What are UX/Product design hiring managers looking for and how to stand out.

I recently had a round-table discussion with two UX leaders from Amazon, Abbey Smalley, and Sylas Souza. We covered a range of topics with folks from all over the world, most of whom have just graduated or transitioned to UX design and are actively looking for jobs. This article covers everything we discussed. Please feel free to leave questions for us in the comment section!

Breaking into the field

There’s definitely more than one way of doing it.

Ask yourself the hard questions.

For people transition to UX, it’s important that you ask yourself the hard questions. Do you really want to be a product/UX Designer? If so, would you be willing to start at a lower paying (hard to find) apprenticeships? We stress on this because companies usually offer internships to college students, leaving career transition folks out in the cold.

If you get stuck answering the first question, then we suggest reading job descriptions, UX college /course curricula, UX 101 books and doing informational interviews with current UX designers.

Tip: User Informational interviews as a tool to get in-depth information that isn’t available on the internet. Reach out to current UX practitioners through LinkedIn intending to do an information interview only. Make sure you use their time effectively by doing your homework and asking questions based on your knowledge gaps and their expertise. Having an excellent set of questions not only shows your interest but also suggests that you value their time. A skill anyone in the field will appreciate since their time is often limited.

To bootcamp or not to bootcamp?

The hardest way to transition into this field is being self taught without experience. It’s not impossible, but it’s extremely difficult. Abbey mentioned, “The best way I’ve seen work out is when someone is already at a company that has UX roles and asks permission to lean in or shadow on their own time while completing their current work.”

Not all bootcamps are equal, so dig deeper to know the structure. Here are some questions you should ask:

• Are they 8 months to a year long? — This shows that they dive deep and aren’t just surface level overviews.
• Do they pair you with mentors who have practical knowledge in the field?
• Will they teach you the fundamentals and actively make sure you practice them?
• Do they help you practice few projects involving cross functional peers like the real world? For example, with Product Owners, Developer, and Business owners.
• Do they help you build a portfolio? — Usually 3–5 projects are enough, some of these need to look pretty real or built out, think interactive prototypes.
• Do they cover a variety of UX tools and methodologies that will help you build artifacts and prototypes for your portfolio?
• Do they cover UX research and make you practice talking and testing with users?

These are some of the criteria hiring managers look for, so make sure you proactively look for them before choosing your bootcamp.

Hiring based on experience vs. potential

Will hiring managers think twice about a candidate with less experience yet a strong desire to learn? Well, that depends. The most important question a hiring manager is trying to answer is, “Is this person qualified for the specific job that I have available?” The best thing you can do is help them answer that question by showing them examples that prove your ability to handle similar work and situations. Your examples will be the strongest if they happen to be real life examples that leverage insights from real users that goes beyond a classroom project. Read the job requirements and criteria and tailor your cover letter, resume and portfolio accordingly. For example, you can tweak the intro paragraph for the job to highlight the skills that you have that related to what the role is looking for.

Transitioning from Graphic Design or UI design to UX.

Both fields closely overlap with UX design so they can be easier to switch from, but, like with any other field, it’s important to think about your skills in UI/Graphic design as an asset that makes you uniquely qualified to be in UX. Many things are transferable, like problem solving, working with cross functional stakeholders, and visual design skills, but a here are some common gaps that Abbey highlighted:

• Show that you understand the up front problems to solve.
• Define what success looks like and how you measure that you have achieved it.
• Conduct research activities and showing how you analyzed the data to surface themes, key findings, and insights.
• Design prototypes based on data and show them at varying levels of fidelity. For example, sketches, paper prototypes, black and white, and higher fidelity designs.
• Show that you know how to use a variety of tools and how to use them at the right time. For example, personas, journey maps, and user flows.

UX resume

Really, be honest.

Start looking at your resume from the perspective of a hiring manager. Think, “I have limited time, but would like to know more about this candidate, their experience and skills.” With that mindset, what would you be looking for? Sylas mentioned 6 integral sections you should have in your resume:

1. A resume header with contact data and a portfolio link — Make sure you include any passwords.
2. An introduction in the form a career summary — Introduce the hiring manager to the human behind the resume.
3. A brief explanation of work experiences in a reverse-chronological order.
4. An education section — Spend more time in this section if this is your first job. Highlight any courses or skills you’ve gained that will help you thrive in the job you’ve applied to.
5. Relevant certifications (if any).
6. A section with soft skills and technologies relevant to the job.

Things to avoid:

1. Do not exceed two pages, sticking to one is ideal.
2. Grammar errors and misspelling — A software like Grammarly is great at spotting this.
3. Don’t mislead recruiters by exaggerating on the details of previous roles or responsibilities.
4. Adding a picture — This doesn’t add to your capabilities as a designer, might add to unconscious bias instead.

Tips:

• Try not to reinvent the wheel by over-designing your resume. Focus on readability because hiring managers have little time and they will only spend a minute or less on each resume.
• Wherever possible, highlight your impact in the projects you worked on with metrics. This could be data from a live site/app or even data from a user test.
• Great guide for UX Resumes: https://enhancv.com/resume-examples/ux-designer/

UX portfolio

First impressions matter.

Hiring Managers can’t spend a lot of time reviewing portfolios in detail, so first impressions matter. The first project you put in your portfolio is the one that is going to be clicked on the most, so make sure it shows breadth and depth. Most times it will be the only project people look at. When picking your first project think like a hiring manager, “What do I need to know about this candidate’s design capabilities in order for them to qualify for the next round?” Abbey explained six integral sections to include in each case study.

Summary: This section helps you set the context for the viewer.

• Clearly mention the project, the problem and your role along with other roles you worked with.
• What did you do? — Tools and processes you used.
• Duration — How long the project took from start to finish. Highlight how long your UX effort took if this differs from the larger project timeline.
• This also a great place to add an anchor link to the project’s outcome.

Discovery phases: Cover how you re-framed the ask and how you decided to know more about the problem.

• Help the viewer understand how you approached the problem
• What was your hypothesis?
• What were the business and user goals — highlight any tensions you spotted.

Process: Explain your approach and the tools you chose to use.

• UX research — What did you learn from stakeholder and user interviews.
• Ideation — What ideas did you come up with? How did you prioritize them?
• Personas — How did you build your user personas?
• User journey — How did you plot this? What pain points did you identify?
• Wireframes — How did you iterate and improve the idea from sketches to hi-fidelity prototypes?

Outcome: Show the final outcome and the iterations you made to get to it.

• Provide a preview of the end solutions — you can add an anchor link to this right in the beginning.
• Include a culmination of your work, and the larger project. — For example, what happened after you handed it over to a UI designer or developer. Did you work closely with them to develop it further?
• Provide data — Any results to highlight that came from your end solution? For example, increase in conversion rates, less time on task, and higher satisfaction scores. Tip: Look up NPS and the SUS to get an understanding of satisfaction scores.

Lessons: What did you learn? What did you think you could do better next time?

Next steps: Where is the project headed? If it wasn’t a real project, talk about what your next steps would be.

UX interviews

Go into these with the right frame of mind.

UX Interviews help the hiring manager get to know you better and assess your experience, work and skills as a product designer. Go in with a positive frame of mind, be brief and objective. Sylas said, “Don’t forget to introduce yourself! Practice a 2–3 minute introduction in an elevator pitch format that describes who you are, a little about your background and training and why you want to get into the UX field or why you’re passionate about UX.” This helps them understand you before going deeper into your work.

Tip: It’s good to have different lengths of introduction. Practice introducing yourself in 30 seconds, 1 minute and 3 minute introductions. This prepares you to give the right amount of detail based on the time you have.

Talk about your challenges

Be real and bring up any challenges that you have faced while working through projects. Hiring managers know that it’s normal to face problems, telling them about your past behaviors and how you worked through obstacles will help them assess if you are a good fit for the role.

Time your portfolio review

Ask your recruiter how many projects the interviewers would like to see and how much time you will have to present. Divide the time you have between 2 projects and leave 10–15 minutes for questions, (unless the recruiter asks for any other specifics). You might also mention at the beginning of the interview how you’ve divided the time and that you would welcome questions at the end. Answer questions with brief and clear answers and end your answers with questions like, “Does this response answer your question?” or “Do you have additional questions?”

Tip: It’s always great to create a presentation for the interview that dives deeper than your public facing portfolio. If you are using your portfolio website for the interview, have a backup version in PDF, PPT, Google doc, format and try testing presentation tools ahead of time with the same equipment you would use for the interview.

Be prepared with questions for the hiring manager or interviewer.

Here are some sample questions:

• Tell me about ‘A Day in the Life’ of a designer at your company.
• How does this company define and measure success?
• What are you looking forward to accomplishing this year?
• What are the next steps in this hiring process?
• Can I speak to anything in more detail?

Tip: Based on the company policy, you can also ask, “How did I do?” Some companies do not allow interviewers to respond to this, but if they do, this is a great opportunity to get some direct feedback and have an opportunity to clarify open questions.

Sending in a thank you email to the recruiter shows your interest in the company’s decision.

Design Challenges

Check in with your interviewer to give them an opportunity to nudge you in the right direction.

White-boarding exercises and design challenges are all about the journey. They help your interviewer assess how you approach a problem and your ability to work through it. It’s good to practice and time yourself with dummy projects ahead of time. Have a rough plan of action and mentally keep in mind the time breakup — at what point do you want to stop asking questions? When do you want to sketch? When do you want to summarize?

The end result is not the most important thing. Try to understand the problem and collect foundational information from the person running the challenge. You can base your questions on:

• End users — Demographics, needs, concerns, preferences…
• Project constraints — Stakeholder opinion, business interests, timeline…
• Business and Design metrics — What does success look like?
• Medium of execution — Does it have to be a visual solution? A journey map?
• Ask if there is a preferred tool to be used, or if you get to choose — You can ask about this beforehand too so you can practice with the preferred tool
• What role would the person running the exercise play — Sometimes they would want to be a fly on the wall and sometimes, you can request that they play multiple roles like the stakeholder or a team member.

While doing the exercise, speak your thoughts out-loud. This is a proxy hiring managers/recruiters use to ‘look inside your head and see how you think’. They will also assess you on your ability to handle pressure and incomplete information.

Tip: You can ask questions like, “What do you think of this solution?” or “Should we do this differently?” This helps the person be your sounding board and nudge you in the right direction.

Leave some time to summarize your process, your assumptions, and your ideas at the end.

We’re rooting for you!

Save this article and keep coming back to it as you progress in your job seeking journey. Leave questions you might have in the comments below and we’ll be happy to answer them and update this article!

Good luck and we wish you the very best!
Sylas, Abbey and Mrinali.