Episode 108
How to advance your UX or Product career as a mid or senior-level professional
15 min listen
Episode 79
15 min listen
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Episode Summary
Not sure how to advance your UX or Product career? Mid and senior level UX professionals often get stuck and reach plateaus because they aren’t clear on what they want, how to advocate for themselves, and find themsleves second guessing their skills as they compare themselves to others.
Today’s episode sheds light on what it takes to get hired, change your mindset, and overcome obstacles along the way. Many mid and senior level UX and Product professionals with 10, 15, or even 20-plus years of experience worry about their job prospects. The truth is, there are opportunities out there in various industries like finance, healthcare, and tech.
We delve into the importance of mindset, emphasizing the difference between healthy compromise and settling for less. It’s crucial to stay true to your career goals and learn to communicate your experiences effectively. There’s also a focus on overcoming imposter syndrome, which often manifests as overconfidence or resistance to updating resumes and LinkedIn profiles.
By doing the necessary work on your career materials, you not only improve your chances of landing a job but also bolster your confidence. This episode is packed with strategies and examples from real people who have taken control of their careers, including those who’ve made tough yet empowering decisions. Whether you’re a career climber or navigating a job search, this episode offers valuable insights to help you succeed.
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- Learn how to advance your UX career in our UX Career Roadmap
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Discussion Questions About The Episode
- How do you effectively showcase your experience to potential employers, and what strategies have you found helpful in differentiating yourself in a competitive job market?
- How do you balance financial needs with roles that align with your long-term career goals? Have you ever compromised in your career, and what were the results?
- How do you define and maintain your boundaries during a job search, and what strategies help you stay aligned with your career goals?
- The episode discusses how imposter syndrome can appear as overconfidence among career climbers. Have you experienced this form of imposter syndrome, and how did you address it? What steps can you take to maintain a balanced view of your skills and experience?
- How has LinkedIn or other networking platforms impacted your job search or career growth? What are some ways you could improve your presence on such platforms to attract better opportunities?
Episode Notes & Links
Episode Transcript
Sarah Doody [00:00:00]: 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. Welcome back.
Sarah Doody [00:00:39]: Today, we are going to cover 3 things. Number 1, getting hired as a career climber. So someone that’s been working in the world of user experience or product for a while. I wanna share some stats with you concerning what I am seeing in the industry and what we’re seeing with clients in career strategy lab, our career coaching program, and what I’m seeing in the industry as a whole. Number 2, I want to talk about the mindset that career climbers need, and don’t worry it’s not just all about making sacrifices and taking any job. And number 3, I wanna talk a little bit about this sneaky way that imposter syndrome shows up for climbers and how to overcome it. So let’s dive in. 1st off, getting hired as a clear climber.
Sarah Doody [00:01:32]: Full stop getting hired is still possible. If you have 10, 15, 20 plus years of experience it is not time to throw in a towel. People are still hiring for candidates just like you. So let’s dive into some stats. I went through the stats of people, from career strategy lab, my career coaching program. And in the last 12 months, 70% of the people who ended up getting hired were in fact climbers, which tells me climbers are still getting hired now. Where are they getting hired? So I looked at the companies they are getting hired at and it really broke down to kind of 4 buckets. First of all, there’s the industry of finance.
Sarah Doody [00:02:24]: We’ve had people get hired at companies including Vanguard, JPMorgan Chase, Fisher Investments, and others. Number 2 is the health industry. Health companies such as UnitedHealthcare or HealthEquity. Number 3 is kind of tech or software companies. So we’ve seen people get hired at Google, Samsung, and Circle, Cisco to name a few. And then finally, I have just another category of other, and I’ll give you some examples from that one. So, we saw some people in the education industry such as getting hired at Southern New Hampshire University, SimpliSafe, a security company, America’s Test Kitchen, kind of a media and cooking food company, I guess. Contactmonkey, SaaS software, they’re in Canada.
Sarah Doody [00:03:14]: BSI is a consulting group in the UK, and even AmeriCorps. Now, what countries have these career climbers been hired in? So we’ve seen people get hired in USA, Canada, UK, and Spain. And I just wanna say too, there have probably been other climbers get hired as well that just didn’t tell us they got hired. So this is just based on the data that we have been given from people who filled out the little form we have when they got hired after a career strategy lab or sometimes during their time in career strategy lab. Alright. Now, job titles. So what are they getting hired for? We’re seeing people got hired into positions of senior product designer, director of product, service design, and customer experience journey manager, design researcher, UX writer, product manager, to name a few. So my takeaways here are really that companies are still hiring especially outside of tech, you may need to drop your ego and not be married to job titles, your ability to communicate what you have done as a climber is more important than what you have done.
Sarah Doody [00:04:28]: And I really wanna underline that because I think sometimes it’s very easy to sell yourself short or think you don’t need to spend as much time as a climber on your resume, or on your portfolio, or something because you think, oh well, the years of experience or the names of the companies I’ve worked at should kinda, like, give me some clout, and that is not enough today. You have to communicate what you have done. You can’t just rely on your qualifications. Alright. And as a climber, you really have the challenge of so much experience. Right? So creating your resume and portfolio etcetera is challenging because you have the unique position where you can’t likely include everything. And so you have to decide, do I include this or that? By every single project you’ve worked on, skill you have, etc. And it’s really about culling through all your experience and deciding based on the job I want next, what are the very most important things I should talk about? And that gets confusing and hard, which is why we see a lot of climbers join us in career strategy lab.
Sarah Doody [00:05:42]: Alright. Number 2 thing we wanna talk about is mindset. So many career climbers really worry that they are gonna seem overqualified or that they’ll need to maybe take a role that has a lower salary or fewer or maybe even different responsibilities than that they were originally looking for. And here’s the thing, there is a difference between settling or sacrificing and compromise. And with compromise, you still have the power. There’s not, like, a sense of desperation. So we just had a client who was a career climber, who actually said no to a job opportunity. Because after working with us on something we call a compass statement, kinda like a vision statement for your career, this person got very clear on what she wanted in her career and her next role and while the money was great for this job offer, she knew that the role was not aligned with what she was looking for based on her compass statement.
Sarah Doody [00:06:50]: And even more importantly, she knew she had options. She didn’t just have to take this job offer because she was confident in her experience and knew how to powerfully articulate it, and she knew that if she could get that job offer, she probably could get more job offers. We had another person actually from Australia who joined career strategy lab and then resigned from her job a few weeks after creating this very career compass statement. And it was very powerful what she posted in the community, and I thought I would just read it to you. She said, today I’m resigning from my senior service designer role at a large software company. I’m only 3 months into the role, but it’s become very evident that the expectations of the role are extremely limited and not offering me opportunities to learn, grow, and challenge myself. I haven’t taken this decision lightly as I’m not someone who hops from one job to the next. Before pivoting into the UX a few years ago, I was with one company for 11 years.
Sarah Doody [00:08:00]: That said, I’m trying to be more authentic in my career decisions and listening to my gut when it’s time to go. I’m sharing this for anyone else out there who’s stuck in a dead end job and is trying to find the courage to make a change. Be brave. Listen to your gut. You will be happy you did. And I just thought that was so powerful and such in alignment with this mindset that we know is so important for people at all career stages, but especially our career climbers out there. So I want you to be open to opportunities and know your boundaries and what makes sense for you. And slight caveat here, sometimes yes we do just need to take a job.
Sarah Doody [00:08:50]: I totally fully understand that. We all have bills to pay, we all have lives, etc. And so I just want to say that because it’d be bad not to recognize that. Alright, now third thing, overcoming sneaky imposter syndrome. So for some career climbers, instead of just straight fear and doubt in their skills, in their experience, etcetera, imposter syndrome can actually show up as overconfidence. And here’s what I mean, so if you have resistance to doing the work on your career materials, meaning your resume, your portfolio, your LinkedIn, etcetera, if you have resistance to all of that because you think, oh, I shouldn’t have to make a portfolio, or I shouldn’t have to do this or that, you might actually have some fear in there that’s kind of hidden behind those I shouldn’t have to’s. And it’s really time to kinda get humble and be willing to do the work, and it can be really tricky to learn all of the things that you have to do, especially as a career climber, because it may have been a while since you did a job search and the way that may you maybe find jobs or extra things you can do during the interview process etcetera, Maybe you didn’t have to do those things 5, 10, 15 years ago. And so you can be very overwhelmed with figuring out, number 1, what are those things, and number 2, actually doing them.
Sarah Doody [00:10:27]: But doing the work on your career materials, meaning resume, portfolio, Linkedin, etcetera, will not only help you find and land your next role, but it will also likely build your confidence in a whole new way because you’re going to realize just how awesome of a candidate you are and you are going to feel more in control, of your not just current job search but future one too. And for example, we often have people who are kind of resentful or terrified about using LinkedIn in their job search. We know that when you use LinkedIn, it is game changer, but you have to use it correctly. But then when they finally get over this fear or resentment about having to use LinkedIn and they actually start posting or commenting and making themselves more visible, they are totally amazed that people comment on their posts, send them messages, and in some cases, have recruiters or hiring managers reach out to them about roles they are hiring for. That’s what can happen when you choose to step back from potentially that overconfidence or thinking, well, I shouldn’t have to use LinkedIn in my job search and instead just realize that’s how the world works now. You can really use that to your advantage. So to recap our tips for career climbers, number 1, people like you are still getting hired in many different industries for many different roles in user experience. Number 2, your mindset is crucial in your job search.
Sarah Doody [00:12:08]: It’s about knowing what you want and don’t want and be willing to set and adhere to boundaries, so you can truly find that role you are looking for. And number 3, impostor syndrome as we know it is real, of course. And if you have resentment or resistance about the job search and you think, but I shouldn’t have to do this, that, the other, that might be a sign that you actually have fear or frustration, and maybe you should stop DIY ing that and instead seek some external help. And, as a side note, I wanna say career strategy lab is for people who are career climbers, but of course other stages as well. We have people who are switching careers into user experience or people seeking their first job in user experience. So if you are a career climber or at another stage in your career and you are interested, email us. You can find that on our website on the contact page. Send me a message on LinkedIn or just go to careerstrategylab.com to learn more.
Sarah Doody [00:13:15]: But I always love to chat. I’m always in my LinkedIn DMs. So don’t be shy. If you have any questions, please let us know. That is all for today. I hope you learned something. I hope maybe you had some confusing things become a little clearer if you are a career climber. So I will talk to you later.
Sarah Doody [00:13:35]: Have a great rest of your day. Thanks for listening to the Career Strategy Podcast. Make sure to follow me, Sarah Doody, 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. 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.