3 Ways to Stop Wasting Time in Your UX Job Search

Sarah Doody (00:00)

Every month your job search continues is a month of lost salary. Now, I don’t need to tell you that, but I think it’s an important reality check. So let’s talk about three things that are slowing you down and what to

instead.

So when I look at the thousands

people that I’ve worked with on their job search, the ones who are stuck for months or frankly sometimes years have something in common and they’re working their hardest They’re doing their best. They’re spending hours a week on their job search, but a lot of them are also spending a lot of time just waiting. And by that, mean they’re waiting for a response after they apply.

or maybe they’re waiting after they go to an interview, maybe they’re waiting for the right job to show up, right? Or maybe they’re waiting for someone to reply to that email where they ask for a referral or introduction to someone at a company where they want to apply. And every week they spend waiting is a week they’re not getting paid. And so I wanna go over…

three really quick ways that we can stop wasting time in our job search and what to do instead of sometimes just waiting around.

So our first example is all about following up

after you apply or maybe even go do an interview.

So maybe you apply for a job or you email a recruiter or you go to an interview and then you wait, right?

and days go by, maybe even weeks go by, you’re checking your inbox and you’re not seeing any responses, emails, action steps, right? And you start to convince yourself that following up will make you seem desperate.

and will then make you seem like a not very desirable candidate. So you just sit there and do nothing and you keep waiting. Meanwhile, maybe that person that you’re waiting on just got busy, right? Maybe they’re recruiting for 20 or 30 or 50 other roles. They had a personal emergency, they got sick. The person that they are waiting on before they can contact you is taking their time.

Right? And so instead of waiting around, what we want to do is we want to follow up and not in a pushy way, not in an annoying way, just that in a way that shows you are serious, that you’re still interested and you’re trying to move the conversation forward.

Following up isn’t desperate. It can actually make you seem proactive. And who do people wanna hire? Proactive people. And this silence is maybe what is costing you from getting the offer, getting the next step in the interview, or maybe even getting that first interview. And the really desperate thing to do is just sitting there, refreshing your inbox every day, hoping someone replies, right? So following up.

is a way to move things forward and it’s also a way to help you stay top of mind to these people who may be hiring for, like I said, 20, 30, 50 other roles, right? So someone told me this phrase long ago, you either need to follow up or be forgotten and the same applies to your job search. So a simple follow up a week after the last interaction is totally acceptable.

It will not make you seem desperate. And if you were just at an interview, I’m gonna link you to another episode in the show notes that gives you a template for how you could follow up after an interview. But the short version of that is interview follow-ups are a chance to keep the conversation going from the interview. So oftentimes we go to interviews and we forget things that we wanted to mention or we think of.

better responses to questions. Maybe we think of questions we should have asked them in the interview. Following up after an interview is a great way to add these questions to the conversation, to add on to answers you already answered in the interview. So I’ll link to that in the show notes, but follow up or be forgotten. Don’t sit around waiting for someone to reach out to you because you have no idea.

why they haven’t replied yet. So let’s not make assumptions about why they haven’t applied. Let’s just take matters into our own hand and send that follow-up email. It’s gonna help you remain top of mind, help increase your visibility, and of course, push you back to the top of their inbox.

Okay, the second example about how you’re maybe wasting time in your job search is you are sending the same resume and a portfolio if you have a portfolio for every job you apply to. Now, you’re probably thinking, wait a sec, if I’m sending the same version, isn’t that saving me time because I’m just able to apply to more jobs because I’m not like customizing my resume or portfolio for every job I apply to? Well, on one hand, that may seem

like it makes sense. But on the flip side, what are you doing? You’re probably just applying to more jobs, right? Because it takes less effort to apply to a job if you’re just using the same resume, same portfolio, et cetera, over and over and over.

that feels productive, but you’re probably not putting the best version of yourself out there. And you’re probably not standing out because

your resume and portfolio are coming across as maybe a little generic and are not super tailored to the job description. Now, I’m not saying we’re gonna spend 15 hours customizing our resume and portfolio for every job we apply to, that would be ridiculous. But what we wanna do is we actually wanna flip the script. We don’t wanna play the numbers game in our job search. We want to apply to fewer jobs

but more of the right jobs with a tailored or customized resume or portfolio for that job. And this is what I teach to all of the people in my UX job search coaching program. When they do this, the feedback is essentially people noticed, it made a difference. Why? Because when that recruiter or hiring manager was looking at that person’s resume or portfolio,

they were able to tell very quickly that that person had exact characteristics, traits, qualifications that they were looking for in the job description because that person took the time to slightly tailor their resume or portfolio for that job they applied to. And by applying to fewer jobs, but more of the right jobs with tailored materials, you are going to stand out.

and that’s going to save you time because you’re not going to get into this cycle of just applying to job after job after job after job and hoping that things work out. People who are in my UX job search coaching program, they say when they got hired, a major differentiator was that they did not apply to hundreds of jobs. They were applying to far fewer jobs than when they were going about their job search on their own. But with these tailored

materials, meaning resume, portfolio, et cetera, they were able to stand out. So what if instead of applying to more jobs, you took a little bit of time to actually read the job description, like be honest with yourself, did you read the job description? And then look at what it is looking for and go back to your resume and or your portfolio and think to yourself, okay.

Could I maybe rearrange the order of bullet points on my resume so that bullet points that correspond to what they are looking for are higher in the list of bullet points for each of the places that I’ve worked in the past, for example. Maybe at the top of your resume, if you have a little summary or about me statement, you are slightly tweaking that based on what they are looking for in the job description.

and the same applies to your portfolio. How can you tailor or customize your portfolio? It could be similar to your resume bullet points. You could just be changing the order of projects in your portfolio, right? Don’t save the best case study for last. Put that case study as case study number one. They may not get to the end of your portfolio. So let’s put the best work, the work that most relates to the job they’re hiring for.

Let’s make that the first project in your portfolio. And when you do that, you’re going to stand out because you’re really helping connect the dots for that busy recruiter or hiring manager by taking the time to tailor your resume, tailor your portfolio based on the exact skills, criteria, qualifications, characteristics that you are noticing in the job description.

because you actually read the job description. So if you are applying with the same resume, same portfolio, and you’ve applied to 100, 200 jobs, maybe commit for the next two weeks to not play the numbers game and instead apply to fewer jobs, but apply with this tailored resume and tailored portfolio. And you might find that you’re gonna get interviews

more frequently than just mass applying with the same materials. And that will probably save you time in your job search. At least that’s what people are telling me in my UX job search coaching program. They’re able to get hired faster and by applying to fewer jobs by doing this. All right, the third example here is about relationships and networking. And I know that you may hate the word networking.

I frankly do too. I am much more of a fan of relationships, authentic relationships. And the thing that you get wrong about relationships and where you end up wasting time is you are waiting to build and invest in relationships until you need them, right? Until you’re laid off, until you’re in a job search. And then you’re going to spend all this time trying to find people to help you.

reignite relationships, start new relationships, and all of that takes time, time that you probably don’t have in your job search.

Instead, we should be focusing on building and investing in these relationships before we even need them so that in your job search, you’re not scrambling trying to update your resume and your portfolio and find people who work at the company all at the same time. That is overwhelming, right? So we can avoid wasting the time of putting so much effort into relationships by doing it

before we actually need them.

And this is important because

If you are cold messaging people on LinkedIn that you know or maybe don’t know, or asking referrals of people who just have no idea who you are, guess what? They’re probably not gonna reply because they don’t know who you are. That almost never works and it eats up so much time. People who get hired faster and have people actually reply to their messages, their emails, their DMs, their requests for referrals,

Those people are people who had existing relationships with the people they’re reaching out to. So we want to avoid this situation where we are cold messaging people and we want to come across as a warm message in someone’s inbox, meaning when they see your name in their inbox, in their email, their LinkedIn messages, you are not going to be a stranger.

but you are going to be a familiar name, hence cold messaging versus warm messaging someone. When they know who you are, that is warm messaging and people are more likely to reply when they see a message from someone they already know. So how do we make sure that we are making ourselves known to people before we need them and we are building and nurturing those relationships?

It doesn’t always have to mean that you are constantly having coffee dates with people to catch up, right? That takes a lot of time. You can do that if you enjoy that, but some of the things that I think are more effective and a better use of your time are just showing up on LinkedIn, on that person’s LinkedIn. So if they posted something, leave a thoughtful comment. And a thoughtful comment is not just cool, neat, thanks, interesting posts. It is…

a couple of sentences, right? Responding to whatever they posted. And don’t you dare use AI to write it, because they for sure will be able to know that. So,

when you do this, the next time you need to contact them about maybe an opening at their company or you need a referral because you used to work with them. Now they work at a company where you want to work. They are not going to ignore you because you’re not starting that relationship from scratch.

So instead of wasting so much time in your job search, cold messaging people over and over and over and then being frustrated because they don’t reply, think about what you can do now to be investing in and building relationships with people before you need them, right? And you might be wondering, well, how do I know what people to invest in relationships with? Number one, if you know that you want to apply at certain companies in the future, then

I would start prioritizing people who work at those companies or people who used to work at those companies. They’re gonna be able to give you intel about that company, the culture, and maybe even the team you may work on and maybe even a referral link. The other types of people I would prioritize relationships with would be people you worked with in the past. They are going to be a potential source of, again, referrals. Maybe they are working at a company where you’re interested in working.

or they may just be able to be a reference in the future, or if you are laid off one day, maybe you let some of the people that you used to work with two, three, five years ago know, and they can be your eyes and ears in your job search. You let them know, hey, I was just laid off, I’m looking for XYZ, let me know. Now, they have a sense of what to keep an eye out for, and you never know who might hear about a role that is a perfect fit for you.

But that cannot happen if all your messages come across as cold messages. So you need to build relationships before you need them so you’re not wasting time in your job search trying to build relationships with people when you’re trying to do so many other things in your job search.

All right, so hopefully today’s episode helped you see where maybe you are wasting time in your job search or you have in the past and has given you some tips to save time in your job search by number one, following up instead of waiting around for people to reply. Number two, saying no to the numbers game and instead tailoring your resume, tailoring your portfolio for the jobs you apply to.

And in doing that, you’ll be able to apply to fewer jobs, but with better resume, better portfolio, and that will help you stand out. And when you stand out, you get more interviews. And lastly, we’re gonna focus on building relationships before we need them. That is going to help you not come across as a cold message in someone’s inbox, but more of a warm connection. And who are people more likely to respond to? Warm connections.

All right, that is all for today. I will see you in another episode.