Escaping UX Career Identity Fog and Why Your Identity Is Your Superpower

[00:00:00] feel like you’re lost in your UX career, I want you to know you’re not. This is fixable. The problem is that you have outgrown the version of yourself that you once knew and now you’re struggling to communicate who you are today.

This is what I refer to as career identity fog. It can happen in many points in your career, especially if you’re more senior, where you have so much experience, you don’t know how to succinctly communicate it. For the job market today. So in this episode, I’m gonna share more about how to lift the career identity fog by applying some UX research and product strategy to yourself.

Intro: Hey, I’m Sarah Dody, a user researcher and product designer with 20 years of experience. In 2017, I noticed something a little ironic. UX and product people, despite being great at designing experiences for other people, often struggle to design their own [00:01:00] careers. That’s why I created Career Strategy Lab and this podcast to help you navigate your UX job search, grow in your current role, and avoid skill and salary plateaus all in a chill and BS free way.

So whether you’re. Stuck in your job search or wondering what’s next in your UX career. You are in the right place.

Alright, so today I wanna kick off a three part series all about how to diagnose problems in your UX job search and in your career. I wanna tell you how this series came to be, but first I wanna let you know these episodes will literally not be in sequential order. So we already have some other episodes planned.

In the show notes, I will make sure to update. All the episodes so they all link together. And it should be pretty clear from the title, but I just want you to know that. So diagnose your UX job search. How [00:02:00] did this topic come to be and why do I feel like it’s so important to address right now? So recently I have been.

Taking some time to really have some one-on-ones with various UX people. I’ve been meeting a lot of people at UX events. I was just in Berlin at the Hatch Conference and this theme kept coming up in all of my conversations. And the theme really is around who am I, where do I fit, what do I want to do next?

Does the UX industry need me anymore? Or if you’re starting your career, where in the world do I want to go? In this industry and this identity fog, as I call it, can be really crippling. It can prevent you from applying for jobs. It can prevent you from working on your resume. It [00:03:00] can prevent you from talking to your boss about a promotion or something because at the end of the day when you’re stuck in identity fog, it also starts to erode your confidence.

And I just see the confidence of so many UX people being eroded right now, and I really want you to know that it is not you. Many people struggle with this and we have the solutions to get out of this. the short version is we just have to UX ourselves. So today we’re gonna talk about what identity fog is, how it shows up in your job search and your career. And most importantly, why your identity, once you really understand it, can actually be your superpower as a professional. So [00:04:00] first, Chat the heck is identity fog?

Actually, I kind of talked about it briefly, but I see identity fog happening when your skills, your story, your goals stop lining up and because of this, you start losing confidence in your own narrative. Maybe you feel like what your boss is asking of you. Is not what you feel like your strengths are.

Maybe you’re reading job descriptions and just feeling like every job description you read does not sound like you. It doesn’t resonate with you, and you are starting to doubt yourself, right? You’re starting to question your own career narrative, and you’re starting to believe maybe I’m the problem, right?

It is not burnout or lack of talent. If you are experiencing this, I want you to know that, and I’m gonna say it again. It’s not burnout or lack of talent, okay? It’s [00:05:00] a misalignment between what you believe and know are your strengths, which are part of your identity, and what you feel like is being asked of you.

So. UX designers are really great at designing products, right? Researchers are great at doing research. Writers are great at doing writers, right? In the world of ux, there are all these areas or disciplines, and the common theme I see is that we spend so much time working on the products for our company, our clients, et cetera, and we don’t apply the same UX principles, strategy, et cetera.

To our selves, and this is key. When you apply the same UX research, the same strategy, et cetera, that you apply to the products you work on, but you apply it to you, this starts to [00:06:00] clear the identity fog, and I’m gonna give you some examples. So I wanna go into like. How and where this identity fog can really manifest, because as I said, it doesn’t just live in your head.

It’s not this thing that you are the only person being challenged with this. It shows up everywhere in your career. So for example. How does identity fog show up in your job search? Here are a few symptoms, if you will. Number one would be if someone asks you, like, well, tell me about yourself, you know, in an interview, in a screener call with a hiring manager or recruiter or something, and you kind of fumble through that.

Or you say something and you think, man, that was, that was terrible. And that is not reflective of who I am. Or it just feels out of alignment. That is a sign that you are stuck in identity [00:07:00] fog. If you literally cannot communicate who you are and what you do in like an elevator pitch, that is a sign you are stuck in identity fog.

Another sign that you might be experiencing identity fog when it relates to your job search. If you’re reading job description after job description and you’re thinking to yourself. This is not me. I meet like 15% of this job description. That is another sign that you could be suffering from identity fog.

And another reason is that if you are hesitant to actually apply for jobs. Because you worry you’re gonna be kind of like square peg, round hole. That is another sign I, I think even larger signs are if you’re thinking you need to leave the field of UX altogether, ’cause you literally don’t think there’s a future for you, that is [00:08:00] another giant red flag in my opinion.

Maybe you are not in a job search, but you feel like you’re at a crossroads in your career and you’re not sure what’s next, et cetera. You could be experiencing some of these symptoms. So one of them could be that you feel like you are at the end of a chapter and you don’t know where to head next, especially if you’ve been working in UX for.

15, 10, 20 plus years. You’ve seen a lot and you’ve done a lot. And sometimes when we have a lot of experience, it makes it even harder because we could go double down on UX research, we could go focus on the healthcare industry. We could go, Teach or something like that, right? And sometimes too many options leaves us torn when it comes to figuring out [00:09:00] what’s next.

Another symptom that you are stuck in this identity fog when it comes to figuring out what’s next, is if you have been in this figure it out stage for more than six months. Because if you’re circling around an indecision, that is a clear sign that you are stuck in identity fog. And another scenario, the last scenario really is with regards to kind of how fast the UX industry keeps changing, and you’re wondering if you fit.

Do you want to fit? Maybe is is a better way to say that, but what I mean is you know, every week there’s a new software, a new tool, a new trend or something, right? And you are feeling the pressure. That you need to learn all of these things because you believe that is [00:10:00] what’s expected of you in the industry right now.

Side note, you don’t need to learn everything. Companies and managers will value people who maybe are a generalist or have invested a lot of the time in their career sticking with. The timeless stuff that will always be relevant. Another symptom is that maybe you feel like you are behind or relevant, or that you frankly are maybe too old for ux.

I’ll link up another episode all about ageism in UX and tech. You start to think, you know, do I still belong here? Are my skills outdated, et cetera. And. Going back to what I said earlier, this identity fog, this is also what impacts our confidence, right? Because it’s really hard to feel confident when the industry you have [00:11:00] potentially invested 5, 10, 15, or more years of your career in keeps feeling like it’s reinventing itself every six months, and you don’t have the time or energy.

To reinvent yourself every six months. So those are some of the symptoms that I would say are specific to kind of these three areas of someone who might be in a job search, someone who’s trying to figure out what is next, and someone who is just feeling the pressure of the pace of change in the industry right now.

Now I wanna go into a bit of a. Job search diagnosis checklist specific to this part of identity fog. So as I go through some of these items in the checklist, I want you to keep a running score so you can find out if you might be suffering from identity fog. So number one, you are unsure of what you want in your next role or [00:12:00] next company that you join.

Number two. You are not confident in your skills, even though you have done great work. And I wanna expand on this one a little bit. One of the reasons that I see people not confident in their skills is unfortunately because other people that have worked with them, whether it’s their boss, their colleague, their clients, et cetera, have essentially beat down their confidence in their own skills because.

They were not a great boss. They were not a great team player or teammate, and they were kind of a crappy client, right? Because let’s face it, at our jobs, we spend a lot of hours every day with these people. And if you’re constantly surrounded by negativity around your skills, and you’re not receiving positive reinforcement and having your confidence built up around.

What [00:13:00] you do, then of course, you’re not gonna be confident in your skills, right? So if, so, that could be contributing to your identity fog. Number three is that you can’t clearly explain your story or what kind of UX professional you are. This goes back to our elevator pitch, right? If I ask you. Tell me about yourself, or if you had to, at the top of your resume, put a one or two word sentence, elevator pitch about yourself and you did not know what you were going to write or your elevator pitch was very vague and generic and boilerplate, and essentially said, I’m a UX designer.

Passionate about how understanding people and business can help create products people love. That’s boring. That is not going to stand out. And to me, when I see generic and boilerplate elevator pitches or about me statements, it is a major yellow flag that that [00:14:00] person is not clear about who they are and what they do.

Because when you have the clarity and conviction about who you are and what you do. Then and only then can you actually communicate that to other people. All right, so that was number three. I’ll say it again. You can’t clearly explain your story or what kind of UX professional you are. Number four is you worry, you will be found out or feel like an imposter.

Another sign of identity fog, which. Is kind of another sign of this lack of confidence in your skills, et cetera. Which we already discussed how that can come about. But if you feel like you’re gonna be found out or you are an imposter, it is a major sign that you could be suffering from this identity fog.

And the last one, number five, is you feel like your experience is too unique or no longer [00:15:00] relevant in. Today’s UX industry. Now I wanna pause on this one and especially emphasize the idea of that you feel like your experience is too unique. What do I mean by that? So this more so applies to people who’ve been working in user experience for a while, or people switching careers, because when people come to me and say they feel like they are too unique, in conversation with them, I realized they all have really awesome skills but they don’t fit the mold of what they are seeing in job descriptions or what people are posting about on LinkedIn that recruiters and hiring managers hypothetically want to see. And I would. Offer a counterpoint to this, which is that your experience is not too unique.

Some of the best UX people I’ve worked with have [00:16:00] had the craziest backgrounds, the wildest previous careers doing things that. At the surface you wouldn’t imagine, relate to user experience, but actually really do provide them with a lot of transferable skills. I think of friends that worked in theater and psychology, even a priest who became a UX researcher.

These are all examples of people that could have said, well, my experience is too unique. I think I’m gonna get outta user experience. Versus they owned that experience and they didn’t let it be a negative, but they really turned it into their superpower. So if you feel like your experience is too unique, you’re no longer relevant, that is another major sign that you might be suffering from this identity fog that I see so many people experiencing.

And if, if [00:17:00] you scored. Even one out of these five questions, I want you to know that you are not broken as a professional. You’re just out of alignment and this is a problem we can fix and alignment. It’s really a design problem and. A research problem. So how do we clear the identity fog? I wanna give you three simple steps.

These are steps I teach inside my ux, career coaching program, career strategy lab. We often go through these steps. In a longer period of time, I’ll give you the abbreviated versions here. So to get clear on who you are as a professional, it’s gonna require some research. So you can think of this as a little user research project on yourself.

And the first thing that, uh, I like to do is have people audit their past. So think [00:18:00] about your past and evaluate. Things and reflect. Really reflect and evaluate on things such as, you know, in previous roles you’ve held or projects you worked on. What parts of those projects really lit you up? Which parts do you wish you never had to see or do again?

What projects have you worked with or teams or companies really kind of gave you energy and made you excited versus you felt like drained your energy? You can even go as specific as like traits of your manager, for example. Size of the company, size of the team, industry, et cetera. The idea is I want you to think back on the last X years of your career.

You decide how long. If you want me to tell you, I would say it lasts. Five. Feel [00:19:00] free to go longer into history if you want, but essentially you need to spend some time reflecting on your past. Think about the highs and lows, and those highs and lows are going to help provide clues. As to what you might wanna look for in the future and stay away from in the future as well.

All right. Step two is to really think forward. So we thought back, now we need to think forward and based on this we want to be thinking about questions such as like, what would my ideal. Company look like. What would my ideal team look like? What would my ideal clients look like if I was working freelance, for example, what would my ideal day look like, even my ideal week?

These are all questions that can help you start to narrow down [00:20:00] what you want in the future because in doing this activity of plotting your future, you’re starting to. Uncover your values. Maybe also some goals, maybe also some deal breakers around what you want the next part of your career to look like.

I would also challenge you to think about too what do you need in your career or even in your next job, do you need to get more managerial experience? Do you need to get back to doing hands-on work because you’ve been a manager for 10 years? You could also zoom out to your life too, and think about what would you want your life to look like, like your ideal day?

Do you want your schedule to allow you to be able to go pick your kids up from school or drop them off or coach the soccer team or whatever? All of these things are really important into [00:21:00] lifting the fog that can so hoffen happen when we are so focused on doing the work of our day-to-day job and we don’t take the time to do this research and I would say product strategy on ourselves.

So you’ve audited the past, you’re gonna plot your future. What do you need in your career, in your day to day? Your life, et cetera. And then the third step is to really articulate your story. Come up with the elevator pitch that connects the dots between what are you awesome at? What experience do you bring from your past?

What do you wanna do more of in the future? And then that becomes your. I call it a, a compass statement. You could call it an elevator pitch and about me, whatever you want. The key to this though, is [00:22:00] it’s gonna be really difficult to just open up a Word Doc or a Google Doc and start to write out this about me statement without first thinking about your past and plotting your future.

I have a couple of examples in other podcast episodes about creating your elevator pitch, so I will link to those in the show notes. Here is the thing though, you have to think of clearing this identity fog as an investment, not an expense, because I know. Hearing me tell you, do this, it feels like it’s gonna be a lot of work and it’s kind of boring, et cetera.

But here’s the thing. If you don’t have a clear elevator pitch for your career, that means you are not going to be able to communicate your value in real time, like in interviews or in performance reviews. And you’re not going to be able to [00:23:00] create a resume, a portfolio, a LinkedIn presence that also communicates this.

And to stand out, especially in today’s job market, we need to be communicating the same consistent message about who we are and what we do across all of our career. Materials across all the touch points, right? The moment someone senses inconsistencies in your story or lack of clarity about your strengths or what you want, et cetera, there is a real risk that they will move on to next candidate.

So we wanna make sure that we are communicating a consistent story across everything and to do that. We need to clear the identity fog by doing these three steps. And as I said, when you clear that identity fog, it can become your superpower. And let me tell you an example. One woman, I forget her name, she went through these [00:24:00] exercises, identified that she wanted to do, I believe it was user research.

For STEM and ed tech, she had not realized this passion and desire to really hone in on STEM and ed tech. With this clarity, she went and updated her LinkedIn profile and literally days later, had a recruiter or hiring manager reach out to her about a UX research position in stem because the recruiter was able to find her on LinkedIn because this woman had updated her LinkedIn to mention stem.

That is how clearing the identity fog can become a superpower. It doesn’t just help you have clarity about you and your strengths. It also becomes a signal to other people about your strengths, and that is how you can stop [00:25:00] chasing jobs and have them come to you because you know what happened with this woman?

The person reached out to her about this STEM job. She did a few interviews. She got the job in stem. That would’ve never have happened. Because her previous LinkedIn did not mention this desire to focus on stem. So that is how all of this and getting clear on your identity can become a superpower, but to go update your LinkedIn.

You need to know how you are different, your points of differentiation, what makes you unique, et cetera. And that comes from that step one of auditing your past. I sometimes even recommend people that you don’t just make it kind of a solo activity of just reflecting on your own with a journal or something, but you literally go ask former colleagues, current colleagues, former classmates, [00:26:00] former managers, current managers, et cetera, depending on your relationship with them.

Ask them some questions like, what do you think my superpowers are as a professional, what do you think I’m really great at that I don’t realize. I’m great at. Questions like that can be amazing at helping you identify blind spots that you may have, or their answers may give you confidence in skills that you kind of brushed under the table, so to speak, because.

Former colleagues, former clients, former bosses, made you think you were no longer good at those things. So that is the power of taking the time to do this user research on yourself and develop this clear identity because it can be your superpower just like it was for that woman got hired in stem. Your identity is [00:27:00] not what’s holding you back.

But misunderstanding your identity is, and if you wanna stand out in a crowded UX job market, you need to be clear on your story. You need to stop chasing trends, and you need to communicate who you are with clarity, conviction, and confidence. So if your career feels like foggy right now, if your identity just feels like a complete, uh, unknown to you potentially, if you’re at a crossroads, if you are thinking, I don’t think I have a place in user experience anymore, and you’re questioning what to do, I want you to hit the pause button before you burn it all down.

You don’t need a total career reset. You also don’t need to learn every trendy thing that everyone is telling you to learn. What you need is a clearer career strategy and a clearer career strategy starts with a [00:28:00] clearer identity. So in the next episode of this series. We’re gonna talk about the second thing that holds people back in their job search, which is this problem of feeling like you are an invisible genius.

I will tell you what invisible genius means, but as a tease, I will say that if you think to yourself. I am amazing. Even my colleagues, my boss say I’m amazing. Why doesn’t anyone else recognize how awesome I am? Especially if you’re in a job search, that is a sign that you are suffering from invisible genius syndrome, and I will tell you how to fix it in that second episode of this Diagnose Your Job Search.

Struggles series. For now, I wanna leave you with one thing, and that is to remember that your identity is not a weakness.

It truly can be your superpower [00:29:00] Once you learn how to use it, and once you uncover that identity, believe it, and then go communicate it out into the world because. Just like that woman who got hired into that STEM job. After going through these exercises and getting clear that she wanted to work in STEM and then updating her LinkedIn profile to reflect that, that too can happen to you if you do these steps to.

Lift the identity fog. So that is all for today. Uh, I will see you in the next episode of this podcast and keep an eye out for the second episode in this diagnose your job search series. If you feel like you are stuck in your career identity fog right now, and it’s holding you back from getting promoted, finishing your resume, finishing your portfolio, applying to jobs, or being ready for [00:30:00] interviews. Then I wanna let you know that my career coaching program and community called Career Strategy Lab does have some spots available right now.

If you are curious about learning more, check the show notes. For specific links, whether you are a more senior UX professional, a mid-level UX professional, or someone switching careers to user experience because I have specific pages for each of you to check out to explore how you could work with me in my career coaching program, career strategy lab.

Alright, that is all for today. I hope you have a great rest of your day and I’ll talk to you soon. See ya.

Outro: Thanks so much for listening to the Career Strategy Podcast. Now make sure to follow so you don’t miss an episode, and you can check out all of our episodes@careerstrategylab.com slash podcasts now to learn more about how to apply UX and product strategy [00:31:00] to advancing your career. Whether that means leveling up in your current role, getting a new role, getting freelance work, or just being ready for the unexpected, then I invite you to watch my free UX job search workshop@careerstrategylab.com slash hired.

And please feel free to send me a DM on LinkedIn. I would love to hear from you.

Post Roll: Hey there. Before I go, I wanna speak to you specifically if you’ve applied to 50, 100, 200 or more jobs and you haven’t secured an offer or interviews yet. First of all, I want you to know it’s not your fault. It is challenging out there and learning how to navigate the job, search, interviews, negotiation, et cetera.

It is not something that we are taught. Your boss is too busy to help you. Your friends just give you vague advice. Your family doesn’t really know how [00:32:00] hiring in UX works. This is why I created my career strategy lab, UX job search accelerator. If you are tired of your DIY approach. Not leading to the results you want, then I challenge you to consider.

Maybe it is time for a pivot, just like products pivot. Maybe your job search needs a pivot too. So head over to career strategy lab.com/apply to learn more or have a call with someone on my team or myself so we can answer all of your questions. Hope to talk to you soon.