the recruiters
and hiring managers don't really need to know
whether you got paid or not, but it's the work that you did.
So I put it as contractor.
So right out of bootcamp, I made sure to get other projects
on the pipeline where I could get real life experience.
And so Kernl and StylSavvy were two of those projects.
I actually didn't get to do any of them
because as I was interviewing
and getting these projects ramped up
I got my job during my first interview.
Kernl was a startup that a friend
of my friend was involved with
and I offered to help with the designs for free.
And so the first line here is a summary
of what the product is 'cause most people
don't know Kernl and StylSavvy.
And then I went into what I actually did for them,
or in this case, what I was planning to do,
but never got to.
Prototype high-fidelity UI, developed system design
and conduct user research.
StylSavvy was a project that my roommate's friend
who was a developer wanted to do
and I really wanted to get more experience
working with a developer.
So that never came to fruition
and I got my first job without having any experience
working with a developer nor shipping a product.
It's much harder now to get a job without that experience.
But I do think that one aspect of your skillset
could be overlooked because you have
all these other boxes check marked.
Next is graphic designer Sons & Daughters,
design print materials, T-shirts, banners
and media assets for a local community center
that provides social support for members.
So Sons & Daughters was a church
I was attending at that time.
And I didn't want to put church in there
because with the political climate
and everything that's going on,
I feel like churches have a bad reputation overall
and I didn't want to be judged by that one factor.
So I framed it as a local community center.
So we had this retreat that was coming up
and they needed volunteers to design the pamphlet
and the banner and the T-shirt,
so I volunteered for that.
So Levi's was one of the GA projects that I did.
We had a designer come from Levi's
and give us a project prompt.
So I did work for them and I framed it
as a contractor position.
We worked with for two weeks.
I know it was like a very short stead,
but we developed high-fidelity wire frames,
clickable prototypes
and we conducted usability testings.
And I had this on my portfolio and it was one
of the projects that I had presented during my interview.
The other question that I got was,
how do you list previous work
from a career that you're transitioning from?
So we're gonna get into my work experience.
I was a content creator back in 2016,
I only had 2000 subscribers, look at me, I've grown.
I want it highlight
that I had experienced in content strategy
and I knew the importance of analytics,
ad words, SEO, engagement, et cetera.
The job I had right before I enrolled in bootcamp
was at Tatcha, I was not a communications designer,
so I ended up swapping this out
to my more official title, which was community specialist.
But here I did want to drive home the point
that I was designing the communications.
I spearheaded visual design
and content for global email marketing.
So I sent out all the email campaigns to influencers.
I also designed the story cards tied to product launches.
Now let's look at my 2015 resume,
right when I had quit Tatcha.
I mean visually, you can see a stark difference
but also in the content itself,
you can see the framing is just completely different.
Here I focus a lot on my responsibilities
as an influencer and affiliate program manager.
So I highlight a lot more of the marketing side
of the job rather than the designs that I had done.
But in my design resume
I only highlight the things that are relevant
to the design role that I'm trying to apply for.
So to summarize everything, frame your resume
in a way that connects all the dots
back to your design skills.
Find creative ways to position yourself
as already having those design skills
and highlight them in your resume.
And remember your resume is always
secondary to your portfolio.
Even if you have the most amazing resume,
if your portfolio isn't there yet,
it doesn't have a strong problem statement,
you're not showing enough high fidelity mock-ups,
you're not really solving for a real life problem,
then it's most likely that you won't get far
in the interview process.
So if you're short on time and you're prepping
for interviews right now, I would suggest that you put 80%
of your effort on making your portfolio stronger
rather than focusing on the details of the resume.
The right column of my resume,
has all the tools and skills listed out.
I'm not sure if this is really important.
I just put it here because I've seen every designer
put this tools and skill section.
I think what's important
is that you know how to use Figma and Sketch
and some prototyping tools like Principal or maybe Framer.
So skills. I just put wire framing, rapid prototyping,
user flows, usability testing but honestly recruiters
and hiring managers don't really have time
to look at this whole list here
'cause once they see your portfolio,
they will get a good sense
of what skills and tools you know how to use.
If you wanna download a copy of my resume,
you can do that by clicking on the link down below,
you'll also be subscribed to my email list.
You'll be the first to know when my resume template launches
in a few weeks, I'll also be sharing any tips
and advice for anyone who wants to break
into the design and tech industry.
Now let's look at the evolution
of my resumes from 2015 until now.
So this is the resume I had when I had just quit Tatcha.
Now that I'm looking at it, it's really hard
to scan everything because there's just so much text.
I've looked at a lot of resumes
over the past few years because I've been helping my team
with interviews and hiring.
I prefer concise paragraphs over bullet points now
but that is just my personal preference.
So this was my 2016 resume that I just went over.
This is my 2017, oh my gosh.
Get, look at the type of gray
I was using, very questionable.
One thing that did improve from this
to this, is the hierarchy of the text.
In this resume, it looks like I'm using six
different font styles 'cause
of all the different grays, the boldness and everything.
Whereas this one,
it looks like I'm using a lot less style of fonts.
I'll be sharing the resume that got me a job
at Facebook in a separate video.
So while you wait for that,
make sure to watch these two videos
to get my tips on how network effectively
on LinkedIn and how to ace your apery.