Get Hired Faster in UX: Take A Tour of Career Strategy Lab

Sarah Doody (00:00.078)

If you’re a UX or product person who is applying to roles and not getting interviews or offers, with no idea why you’re stuck, or maybe you’re not in a job search, but you just want to be ready for the unexpected, I want to introduce you to Career Strategy Lab, my UX job search coaching program. Hey, I’m Sarah Duty, a user researcher and product designer with 20 years of experience. In 2017, I noticed something a little ironic.

UX product people, despite being great at designing experiences for other people, often struggle to design their own 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’re in the right place.

I help UX and product people get hired with average five-figure salary increases without applying to hundreds of roles. So let me show you exactly how I do that. But first, I’m gonna guess your job search looks something like this. You have tons of tabs open, advice and tips from LinkedIn, YouTube, Medium, Reddit, Twitter, threads. The problem is a lot of this advice conflicts and you’re left piecing it together alone and second guessing every step.

And you’re still not sure why you are not getting interviews or offers. And this is exactly what Career Strategy Lab helps you do. All these things in one place, and you’re not doing it alone. Now, after doing UX career strategy and job search coaching since 2017, I’ve learned there are six things that help people get hired faster. Detailed checklists so you always know the next step.

Fill in the blank templates so you’re never starting from scratch with your resume, portfolio, LinkedIn, cold messages, negotiations, etc. Weekly expert critiques, so you know exactly what to fix and what to stop overthinking. Accountability check-ins so you don’t get stuck or procrastinate. A private UX community, so you’re never alone in this job search. And a job referral network specific to UX.

Sarah Doody (02:22.413)

With our now 850 alumni who are hiring each other. So let’s dive into your experience inside Career Strategy Lab. When you join, you’re gonna dive into our first 30 days checklist. This is where accountability and follow through really kick in. So you don’t lose momentum or maybe get stuck like you have in the past. All of the steps build upon each other on purpose. It’s very, very intentional.

I want to jump to step 11 in this checklist. We’re going to hit some really important milestones. First, you’re going to get really crystal clear on how you talk about yourself as a candidate, or what I call your positioning in your compass statement. This is going to make fixing your LinkedIn profile very easy and very fast. So your profile starts to attract recruiters and hiring managers.

Who are looking for someone like you. After you do that first update to your LinkedIn profile, then you’re gonna start working on your resume based on the positioning you worked on a few days before. This positioning is going to help you create a resume that resonates with exactly the type of people who are looking for someone like you. Then when you have that draft of your resume done, you’re gonna submit it for critique, which I’m gonna show you in a moment. Every step builds upon the next.

So you’re never left guessing what am I supposed to do? Now I want to give you a peek at the courses inside Career Strategy Lab. So we’re inside the portfolio course right now. I want you to notice it’s broken into short, actionable lessons. We’re going to watch a video or read a lesson and then do a two or three minute activity. And you’re gonna watch another video or read another lesson and go on and do the next activity. The action steps are fast to do so that you don’t get overwhelmed.

And you stay motivated by making fast progress. When you get to the step of writing your UX case studies, you’re gonna follow the four-step process and use our case study writing template along with a fully flushed out case study. So you can see what a case study looks like that’s going to stand out to recruiters and hiring managers. Then when it gets to the design of your portfolio, you’re gonna follow our four-step process.

Sarah Doody (04:42.13)

And you’re gonna use our UX portfolio template, which I’m gonna let you look at right now. Let’s look at the portfolio template. In the template, I’ve included a bunch of reminders about what to do and not to do when it comes to your portfolio slides, the literal layout and designs. So you do not make red flag mistakes that could cost you interviews or offers. You can think of the portfolio template as a giant set of wireframes that you’re gonna just plug your content into. We have examples.

For all parts of a project about you, your skills, your experience, maybe a career timeline, companies you’ve worked at, and of course your projects, where you’re gonna follow the template and put your case studies into slides so they’re easy for recruiters and hiring managers to skim and scan and quickly understand why they should invite you to an interview or extend you an offer. All right, let’s talk about feedback. Every week you have the opportunity to submit things.

For critique, your resume, your LinkedIn portfolio, cover letters. You can even record a 10-minute video of yourself presenting a project so you can get feedback from our team about how to improve your presentation skills for interviews. After you submit something for critique, we’ll send you an email letting you know it’s ready with a link to go watch your critique and you could see exactly what we are talking about.

When we’re giving you tips on what’s working and what’s not working. Now, when it comes to accountability, I have you covered. Every Friday, you’ll fill out a two-minute check-in to let me know what you worked on, jobs applied to, if you have interviews coming up, where those interviews are, how you’re feeling about things. This keeps you accountable.

So when motivation maybe dips, you don’t just give up. And if we notice issues, we will step in. If I notice you’ve applied to 200 jobs, but you haven’t submitted your resume or LinkedIn for critique, I will be in touch and help you get back on track. Now to help you stop guessing about what hiring managers actually want, every month I bring in a real recruiter or hiring manager for a live QA. We’ve interviewed people from HubSpot, Many Chat.

Sarah Doody (06:55.926)

Workday, Shopify, and many other places. You get to hear from them in their own words what makes a candidate stand out to them. Better yet, you get FaceTime with these people. You show up, you get to ask questions, and you can follow up with them after if you wish. So instead of just cold applying to strangers, you will have relationships in place if you apply to roles at companies.

Where our guest recruiters and hiring managers are working. Now, here’s the part of Career Strategy Lab that is the major superpower. It is our 850 alumni. They are working at companies like Amazon, JetBlue, Delta, JP Morgan Chase, Fidelity, Wells Fargo, so many more. And they are referring each other for roles. If their team or company is hiring, they often come back to the community.

To let you know. And guess what? Then you have a referral. We also have a place where if you’re looking to connect with someone at a certain company, you can check to see if anyone might work there or maybe they know someone who works there. A new part that we just added is our open to work area. So if you are ready to start applying, you can post in here to let other people know what types of roles you are looking for, and they can be your eyes and ears. So maybe

Their team or their company is hiring for a position very close to what you said you’re interested in. That might be the connection that helps you get interviews at companies that you’re interested in. And lastly, we have our interview and hired recaps area. This is really powerful because after people go to interviews, they often post an interview debrief recapping.

What that interview process was like. And every time someone lands a role, they come back and let us know in the community. This is amazing intel for you because you get to hear about the interview process and what actually moved the needle for these people who got hired. This means you’re not just guessing at what’s working in the UX job search, you’re watching other people get hired and you’re able to learn from their experience. That’s Career Strategy Lab. It is so much more.

Sarah Doody (09:13.274)

Then of course, it’s really an operating system for your UX job search with expert feedback on your work, a community of people who understand accountability, a referral network, and so much more. If you’re struggling in your UX job search, I want you to know it can get better and you don’t have to do this alone. If this sounds like the type of help that is missing in your UX job search, I invite you to go to careerstrategylab.com/slash apply.

And submit your application. We use an application because we can only accept so many people into the program at a time. If you apply, feel free to send me a DM on LinkedIn to let me know. I can’t wait to maybe get to work with you inside Career Strategy Lab. See you later. Hey there. I just wanted to say thanks for listening to this episode all the way to the end. If you’re looking for links or resources mentioned, visit careerstrategy lab.com slash podcast.

To find this episode details and the details of the hundreds of other episodes. If you’re looking for help with your UX or product job search, you may want to consider checking out my program Career Strategy Lab, where I help UX and product people just like you navigate unexpected challenges in their careers, whether that’s a layoff, trying to get promoted, or getting hired without applying to hundreds of jobs. To learn more about that,

Just go to Careerstrategy Lab.com and click UX Career Coaching at the very top. That’s all for today, and I will see you next time in another episode of the Career Strategy Podcast.