How to Land a Senior UX Job After a UX Bootcamp: Interview with UX Design Graduate, Sheridan Baker

15 January 2022 6:00 pm Online Career Change , UX Design

How To Land Your First UX Design Job

If you’re an aspiring UX designer, you’ll no doubt be considering the UX design job market. What kinds of roles await you? And, perhaps most important of all, how do you go about landing your first UX design job? 

First things first: a career in UX design offers great variety, both in terms of job titles and responsibilities, and in terms of where you can actually work. So, if you’re considering a career in UX, it’s worth getting to grips with the different routes you might take once you’ve mastered those fundamental (and highly sought-after) UX design skills. Believe it or not, “UX designer” is just one of many different job titles you might end up with. It all depends on whether you choose to generalize or specialize (for example, focusing primarily on user research and pursuing a career as a UX researcher), what kind of company or setting you work in (for example, in-house UX designers may occupy a different role to that of an agency designer), and where your interests lie. If you’re more interested in strategy than hands-on design, for example, you could end up working as a UX strategist. 

As you can see, there are many different routes when it comes to employment in the UX world. Of course, you don’t need to settle on a single path from the get-go; many designers start their careers as generalists and gain some hands-on experience before deciding what direction they want to take later on. Still, it’s worth knowing what’s out there. So, as you start to embark on your new career, familiarize yourself with some of the most common UX designer job titles and job descriptions.

At the same time, there are certain steps you can take to prepare for the process of actually applying for—and landing—your first UX design job. These include:

    • Identifying your transferable skills from your previous or current career, and thinking about how you can apply these to the field of UX. This is especially important if you’re coming from a completely unrelated field, and is all part of building your personal brand.
  • Creating and polishing up your UX design portfolio. Your UX design portfolio is essential for showcasing your work and giving employers insight into your design process. It’s just as important—if not more so—than your resumé, and should be up to a great standard before you start applying for jobs.
  • Practicing a whiteboard challenge. The whiteboard challenge features in most UX design hiring processes. It’s essentially a practical task you’ll complete in front of the hiring panel, talking them through your process as you solve a design challenge. You can learn exactly what a whiteboard challenge is (and how to ace it) in this guide.

For more tips on how to land your first UX design job, check out the video at the top of this page, in which CareerFoundry graduate Sheridan talks about how she landed a senior UX role after completing the UX Design Program. We can also recommend these guides:

Alumni panel Job interview UX design

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