How 2 senior UX professionals got hired (& the UX portfolio “Inverted Pyramid Framework”)

Meg [00:00:00]: Made some really great relationships to the point where, like, I was standing Friday meeting with someone else in our cohort just to, like, catch up and see how each other were doing. Right? So I think there’s a lot of, like, that relationship building and that sort of, like, community that kind of, like, comes out in those spaces as well, which is it’s it’s powerful. This is a hard thing to do by yourself.

Sarah Doody [00:00:18]: Hey there. I’m Sarah Doody, host of the career strategy podcast. Many professionals are seeking more impact, flexibility, growth, and let’s face it, getting paid what they’re worth. But how do you unlock this in your career? It starts with strategy. I’m taking you behind the scenes of what’s working for my career coaching clients. You’ll hear strategies and actionable, yet sometimes against the grain, advice for how you can be the CEO of your career and stop dreading Mondays. Ready to level up your career? Let’s get after it. Alright.

Sarah Doody [00:00:57]: Welcome, everyone. We’re super excited to have you here today. We have 2 alumni from Career Strategy Lab, the job search accelerator that I run with, a team of 4 people specifically focused on helping UX and product people navigate their job searches. And so we have Craig who is joining us, and we have Meg who will be joining us shortly. And, really, they’re just gonna share about their experience, what was going on in their kind of world before they joined career strategy lab, what what prompted them to join, some of the highlights for them, and and, of course, how did they get hired into their current roles. So that’s what we’re gonna do first, and then we are going to do a mini. And by mini, I mean, I’m gonna try and keep it under 10 minutes portfolio workshop with, like, a very, very narrowly focused part of creating a portfolio that I see a lot of people really mess up. So we’re gonna go over that, and then I’m gonna share more about career strategy lab.

Sarah Doody [00:02:19]: We had a bunch of you emailing us, asking about more details and all these questions about it, so we have a little bit about what exactly is inside that job search accelerator. And from the career strategy lab team, we have myself, Sarah, in case we haven’t met yet. I’m the founder and CEO. We also have Becca, one of the coaches inside career strategy lab, and we have Erin also. Becca and Erin will probably be, responding to questions that you may ask in the chat. So just so you know who they are, that’s the awesome people replying to your questions, and then we’re gonna get started. So to kick us off, Meg and Craig, also I love your names rhyme. Alright.

Sarah Doody [00:03:17]: We would love to hear from each of you. And, Craig, maybe we’ll start with you. Tell us a little bit about what you do specifically in the world of UX and product because it’s a wide range of things. Right? Tell us what you’re doing now and a little bit more about what were you doing in your job search before you joined career strategy lab. And then, Meg, we’ll go to the same questions for you asked after that one.

Craig Brooks [00:03:45]: Okay. Hello, everyone. I’m Craig Brooks. I’m on the West Coast of the US. I’m on near Seattle. I am a lead UX designer at Dexcom right now. Prior roles, I was staff or senior staff at Compass, and similar, I had 10 years at Amazon. Kind of in the bigger picture of coming to CSL, I had been doing interviews, previous, about 6 months and getting to spaces where I’d like to get proper feedback.

Craig Brooks [00:04:19]: And going through the CSL journey helped me find the right places to ask for that feedback with the I’ll call it the CSL crew. And it became a really good system for me to then hone those questions and and then prepare a portfolio. Not not just kind of a web view, but, like, a how to walk through portfolio and how to actually aim my attentions at companies that I was interested in with the a piece they called the compass statement and especially in my portfolio of presentations with, the hardest part, which is the headlines. But I I spent a lot of time with that and that I believe that’s what made the difference in my job search. Is there more you can I you want me to dive in more? Or where where

Sarah Doody [00:05:04]: No. That that that was great. And just make sure I heard you right. You said you were job searching for 6 months before, and you were, I think, getting some interviews, but you weren’t making all the way to the offer stage. Is that correct?

Craig Brooks [00:05:18]: Right. I was yes. I wasn’t getting to offer stage. I was very close, and I still get follow ups, which is kind of crazy, like, months later. And, it it shows that there was some connection, but I think the the CSL program helped me get over that, I’ll call it last little step, in the clarity especially in the clarity of the portfolio piece. I had someone in the program with the the, with the kind of leaders you share stuff with where I could get feedback. Do I really need to show this? Is this too much information? Is it not enough information? Or is it even relevant to show it in a kind of a portfolio walk through? And the ability to get that feedback, I think, builds the confidence that is recognizable when you’re going into a kind of final step of an interview process. You you you have the ability to kind of understand that, yeah, it it does make sense or this might be the part where you wanna move a little faster through it.

Sarah Doody [00:06:23]: And one last question before we get to Meg. Do you recall, like, was there a specific tipping point or a moment in, you know, your your journey before you decided to to join career strategy lab where you thought I gotta do something different. Like, do you remember a specific moment? Or

Craig Brooks [00:06:44]: Yeah. I mean, I don’t wanna call any companies out. I mean, they’re still they reached out after the program too. So so you may went through a full loop. I did 7 interviews and then I did a full 2 day loop over a 2 month period, and it just kept dragging on. And they I don’t wanna say, like, put me on the bench. Sounds sounds funny, but it wasn’t an offer. It was like, we’ll get back to you.

Craig Brooks [00:07:08]: And, that’s a point where I was like, something’s not gelling. I don’t know what it is. And I wanna find someone where I can share my my actual stuff with someone and get feedback with, like, Erin and Becca in the program. I they were able to give me some pointers or at least point out how to think about structuring as I went through the process.

Sarah Doody [00:07:33]: Yeah. What one of the things we see all the time, and and maybe you agree with this in hindsight and and Meg too is, like, when it comes to all of these, what we call career marketing materials, you know, the the the collection of your resume, your LinkedIn, your portfolio, etcetera. You know, you get to this point where you’re too close to it. Yeah. And you need to, like, have someone kinda help you see it through the lens of the actual recruiters, hiring managers, etcetera, to help you identify, like, where is the the story off in in the slightest way or in a big way? It it depends from person to person.

Craig Brooks [00:08:16]: I think there there’s I mean, the way the program set up really helps help me guide into only applying to places I wanted to work. So you as part of the process, you do a compass statement, and that’s not just a random compass statement you have in your program that you put together. So you have very succinct things you go through and learn about that, and that then evolves into all the other pieces into your resume, into the the computer read as resume, how how to think about that, which then leads into your LinkedIn, how to think about that, and then how that all translates into how you share your presentation in a portfolio presentation for a UX role. And I think that would also apply to research as well. So it’s kind of like stepping stones. You know, the hardest part is really acknowledging who you wanna be in the Compass statement. And then you connect all the dots and you get to your kind of final piece, which is the portfolio presentation. And then getting those into the headlines, and honing those headlines.

Craig Brooks [00:09:21]: So they’re they’re pointed and they make sense. And that helps, as you talk through your portfolio presentation to really have a story.

Sarah Doody [00:09:30]: Totally. Yeah. Let’s let’s jump over to Meg, and then I wanna dive deeper into a little bit more, like, you touched on confidence, and I know mindset is a big thing, but, Meg, so tell us a little bit about what you’re doing now because you’re recently hired. I I forget if it was in August or May ish. And then a little bit about your journey and and job search before you entered the the world of career strategy lab.

Meg [00:09:58]: Yeah. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the open house. So nice to, have you all here today. So as Sarah mentioned, my name is Meg. I have a little bit of a nontraditional background within user experience. I’m a researcher. That’s my area of focus.

Meg [00:10:11]: And I worked at Google for 12 years, but I got my start in sort of voice of the customer or customer feedback

Erin [00:10:19]: kind of work, and then expanded

Meg [00:10:19]: into sort of product user experience work. And so figuring out a way to tell my story and talk about my experience, I think, was a a big challenge and why I came to CSL. You asked about moments, Sarah, but I, like Craig, had kind of gotten to a point where I was getting some good traction in terms of interviews, but I’ve been through 4 full round cycles with, like, no offer. And I just got this sense, you know, we’re we’re user experience folks. Like, our empathy, our ability to read a room, I think, is pretty strong. And I just got this sense that, like, I was doing really well at the initial interviews, but when it came to presenting the case study, there was something that just wasn’t clicking and translating with audience. And so I got this sense that my storytelling there was something that I really wanted to improve and make better. So that’s why I came to CSL.

Meg [00:11:04]: I recently just started working at Nextdoor. I’m a researcher there. We’re actually looking to work with some folks on the design side. So if anybody’s interested, please, I’m sure my contact information will be shared, but feel free to get in touch. And I am based here in San Francisco if we’ve got any San Francisco friends in the house. The last thing I’ll sort of share about my experience, which may resonate with a few of you folks, I actually went through back to back layoffs. And I think a lot of us are sort of experiencing that today. And so, you know, I’d been at Google for a very long time to the point where, I don’t think I even had a resume at the time that we went through massive lay offs out there.

Meg [00:11:38]: So a lot of my materials, I basically had to create from scratch. And CSL was a really great program and framework to sort of, like, start to think about building a lot of those things from the ground up. And, I think the other thing, you know, Craig talked about the compass statement and just getting clear on your purpose and where you wanna go next. I think sometimes after a layoff, you can be just like such a jarring experience. So it’s taking some time to reflect and really figure out, okay, where where do I wanna work next? What about my past experience? Did I enjoy? What did I not enjoy? And how do I wanna set myself up for success? And then the other piece that I’ll mention, which I’m sure we’ll talk about today, so Craig and I were actually in the same cohort. We were like in CSL at the same time, and there’s just so much support that you get from being part of the group to be able to have the critiques and be able to be in a safe space where you can get that feedback, but also to be able to check-in with folks and just ask about their process and how things are going. You know? Applying for jobs can be a gauntlet. It can be really draining.

Meg [00:12:33]: And feeling like you’re not in it alone was a really big piece for me as well. Yeah. Yeah. You

Sarah Doody [00:12:38]: Go ahead.

Meg [00:12:38]: The shell shock after layoffs. I definitely felt that. That’s a good word for that.

Sarah Doody [00:12:42]: Yeah. Like, we we never see, you know, for the most part, layoffs coming or you think, no. It’s not gonna happen to me. Right? Then and it it’s it’s easy to get into this, you know, kind of panic mode somewhat because if you’re in a situation where, you know, you don’t have updated resume portfolio, etcetera, like, there’s that added pressure on top of just the the stress of of the layoff and things like that. But both of you mentioned this idea of a compass or compass statement. And for for everyone who is not in CSL, career strategy lab and what we do is divide it into 5 sprints. We’ve sprintified this overwhelming process of getting your resume, getting your portfolio, your LinkedIn profile, networking, applying to jobs, all that. We’ve broken it down into these sprints.

Sarah Doody [00:13:35]: And the first sprint that we do is the design your career roadmap sprint, and part of that is coming up with this compass statement or elevator pitch for yourself. And we do this because products that don’t have road maps generally don’t work out very well. I mean, I’ve worked with enough start ups and founders to know, and maybe some of you are in a company like this right now where there is no road map. Like, it’s kind of not a great experience. The same applies to you because, ultimately, you are a product. Right? Companies are, quote, buying you, hiring. But if we wanna get literal, they’re buying you, the product of you. And so you need to have this very clear road map and elevator pitch for yourself.

Sarah Doody [00:14:25]: And, Craig and Meg, I’m curious, you know, your your hindsight on this. But what we find is when you try and do your resume, portfolio, etcetera, without that literal compass, it’s very difficult. But once you do have clarity about your career direction, etcetera, it makes the creation of that resume portfolio even what jobs you should apply to. It gives you guardrails, which I think is is a big part of why people love that that first sprint so much.

Meg [00:15:03]: Yeah. I think it’s almost like akin to design principles. Right? There’s all these, like, decisions that you make throughout this process of, like, okay. Which project do I wanna highlight, or what’s the case study that I’m gonna showcase? You can kind of get an analysis paralysis of, like, what which is the best option and really being grounded in what type of story you wanna tell or what the road map is for you, I think, just makes all of those decisions a lot easier as you sort of as Sarah said, sort of move through the sprints here.

Craig Brooks [00:15:29]: I think it’s important to note that it’s it’s one of the hardest steps for anybody, and it’s one of the most important things to it’s for you to understand you. And it’s a little bit by you, but there’s, great help from the CSL team. And that that’s really important. But there’s also the, as Meg mentioned, we were in the same cohort. There’s others who you find are like, oh, you were laid off too. So it’s it’s not, you know, the, you know, all the feelings that come with maybe a situation like that. You find others in the program who’ve gone through similar situations. How are they thinking about their approach to their career or maybe applying to companies or what companies and what type of work? So I’ll use the word, UX.

Craig Brooks [00:16:16]: That can go to a lot of different ways, governmental, educational, travel. You know, there’s a wide variety, and it helps kind of narrow into what resonates with you. And then being able to share that and you get feedback from the CSL, leadership, but also the community, which is was a big part for me, and I spent quite a bit of time reaching out.

Sarah Doody [00:16:39]: Yeah. And both of you have mentioned, you know, the the community and and the peer element of career strategy lab. And as I was, you know, literally designing the whole experience around career strategy lab, one of the things that kinda guided me, I guess, my compass for creating this whole program, was that so many people try and approach all of this in a vacuum, almost in secret, and they also rely on kind of one off feedback from a colleague, a former boss, a mentor on a mentoring platform, etcetera. And all of those kind of modalities of feedback are totally fine, but the challenge happens. Like, let’s say, an hour from now, you have a call with a mentor who’s gonna look at your resume or something. You might get some good feedback, but then you’re still on your own on the weekend, you know, trying to implement that feedback or think about it or process it and stuff. And so one of the real values, as as Meg and Craig have said, their benefits of career strategy lab is this group elements where you are surrounded by other people who are laser focused on exactly, you know, the same sprints you’re doing. And everyone is kind of, playing by the same song sheet or whatever the right phrase is for that.

Sarah Doody [00:18:09]: And so you don’t get caught up in a lot of this conflicting information that you see swooshing across your social feeds and things like that because everyone has recognized, look. I need to stop, like, getting into information collecting mode. I just need to take action. And because everyone is taking action from the same kinda principles and and steps in these sprints, it makes the group experience really powerful from from what we hear from people.

Craig Brooks [00:18:41]: I do wanna note that some of these steps, you know, will be easier and some will be more challenging, but that challenge is what makes the discovery of who you wanna be and what you wanna do even more great. And, like, reach out to people. Does this stuff that I’m sharing with everyone makes sense? Does it, so getting that that feedback, and I also found it really great. I was really grateful to be able to add comments to others as as they were doing their work because it really got me back into the feeling that not only are they helping me, but I’m helping them, which is, a a really great way to work.

Meg [00:19:21]: Yeah. That’s such a good point, Craig. Like, it’s a really powerful feeling. I think I feel like I think searching for a job can feel really powerless. Like you’re doing all these things and you’re waiting to sort of see the impact of that come to fruition. And there’s a bit of patience that comes in. But there’s something really great about being able to give back to other people and have people sort of like help you along the way that comes out of this cohort. I think that’s a really great point.

Meg [00:19:43]: I was also gonna add, I think I think it’s also great to see other people submit sort of, parts of this work throughout the process and see how, like, the questions that they ask or, like, you know, the where they feel like they’re getting blocked as they’re, like, submitting the stuff for critique and having that be sort of a, a safe group space sort of process. Because I think you learn a lot, not just about your own materials, but about how other people are sort of, like, putting their projects together or thinking about their portfolio, thinking about their resume. And sometimes, like, they’re maybe not questions you would have thought to ask directly, but they can help sort of shape and inform and make your own materials or your own sort of process smarter too. So I feel like there’s a lot of just, like, really great sort of, like, pure knowledge sharing that comes up throughout that process as well.

Sarah Doody [00:20:27]: Yeah. It’s it’s almost like, you know, just being in this container of this group experience and not being, you know, often a silo by yourself, you’re able to learn, as you said, Meg. Like, you might feel like because we have these q and a calls every Tuesday. You might think to yourself, oh, I don’t have anything to ask on the call today. I think I won’t show up. But if you show up, even if you don’t ask a question, as as you said, you’ll probably have some, like, lightning bolt moment, which makes you think, That other person who’s a researcher did x, y, z. Now I see how that can, like, unblock me in, you know, something I’m struggling with with on this research project in my portfolio or something like that. So, yeah, that that is a huge huge part of it.

Craig Brooks [00:21:21]: I also wanna shout out the Wednesday, mindset calls. I went in very that I don’t need mindset. But I found the ability for folks to share initially give me the permission to share that, you know, I’m not alone on this kind of crazy journey that the tech world is in right now. And so that helped me immensely way more than I would have anticipated before I did the program.

Sarah Doody [00:21:50]: Yeah. The the mindset calls, gosh, I forget when we added them. I I wanna say it was 2022, I think, Erin and Becca, which blows my mind. But those were added really as a way to help address, like, a lot of the things that hold many people back in their careers, frankly, but especially in the process of let’s just get the resume done, get the portfolio done. And so a lot of the topics on these mindset calls kind of surround themes of confidence, imposter syndrome, productivity, doubting your own skill set because maybe the job you just came from or were let go from was a situation where you had a boss who was not so encouraging or you just kinda feel, like, deflated or, in some cases, just, like, traumatized from your past work experience. And so these mindset calls are a place to, I think, number 1, help you realize you’re not the only person that that struggles with these things, and then number 2, have this, like, focused, supportive place that is not publicly, like, laying it all out on LinkedIn or something. And every every Wednesday, we have these calls, and the show I don’t know. I forget how many people on average show up, but it’s a it’s sometimes more than the q and a calls, to be honest.

Sarah Doody [00:23:14]: Yeah. So mindset is a big, big part of it. And I think too, when you when your mindset isn’t when your mindset is blocked, let’s say, I think it’s easy to kinda undersell yourself. And then when you do learn to manage those thoughts of confidence and imposter and things like that, it helps you realize, no, wait a second. I am really awesome. That work I did was awesome. Maybe my boss was a jerk or my team members were jerks. But when I look at this project in my portfolio now, regardless of, like, what happened in the job and on the team, this work is awesome.

Sarah Doody [00:23:52]: And so I think the mindset calls are really powerful in helping, you know, helping people kinda own own their experience and not undersell themselves. Erin, did I miss anything about mindset calls? I wanna make

Erin [00:24:05]: sure I didn’t I think you nailed it.

Sarah Doody [00:24:07]: Do it justice.

Erin [00:24:08]: Yeah. No. You totally did it justice. And, Craig, I appreciate you, like, bringing that up. Honestly, I think the the whole CSL, like, curriculum is transformative for your career materials. Right? It changes the way you’re showing up as a candidate and the way you’re interacting with the job search process. But you were changing too. Like, going through all of your old stuff, bringing it up, and being able to articulate these stories in a powerful way, sometimes there’s grief in the way, and we don’t even realize it.

Erin [00:24:35]: Sometimes it feels like anger or, like, annoyance or avoidance. Like, I just can’t get myself to do this. And when we kind of, like, dig in, it’s like, oh, there’s more there. And so it’s amazing. And I think that’s the power of community is not being in a silo, not doing it alone, and sometimes it’s just popping on and listening to things and hearing other people kind of processing. You kind of start to do the same thing for things that you didn’t even know needed to be processed. So I think that’s the magic of a group coaching program overall.

Sarah Doody [00:25:01]: Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. And I I will say, like, we have looked at, you know, various other degrees of programs that offer help with your resume or, you know, reviews of your portfolio and things like that. But I have yet to find one that really looks at both of these things, your career and your life. Right? It’s it’s hard to, like, decouple those things, and I think these mindset calls really help, you know, unlock blocks that help you not only reach these career goals and milestones faster, but, you know, in the longer term and in the shorter term, help you as a person. So, yeah, we are constantly balancing life and career type, topics, I guess, we could say in career strategy lab.

Meg [00:25:56]: Yeah. I think it’s a good balance too. Right? Like, the Tuesday call gets into some of the work, and the Wednesday gets into more of, like, the human side. And I’ll just say, like, quick shout out to CSL. I made some really great relationships to the point where, like, I was standing Friday meeting with someone else in our cohort just to, like, catch up and see how each other were doing. Right? So I think there’s a lot of, like, that relationship building and that sort of, like, community that kind of, like, comes out in those spaces as well, which is it’s it’s powerful. This is a hard thing to do by yourself.

Sarah Doody [00:26:23]: Totally. I’m I’m curious. Okay. Two questions. I’ll say the questions that we can address 1 by 1 here. But let’s think about, like for Meg and Craig, think about was there a specific mindset shift that you really felt happen personally? And then the second question will be, was there a specific sprint beyond the Compass and Roadmap sprint that really, like, made a big difference in in your experience? So let’s start with the mindset one. Does either of you wanna go first?

Craig Brooks [00:26:58]: I can jump in. I know it’s one of the things I because how do I put this? I have years of experience. I’m grateful that I have experience that I’m able to bring that to, you know, my process. And then thinking about that when I was joining CSL, part of it was like, why do I have to do this? And that kind of was my stopgap for kind of thinking about it. But then I, you know, got over that. The emotion, that was shared from many others, I mean, in terms of their process started, you know, as we kind of touched on really started to shape like, okay, this is, you know, I’m not alone in this journey. There’s lots of others in this journey of trying to find work and it’s a little rough. And, and then the key so, like, it was in the 1st couple weeks, which are still I’m still getting used, but somebody said, please, can you, like, give me feedback in, you know, async? So they had one of the sprints, and they wanted async.

Craig Brooks [00:27:58]: And I that’s why I started to key in, like, oh, people want to hear your thoughts. And then I took it as an opportunity to to learn to help again. Because when you have years of experience in your role, you help mentor, earlier in career individuals. And so I started to do that same thing again, and it built my confidence like, oh, I do have experience I can bring. I can share some thoughts. They don’t have to change their stuff. It’s just thoughts. I asked them as questions.

Craig Brooks [00:28:30]: And then because of that, the mindset call wasn’t like a structured piece, but, like, it was open. You could be very succinct on a certain project. Or how’s everybody feeling, you know, you know, with, you know, some some level of news that was in the industry? And so having it that open helped me navigate into a space where how can I help and how can that help me?

Meg [00:28:56]: I think in terms of the mindset shift, you know, I think a back to back layoff is a really, like, unique mental space to be in. I think you, like, build yourself back up after the first one and then to have it happen again. It’s sort of like when you’re in the ocean and, like, the waves keep coming. Right? And so I think, like, just the I came in with a lot of frustration, I think, around that. And I think just, like, having a space and and working on sort of a mindset mindset shift around resilience, I think, was really helpful. I know we talk about, like, confidence and sort of, like, impostor syndrome. Those absolutely, I think, are things that came up a lot. But I think for me in particular, just, like, working through, you know, week over week, some of this, like, resiliency piece and, you know, having the space to, like, know that I I could come and sort of bring some of my frustrations, I think, was really helpful.

Meg [00:29:44]: And then also just, you know, Sarah mentioned, like, it’s, there are sprints and it’s very templatized. And so there’s sort of this, you know, patience and, like, faith mindset you get to get into of, like, okay, just kinda work the process. Right? You can be frustrated, but, like, do the do the work and keep moving in the right direction, and eventually, it’ll kinda pay off. So I think all of that was really a big unlock for me.

Sarah Doody [00:30:07]: Yeah. As we say all the time, trust the process. As cliche as that is, like, don’t overthink it. Trust the process. Trust us. Trust that the people that have gone before you have succeeded. So if you did what they did, woah, you should succeed too. And one thing I’ll just add as a thing you could write on a Post it note, but progress over perfection and focus on minimum viable resume, minimum viable portfolio.

Sarah Doody [00:30:34]: It doesn’t mean a trashy portfolio. It means you can get hired with a good enough resume and a good enough portfolio. It doesn’t need to be pixel perfect, you know, level here. So yeah. But thinking back to this Actually, that’s

Meg [00:30:49]: a really that’s a really good point, Sarah. That brings up for me. So on every like, by Sunday, Pacific time, there’s, like, a weekly deadline to submit things for critique. And getting into the mentality of just, like, every week, I’m gonna try and submit something. I only I signed up for the 12 week program, so I only had 12 weeks. And so, like, let’s don’t worry about making it perfect. Come Sunday, whatever state it’s in, like, we’re gonna submit it and we’re gonna get some feedback. I think that was really also, like, really powerful for me in terms of not spending 3 weeks, like, over rotating on every comma and every pixel.

Meg [00:31:23]: Right? And just sort of getting to this this idea of, like, let’s just keep kind of progressing. I don’t know if anybody else on the call has a little bit of perfectionism in their background, but Me. Very helpful for that if you’re you’re struggling with that piece.

Sarah Doody [00:31:36]: And then the second question was, you know, out of the sprints so there’s there’s these 5 sprints. You’ll see them in a second. But Craig and Meg, does does one stick out to you in terms of, like, man, that was game changer for me? It’s okay if you’re like, no. They were all great. But if if there is one, it’d be great to hear.

Craig Brooks [00:31:55]: Mine was definitely the portfolio section with the framing of headlines and the effort it took to get how to explain headlines to people. So with each page in your portfolio, there’s a reason that page is in your portfolio and being really clear why that page is in your portfolio is demonstrated in a headline. And CSL has a process for understanding that and how you go about writing it. And it was, I think that was the biggest game changer in terms of when I got to an interview process. I knew each page made sense because I’d gotten feedback from the CSL crew. I’d gotten feedback from the other people in my cohort, like Meg. And I could see the story because I’ve written it all out in headlines before putting it to visuals. And it’s I won’t say it’s easy for me.

Craig Brooks [00:32:55]: I’m not a great writer, but it was absolutely game changing because you know it works, so you have the confidence, and you also know you’ve put the work in to get a great presentation.

Meg [00:33:05]: Yeah. I think that was

Erin [00:33:06]: definitely my most impactful sprint as well. Plus one to everything Craig

Meg [00:33:06]: said about the headlines. Like, sprint as well, plus one to everything Craig said about the headlines. Like, I used a critique for the headlines for every case study and then did a separate critique for, like, all the slide sort of content as well. That’s how I think important it was for me to, like, be able to get feedback in both those spaces. I’ll just also call out, you know, the the templates that Sarah has put together. I think you can spend a lot of time going in circles about, like, how do I want to visually represent the different pieces of my case study? And I am not a designer. I’m a researcher, and so that is not my forte. And so really having a proven template that I could work from and start from was such a, like, more streamlined experience than any other time I’ve tried to put these materials together.

Meg [00:33:52]: So I think there’s just was a lot of power for me in that as well.

Sarah Doody [00:33:55]: And, okay, here’s a pop question which was was not on our list of potential questions I was gonna ask, but I’m curious because you both mentioned the portfolio sprint. You know, in you in both of your jobs, whether it’s this week, next month, next year, you’re more than likely going to have to make a presentation about something, whether Meg gets, like, research findings or Craig gets, like, some feature prioritization or pitch to some stakeholder department to Dexcom or something. Do you think that the approach that we took to making a portfolio presentation will help you in the future to make potentially a presentation that is not a portfolio?

Craig Brooks [00:34:39]: I’m still gonna do headlines for sure. And then I shared, like, how I set up the visual side, and that was a process that I didn’t realize I did that I was able to then share with the CSL, but it was using the templates that CSL had set up. And so I will carry that the setup and the headlines through to going forward for sure.

Meg [00:35:02]: Awesome. Yeah. I think for research too, like, we love words, and we’re not always so good about putting together easily sort of digestible visuals. And so it was a good forcing function to think about, like, okay. Instead of me just sharing a screenshot of a doc that has, like, 20 questions in it that nobody can read while you’re presenting it. Right? What is sort of a more impactful way to showcase, what this research covers or, like, what the intention of it was, what we learned? So, yeah, I think there’s a lot of that, like, how to how to get to, like, more visual representation of research that was really powerful for me.

Sarah Doody [00:35:37]: Yeah. We we often say behind the scenes in our team chat, like, this should just be called the communication strategy lab because, yes, it’s about strategy for your career, but, you know, when it when you really boil it down, a lot of it is just helping everyone learn how to communicate and articulate what their value is, what they did, why they made certain decisions, etcetera. And that becomes very transferable, you know, whether it’s learning to write more clearly through our kind of case study writing process, through the resume bullet point process, or if it’s, as you said, Meg, like looking at something that could be a really dense slide with a to a 100 words or a 1000 words and figure out, no. How do I, make this a little bit more easy to to consume? So that is actually a really awesome segue to our little mini portfolio training here. 10 minutes. I’m trying to force myself to keep this to 10 minutes. We have not shared this little portfolio training with anyone yet. It’s something that I’ve been mulling over for a while, and I finally sat down and put it together.

Sarah Doody [00:36:59]: So let me just share my screen. Alright. So I’m gonna start a timer for myself. So mini portfolio training, really thinking about we have all these users of portfolio, How the heck do we meet all of their needs? Because they all have different needs. And how do we do this with one portfolio? Because there’s a lot of advice about portfolios out there, and I’ve even heard of people making different versions. One that they send when they apply for the job, one when they maybe make contact with, like, the hiring manager, then they have another version for the interviews. And that’s great if you have the time, but if you’re recently laid off, you probably don’t have the time or energy. And even if you’re not laid off, it’s a lot of time and energy to make these multiple versions.

Sarah Doody [00:37:49]: So before we get into how do we do this, really quick kind of reframe of who are the users of our portfolio. Now we’re we’re really simplifying this, but we have to think of the process to get hired in these three steps. Right? There’s a vetting step where someone’s deciding, are you even gonna get an interview or not? That person is normally the recruiter, someone in HR. They potentially are going through hundreds of applicants. Right? Then we get to the interviews where these people probably wanna know a little bit more than that recruiter or HR person. So we’re talking about hiring managers, those future peers and colleagues that might be in panel interviews, and things like that. Right? And then, of course, the offer. So what are some these are not all.

Sarah Doody [00:38:39]: There’s some of the traits of all of these people. Right? We know they’re vetting a really high volume of candidates. Right? Sometimes 100 for each role. And they’re busy. Their time is limited, especially if you think they might not just be hiring for one role. They might be hiring for multiple roles. So if they have 200 applicants for 4 positions, you know, 200 times 4, that’s a lot of people to go through. Right? They want to see examples, exact examples of your skills in action.

Sarah Doody [00:39:13]: It’s not just enough to say what you did. We know they are skimming through your portfolio, but here’s the thing. They will start reading if you make it easy for them to read, which we’re gonna see in a moment. And like we just saw in that other slide, we have to design a portfolio that’s gonna meet the needs of the person that might be skimming really quickly versus the person that might be reading a little bit more, because as I said, they will read if you make it easy. Similar to people only spend 6 seconds on your resume. Well, if you give them a reason to spend more than 6 seconds, they’ll spend more than 6 seconds. So what level of detail do they want? Again, super simplified, but we have to think the further along in the process, the more level of detail they are looking for. So how do we meet their needs, right, without creating a separate portfolio for each of them? And we do this through, drum roll, the inverted pyramid from journalism.

Sarah Doody [00:40:23]: So I did not invent this. If you Google it, you know, there’s all kinds of content out there about this. But, essentially, the inverted pyramid from journalism says that in a story, let’s say a news article, it’s gonna start with the most important information. Right? The lead. Then after the lead, there’s gonna be some port supporting information, also known as the body. And then at the end of the article, there might be extra background information, interesting facts, etcetera. So how does this play out in the real world? So what I’m trying to show you is this article that I found all about Taylor Swift. Is Taylor Swift gonna be the cheerleader for the 2025 season for the Chiefs? Right? And let’s look at how this idea of the lead body and tale apply to this article.

Sarah Doody [00:41:24]: So if we look at this, well, guess what? This, will Taylor Swift return as Chiefs cheerleader for 2024, 25? And then this subtitle of Swift made appearances at 13 Chiefs games last season to watch boyfriend, Troy Travis Kelce, and his team. He was also spotted at some of her ARIST tours concerts. That is the lead. If if I am busy, if I’m one of those people that only reads the headlines, which we all do from time to time, I still can have a takeaway from this article. Right? Because it has a really good lead, which is a combination of that title and that kind of subtitle there. Then if I keep reading as we go down the article, we are getting to the body. Right? So we’re hearing about the Chiefs season. We’re not gonna read this whole article together.

Sarah Doody [00:42:20]: But as we go down the article, it’s providing us with more information to essentially back up and support what was in that title and subtitle at the top of the article. And as we go down the article further and further, and we’re not gonna do it for the sake of time, the article essentially ends with, like, relevant information to Taylor and and Travis, but it’s less related to the season and it’s more like, well, in this city, Taylor, like, wore an outfit that was the same color as the Chiefs, therefore, the relationship must be really serious. And it’s kinda just giving us extra tidbits and information that if we read the article and we made it through kinda halfway through, it’s gonna be interesting information for us to consume. So when we think about the inverted pyramid, and you’ll see this when you read an article later today, when you watch a news story, if you watch the news at night, you’ll see this play out where they hook you in at the beginning of the article or the beginning of a little interview on the TV with a really strong lead, then they tell you more, which is the body of the story. And then at the end, it’s kinda like dessert, almost like some extra stuff that’s nice if you made it that far in the in the story or the interview. Alright. So then we’re gonna keep going, and here’s the thing too. You will see this play out even on things like carousel posts that you see on LinkedIn or on Instagram or even you see this concept play out if people write posts on x or threads that are like those multiple tweets or whatever they’re called in a row.

Sarah Doody [00:44:11]: You see people in that first tweet, for example, they’re trying to get a lead in there to get your attention, then there is maybe 5 more tweets that form the body, and then maybe the last one or two tweets is kind of like the tail of what they are communicating. Now your portfolio can use this same structure. And let me zoom out a little bit so you guys can see. Great. So how does this apply to your portfolio? Well, as Craig said, we’re looking at and let’s zoom in a little bit here. We’re looking at a mock slide of a portfolio. Now before you guys blow up the chat with, well, couldn’t a portfolio be a website? You’re all smart. Just apply this to a website.

Sarah Doody [00:44:55]: We’re looking at this from the perspective of the portfolio as a presentation. So on each slide, we want there to be a lead. The most important information or as Craig said, headline. We call it a headline in career strategy lab. And if people only read that headline, that’s what we want them to know. And recruiters and hiring managers are probably oftentimes only reading that as they’re skimming through your portfolio. Then we get into some body information, and maybe it’s this text here. And then over here, this might be considered body information.

Sarah Doody [00:45:38]: And then we get to the tail. It’s like, if they actually read everything on the slide, great. It’s nice extra information, but they don’t need to read this information. This should be pink. 2, understand what’s the the big idea of this slide. So this inverted pyramid structure, though, only works if you are paying attention to both the content and the design of the slides, which is why the way we teach portfolios, and I’ve been doing this since 2017, is we separate the writing of the content from the design of the slides so that we don’t get distracted and so that we have a really strong story that we are telling. Now here’s the problem. If you don’t pay attention to the to the design, for example, like, if everything is the same font size as we’ve done on this slide, nothing stands out because there’s no hierarchy.

Sarah Doody [00:46:45]: Right? And so there is no inverted pyramid here because everything is literally the same font size. Now maybe this text, the first sentence is really well written, but the problem is people won’t read that more than likely because what they see is just a lot of text and their brain is like, can’t compute. There’s no hierarchy. I don’t know what to read first. This also doesn’t work if you have slides with, like, giant walls of text, as we say in career strategy lab, where you have multiple lines of text like this, and it’s not, like, chunked out into smaller paragraphs, which makes it easier to read. This is why if you go to any news site, you’re gonna see, like, the paragraphs are sometimes just 1 or 2 sentences long because they’re making these little chunks of text to make it really easy to read. If you’re a designer, you know this, but a lot of people make this mistake in their portfolio. So for each slide in we in your portfolio, we need to think about what is the lead or the headline.

Sarah Doody [00:47:54]: And if someone only reads that 1 or 2 sentences, what do we want them to take away? And then what is the body content of that slide? Really, what information do we need to support whatever we said in that lead or headline? And then the tail, you know, what extra information could serve as extra kind of proof or evidence of our experience, our skills, our expertise, etcetera. Now if we do this, then we’re meeting the needs of all these people. Right? Because the recruiter or hiring manager, they might only read that headline at the top. And then, you know, if you are going to a panel interview and people are looking at your portfolio beforehand and they might be, you know, peers at the same level as you in the team, they might be reading more. Right? Because they’re the ones that are gonna be working alongside you every single day versus the recruiter or hiring manager or sorry, recruiter or HR person. They’re just really trying to figure out, like, does this person on paper seem like they have the skills and experience that match the job job description? Right? A couple of things. So couple of cautions really quick. I don’t want you to take this literally and think that I’m saying every slide in your portfolio must be laid out like this.

Sarah Doody [00:49:24]: This is not meant to be like a literal wireframe that every single slide needs to follow because a few people I showed this to, they thought that. So I want to make that clear. And then the other thing I wanna make clear is that not every slide will always have body and tail content. And I wish it was as easy as, like, rules that you can follow and it’s super black and white. But let’s face it. A lot of this can be subjective. So sometimes, for example, like, the body of body information might be a visual or no visual, just like this slide we are literally looking at right now. And if if we look back at all these slides we’ve gone through, you’ll see this exact structure playing out on all the slides.

Sarah Doody [00:50:08]: So this is just a kind of example to show you, you know, this inverted pyramid framework, I guess, could play out in these 4 different layouts. Right? And, again, this isn’t meant to say these are the only 4 layouts you can ever use. There’s a ton more, infinite, really. Anyway, that is the inverted pyramid structure. So to recap, we wanna make sure that these slides in our portfolio, if we go back to I don’t know. Let’s start here. This one that somewhere on the slide, we’re making sure there is always a headline. And then where it makes sense, there is body content and sometimes maybe this tail content.

Sarah Doody [00:50:55]: So I’m curious if any of you heard about the inverted pyramid structure before or if you are working on your slides right now, if this helps you wrap your mind around a little bit more, like, how do I take maybe these case studies I’ve written and literally lay them out on slide format or web page if you want to. Right? So that is our little inverted pyramid structure, which we are borrowing from the land of journalism to really help us craft clearer, more effective stories and have really effect effective slides. And, like, if you’re not working on a portfolio, but you’re working on some other presentation, this could still apply to whatever you are doing. Alright. So the last thing we wanna do, we’re gonna try and keep this under 8 minutes, let’s say. I know a bunch of you were asking on email before this event, and I see some private messages too in the chat, questions specific to career strategy labs. So we thought it’d just be easy to walk you through really quick rundown of what happens in career strategy lab, and I’m gonna skip a few slides in the interest of time. So as we said, we are all about helping people create a career that lets them live the life they want to live, and we really believe that the greatest product you’ll ever work on is you.

Sarah Doody [00:52:41]: And so we do this through this career coaching incubator and job search accelerator where we teach people in user experience and product development and tech how to design and market and really sell themselves in their career. And people that have worked with us have been hired at all kinds of companies. You heard Next Door and Dexcom today from Meg and Craig. We have a ton more companies that we don’t have space to list the logos for. And all disciplines. Right? We heard from Meg who’s a researcher and Craig’s more on the design side of things. But we’ve also had people who are UX writers and information architects and web designers and graphic designers and product managers and kinda everything under this umbrella of world of UX and product, and they’ve been hired at countries around the world. I think we’re up to 34 countries where people are from and then joined career strategy lab.

Sarah Doody [00:53:42]: Career stages is a question we get asked all the time too. The current breakdown is constantly shifting. The current breakdown of about the past year is we see 15% of people who are kinda earlier in their career, and then people that are switching. We see a lot of people switching from nursing and teaching and journalism, even attorneys, and then climbers, people that have already been working, whether that’s 3 years, 5 years, 20 plus years, and wanting to advance whatever that means to them. So we’ve talked about those sprints. Right? The 5 sprints. And here, we’re showing you how we break down the process of designing and marketing and selling yourself into these 5 sprints, where we first start with the career road map, and then we go work on your resume and your LinkedIn, and then we get into job search and relationships. Sprint 4 is all about case studies and portfolio.

Sarah Doody [00:54:41]: We wait to do portfolio until we’ve done these other three things because the idea is if we can get your resume and your LinkedIn profile and kinda get you kick started on relationships, that can be attracting potential opportunities and helping nurture relationships and increasing your visibility, especially on LinkedIn, while you are then working on your portfolio. So that’s why we do that in that order. And then within the world of career strategy lab, it’s really centered around how do we give you the best curriculum, the best coaching, and the best community. And so we thought it would be useful to show you, and I’m still sharing my screen, show you the community, and then show you inside our curriculum hub. So this is our community. I blurred out people’s names sorry, photos just for privacy reasons. But, really, over here at the left, we have all these different kinda areas in the community that are really focused on helping you have specific conversations, stay accountable, etcetera. So for example, like, every day we have these sprint check ins and every week where you come in.

Sarah Doody [00:56:06]: I’m not gonna click in because then you’ll see people’s faces, and we only blurred them out on this screen. But we have these accountability threads, we have a asynchronous co working lounge, and then we have areas specific to, like, resume questions or we’re in the compass section or portfolio, etcetera. And then we have a really active alumni lounge as well there. And then when you join career strategy lab, and I didn’t get to pull this up before this call because I had a tech issue, but you end up getting access to our curriculum where it’s gonna look like this, except it’s gonna look like this. And you get access to all of these courses. So they all correspond to a sprint. Right? So designing your career road map, your resume, LinkedIn, job search, etcetera, all the call recordings, mindset calls, all that stuff. And then if we dive in to say the resume course, and then it’s very organized.

Sarah Doody [00:57:11]: There’s all the downloads, and then it’s breaking it down in these super bite sized chunks that make this all super manageable. So thinking about, like, the writing of your resume and the specific parts of your resume and the intro and your name and contact and work experience and the bullets, etcetera, and then the design of your resume and not just designing 1, but designing a human optimized one and a applicant tracking system optimized one, etcetera. And so all the courses are broken down in a very similar, granular way like that. And then like we said, we have these Tuesday q and a calls and mindset calls on Wednesdays. We also give you tons of templates, which Craig and Meg mentioned. We use Google Docs just because they’re the, most the software that people are most familiar with. Right? Because not everyone is like a notion buff or something. So we use Google Docs, and there’s these templates for your resume, writing your resume, writing your portfolio, portfolio template here, even Google Sheets around helping you be engaged on LinkedIn with posting prompts, a plan for engagements, you can be more visible, etcetera.

Sarah Doody [00:58:28]: And like we said, this is not just me here. This is a team. And so we have 4 coaches and Emma, but Emma is really behind the scenes who are experts in really design marketing and sales. We each bring our own kind of, like, focus to this experience. And one person named Sarah, just coincidentally, same name as me, she’d said that the scale of materials blew my mind and that if I realized how broken down everything was, I don’t think I would have waited so long to join. So I guess I should hire her as a copywriter or something like that. Alright. So couple of things to know.

Sarah Doody [00:59:06]: We let people into career strategy lab kind of on a rolling basis here. So career strategy lab, we have a 3 month version and a 6 month version. The only difference is the length. So what we’re looking at right now is the 3 month version where it’s $36100, but if you pay in full, you save a little bit. It’s 3,000. And like we said, we’ll give you another extra month in the program if you want. But really the only difference between 3 6 months is the time. So if you need a little bit more time, if you know maybe you have a busy couple of months coming up, but you still wanna do this, that gives you some extra time.

Sarah Doody [00:59:49]: And I know we have some alumni here. So if you complete your 3 or 6 months and you decide, you know, I wanna stay longer, like, you can do that. We have these month to month plans for after if you want to. And if you’re alumni, you totally just email us, and we will tell you all about those and give you the link to join us. And I think that’s all. We do also work with a financing partner who we’ve been partnering with for almost 2 years now, which blows my mind. And so you’ll see on this page, we’ll link you to links to explore the options with our financing partner. It’s called Elective, and I just wanted to show you the screenshot so you’re not wondering who the heck is Elective.

Sarah Doody [01:00:35]: That’s the company we work with. I know there are probably questions, so I wanna give opportunity if anyone has quick questions. Although Becca and Erin may have been answering them while I was going through those slides and fixing a few little tech issues with our with our journalism pyramid. But let’s see. I think that is all that we have for today. So we hope, number 1, that you learned something new today about the job search. Maybe you learned something new about yourself, or maybe you just feel a little bit more ease about whatever situation you’re in by by hopefully realizing that, you know, you are not alone in this struggle of navigating, you know, a current job search or thinking back to previous job searches or maybe you’re happily employed, but you’re trying to figure out what your next career move is. All of those scenarios are not easy to figure out alone, and I think so many of us it’s very easy to get down on ourselves and think that we’re the only ones who struggle with this, but everyone struggles with this.

Sarah Doody [01:01:53]: It’s not easy. It’s not stuff that is taught in school or that your boss teaches you and things like that. And so let’s see here. We wanna thank Meg and Craig. I know everyone appreciated hearing your stories and your perspective. And thanks to Erin and Becca for answering questions in the chat, etcetera. And thanks to all of you for showing up. I know giving us an hour of your time in the middle of the day is not always easy.

Sarah Doody [01:02:21]: I hope it was worth your time. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn or send us an email. We’re happy to to point you to different resources or answer questions related to career strategy lab. So that is all, everyone. Erin, I don’t know if you’re still here or Becca, but were there any questions you saw that you thought we should, like, verbally talk out here?

Becca [01:02:50]: No. I think we covered everything. We had a more recent question just about, you know, is CSL limited to certain areas of the world and, no, everywhere? So Yeah. We so yep. And that’s a that’s a frequently asked question. I think, you know, that question and then people wondering is this just for a specific career stage? That’s another frequently asked question that we covered.

Sarah Doody [01:03:18]: Yeah. And it ebbs and flows the kind of the types of people that are in career strategy lab. But like we said, this is not just for beginners or people that just graduated, you know, from a degree program or a boot camp or something. We have people from all career stages because here’s the thing. Like, though though the information and the content of, say, your resume and of your portfolio will be different for someone who has who is seeking their first job versus someone with 20 years of experience, obviously, your experience differs and so the content in your resume and portfolio will differ. But the process to create that resume, to create that portfolio, that is the same. And and as Meg and Craig both said, by doing this in community, even if you, let’s say, have 3 years of experience and you’re on a q and a call and you’re looking at someone’s portfolio because we’re asking a question from someone, you know, that’s been working for 20 years and we’re answering questions about their portfolio, you still might be able to take have a takeaway from, you know, the the critique and advice that we’re offering that per person and vice versa. Right? Someone with 20 years of experience might see something that someone with 3 or 1 years of experience did in their portfolio and still learn something.

Sarah Doody [01:04:50]: So, yeah, like, I I see how it’s easy to be skeptical and think, oh, well, like, I couldn’t possibly learn something if I have 20 years of experience or, oh, I have 1 year of experience. Am I gonna be kind of the fish out of the water here? But that is not the case at all. Alright. Well, thank you for your time. I know we went over. And thank you again to Meg and Craig, and I’ll follow-up over email with both of you. And that’s all. So have a great rest of your day, everyone.

Sarah Doody [01:05:20]: And we will see you somewhere on LinkedIn, on Instagram, in the inbox, or maybe add another workshop that we do. Alright. Bye everyone. See you later. Thanks for listening to the career strategy podcast. Make sure to follow me, Sarah Dutti, on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. If anything in today’s episode resonated with you, I’d love to hear about it. Tag me on social media or send me a DM.

Sarah Doody [01:05:48]: And lastly, if you found this episode helpful, I’d really appreciate it if you could share it with a friend or give us a quick rating on Spotify or review on Apple Podcasts. Catch you later.