How Jaden got hired as a Sr Product Designer after a UX employment gap

Jaden [00:00:00]: I was someone who’s terrified to post on LinkedIn. I didn’t wanna post the wrong thing. I don’t consider myself anything close to, like, an influencer or anything like that. I didn’t know what to post. And so having some guidance on not only how to make my LinkedIn pro profile look better and how to make myself sound better, but also, like, getting over the hump of being very scared to post on LinkedIn was very important.

Sarah Doody [00:00:26]: 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 Mondays. Ready to level up your career? Let’s get after it. Guys, I cannot believe it.

Sarah Doody [00:01:06]: We are at episode 100. How did this happen? I have no idea because when I started this podcast I swore to my team it would be 1 season with 12 episodes and that would be that, but here we are. So thank you for joining me and my team on this journey. Whether you are listening to this as your first episode or you have been a loyal listener from the beginning, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I do have one quick favor. If you have found this podcast helpful, can you hit pause right now and go and give us a star rating either in Spotify or Apple wherever you are listening to this podcast.

Sarah Doody [00:01:55]: If you have time and you want to write a little review on Spotify, go for it. But the most valuable thing you can do is to give us one of those star ratings because that helps indicate to Apple and Spotify, etc. That people find this helpful. And here’s my second challenge to you in honor of our 1 hundredth episode. Can you send this episode to just 2 people that you think could benefit from what we talk about here on the career strategy podcast? Maybe there’s someone on your team. Maybe there’s a former colleague, who knows? But it would mean so much if you could take just 2 minutes to give us a rating and then shoot the link to this podcast over to just 2 people, send them a text, put it in Slack, put it on LinkedIn, put it in a group you belong to on Facebook or LinkedIn and Discord, wherever it is. But that would mean so much in honor of our 1 hundredth episode. Alright.

Sarah Doody [00:02:59]: We have a great episode lined up. It is a case study episode where we are doing some q and a with someone from career strategy lab. They’re gonna talk about how they landed a new UX job. So let’s dive in. Thank you all for joining us. If you’re here, you’re probably curious about career strategy lab. You maybe are interested, wanna hear stories from people who recently got hired. So if that’s you, you’re in the right place.

Sarah Doody [00:03:29]: So we have Jaden, who got hired as a product designer at an ecommerce company. Jaden is from the United States. I would love for you to introduce yourselves and tell us, like, a little bit about what you’re doing now and what you were doing kind of before you joined career strategy labs.

Jaden [00:03:50]: Alright. Yeah. I have a little bit more of a unique experience. Not to go too deep in the weeds, but I actually studied apparel design way back in the day, which which is a primary example of why you shouldn’t let 18 year olds choose their career path. But that’s what I chose. So I did that for about 6 years and realized I just didn’t like my job. So I ended up switching about 5 years ago into product design and felt like my career was going pretty well, to be honest. Like, really loved the job I was at.

Jaden [00:04:16]: I was working at a sales enablement company in Seattle and, was a part of the mass layoffs that a lot of people are these days or, experiencing these days. So, basically, was also 9 months pregnant too when I got laid off. So that was unfortunate timing as well, but I took, about 6 months to enjoy time with my daughter before embarking on my career search journey, and it took about 8 months to land a job from there. So it was about a full year that that it took me to actually land my job. I was just spinning my wheels nonstop. I thought my 5 years experience would be enough to carry me, and I was applying to 100 and 100 of jobs and seeing not a lot of, not a lot of interviews coming back my way. So, yeah, finally joined and got a job about, I don’t I think it was, like, 30 or 40 days in after joining, which was great. I just put my head down and got, like, work very, very quickly.

Jaden [00:05:15]: And now I’m working at a company called Zipline. It actually combines my past career in apparel with product design, which is very unique. I never thought I’d find a job that combined both worlds, but they’re kind of colliding together, which is really cool. And I’m a senior product designer there. It’s a smaller team. It’s 3 designers and a manager, but I think that’s gonna be pretty unique because I’ll get to touch a lot of different parts of, of the product.

Sarah Doody [00:05:41]: I I appreciate your story because I think there are probably many people who were previously or are kind of switching careers into user experience. And, you know, I think what you said is such a an important, you know, reality checkup. You thought your 5 years of experience would be enough, and then you ended up applying to, as you said, hundreds and hundreds of jobs and then realized, you know, this is not working and joined career strategy lab. And you said, you know, hired within 30 or 40 days after, and we’ll get into the details of, like, what did Jayden do in 30 or 40 days to get hired. So we’ll we’ll cover that in a little bit. But I think it’s really important to reiterate that, you know, years of experience today, I don’t think are enough. It’s really about how good are you at articulating that experience throughout, you know, the interview and application process.

Jaden [00:06:37]: Definitely. Yeah. It’s great to be here and happy to answer any other questions that people have.

Sarah Doody [00:06:42]: Awesome. This is one of the things we hear quite quite often where people doubt their skills, doubt their experiences. And, you know, the feedback we often hear from people is that the very act of joining Career Strategy Lab, and then thinking more deeply about my resume, my LinkedIn, my portfolio and the projects I previously worked on, and making sure that I really recognize my contributions and my skills on those projects. That’s really where the transformation is. Because I think many of you don’t think deeply enough about what you’ve done in the past. And you just kind of think, oh, well, I was responsible for research, or I made a design system, or I, you know, was the interaction designer or something. But you don’t really dig into the nitty gritty of no. What did you actually do? Jaden, do you have anything else to add to this?

Jaden [00:07:38]: I think there’s a couple things from, like, my mindset that definitely shifted. I think my past experience in apparel, I used to think of it as really negative thing. I used to think of it as a waste of the 1st 6 years of my career. I was basically starting overall all over again. And I feel like during this program, I really realized and was able to shift my mindset into realizing a lot of those soft skills were so transferable into product design. And being able to tell hiring managers, like, I’m really great at interpersonal communication skills because of my last job or my past year in apparel, and I’m really great at organization and communication skills. So being able to flip that has just been, like, a huge mindset shift for me. Also, I think not being so overwhelmed with redoing the portfolio and redoing the resume, I probably have redone my portfolio in the past 5 years, like, maybe 20 times.

Jaden [00:08:33]: So Mhmm. I will look at someone else’s portfolio and think I need to copy theirs or, like, use theirs as, like, a baseline, and I used to redo it over and over and over again. But being able to realize, like, what my strong points are, become a better storyteller, and realize that my past experience is good enough that I don’t need to go and copy someone else’s, for lack of a better word.

Sarah Doody [00:08:54]: One of the things that we call it the mentor model inside career strategy lab, and it’s in kind of the first sprint that you go through. So if you forget or or don’t know, career strategy lab is divided up into these 5 sprints, for example, resume, portfolio, job search interviews. But the first one is your career road map, and it’s like a product road map for your career. And so one of the activities in there is kind of identifying people that you are inspired by or that you wanna emulate because oftentimes, you know, when you do that, it helps you get clarity on on the future of your career. So, you know, thinking back to that first sprint, the career road map sprint, does anything stand out, you know, in hindsight? I know it may have been a while ago, but had you ever done anything like that before, or what do you think the impact of that sprint was on, you know, this whole journey?

Jaden [00:09:54]: I kinda touched on, like, you know, the apparel stuff and being able to twist that, but I think, ultimately, what I learned is just how to own my story. I was very I don’t know if embarrassed was the right word, but when you see a year long break on LinkedIn, I feel like I assumed people would think that was terrible. And I had a great excuse. I had my daughter and, like, was taking maternity leave, but, ultimately, like, I don’t know if a year is gonna compare to someone that just got laid off a month ago. So really owning my story and saying, like, I’m proud that I had my daughter, and I’m proud that I am looking for a job at the same time as being day care. It’s very tough to do if you’ve never done that before. It was something that was super, super important, and I remember I even mentioned that in a lot of my presentations. Like, my final reviews, I’d say, like, this is what I did, and it gave me these skills to be able to take care of her and also work on stuff at the same time.

Jaden [00:10:48]: And so being able to, like, talk about that and just own your story was a very, very important thing that I need to learn too because I was very scared to tell people about the year break that I had.

Sarah Doody [00:10:57]: This this theme of owning your story comes up so so much, and I think your example is just so perfect for this because I think, you know, it’s it’s so easy to kind of make these assumptions and jump to the conclusions about what people may think when they see a year long gap on your resume because you literally had a baby and was raising it. But I I think, like, that mindset shift of just realizing, no. This is what happened. I’m proud of this. And if people don’t want that, then you probably don’t wanna work for them anyway. You know? And I think just leaning into that power is really, really, really important and something we see, you know, over and over whether it’s that career gap or, you know, switching careers from another industry, or we’ve had people join career strategy lab and then quit their jobs because in going through some of the early things in career strategy lab, they realized, wow. This job I’m in right now, like, is really, really not in alignment with what I want to do in the future, etcetera. And they were fortunately in a position where they could quit the job.

Sarah Doody [00:12:01]: But, yeah, owning that story is so, so important.

Jaden [00:12:05]: Yeah. I completely agree. And I think looking back, I was so sad about getting let go from my last job. But like you mentioned, any company that’s willing to let go of someone 9 months pregnant is probably not a place that I want to be working at. So it was very much a blessing in disguise looking back, definitely.

Sarah Doody [00:12:20]: Yeah. Do any of the other sprints jump out to you? You know, like, this one was really powerful, or this one really was a game changer for me.

Jaden [00:12:28]: The 2 sprints that I think that really stuck out to me were first of all, was the LinkedIn sprint that we had. I was someone who’s terrified to post on LinkedIn. I didn’t wanna post the wrong thing. I don’t consider myself anything close to, like, an influencer or anything like that. I didn’t know what to post. And so having some guidance on not only how it to make my LinkedIn pro profile look better and how to make myself sound better, but also, like, getting over the hump of being very scared to post on LinkedIn was very important. I made a post while I was in career strategy lab that got over 13,000 views and made 4 interviews. And just being able to put yourself out there and not realizing that it’s okay to post on LinkedIn was very, very hard for me for whatever reason.

Jaden [00:13:15]: And the second one would be the portfolio. That, like I mentioned, was I was spending so much time redoing my portfolio all of the time, and I learned how to be a better storyteller. I never realized how much my portfolio looked like the masses prior to this. I think the most people say something along the lines of like, hi. I’m Jaden. I’m a product designer from Seattle, and I love to solve tough problems, with empathy at the center of my decision making or something like that. And Yeah. You may.

Jaden [00:13:45]: And I I think at one point, mine said something close to that a long time ago. But I not I felt like, visually, my portfolio looks great, but I didn’t know how to tell stories. If I was bored reading my portfolio, how could I expect other people to want to read it? So just being a better storyteller, realizing that listing problem, site map, wireframe, that’s not gonna keep someone interested for the entire time because everyone says that. So those are probably the 2 that stick out to me the most.

Sarah Doody [00:14:10]: So the last question I have for you is if you could give someone one piece of advice, let’s imagine they’ve joined career strategy lab or maybe they’re on the fence. So decide, you know, which which way to answer this. But if they just joined, what’s one tip you would give them? Or if they’re on the fence, what would you say to them?

Jaden [00:14:28]: In terms of hesitation, to be a 100% transparent, I was nervous about the price tag. I was scared to put this big chunk of money down and wondered if I could find the resources online for free. But what I found after doing that is I was again spinning my wheels, and there’s so many resources. It’s really hard to know, like, what that source of truth is. You get a 1,000 different opinions. So I knew from talking to everyone, at career strategy lab that this worked, and it was a proven, like, one method that would work really, really well. And I wanted a place where I could work on things on my own time. I know people are asking and they thought how long the course takes.

Jaden [00:15:07]: One of the main reasons I joined this was because Sarah said I could work at my own pace. I could go as quick as I wanted. I could go as slow as I wanted. I know some people spend 2 weeks on a sprint. I spent, like, 2 days on a sprint. I was moving so quickly because I was running out of unemployment, and I knew I just wanted a job quickly. So you could work as quick as slowly as you want, and it was very important to me because I, again, was doing day care during the day that I needed to work on it at nighttime. And then if I’ve learned anything over the last 10 years, it’s to invest in myself.

Jaden [00:15:38]: I invested in myself when I switched career paths, and I invested my with myself at career strategy lab. And it’s just, like, when you need to, just get the advice from the experts, and it ends up paying for itself when you get a job even a month earlier than what you expected. So it definitely paid for itself. And in terms of a tip, take a break. If you do join, take a break from applying. That was the thing that I think worked out for me the best and why I got a job so quickly is because I stopped applying to 100 jobs. I for 2 or 3 weeks, I just quit applying. And I just focused all of my time, energy, and effort into finishing career strategy labs so I could apply with all of the best materials and not keep switching my mindset from applying and wondering if I’m gonna get a callback and then also trying to fix my portfolio.

Jaden [00:16:24]: So don’t be afraid to stop applying and give your mind a break.

Sarah Doody [00:16:30]: Well, thank you for sharing, like, these tips. I think they’re gonna be really helpful for anyone who might be on the fence or for anyone that that does decide to join. Like, to to your point, Jayden, take a break. Stop applying. All of the things I think are super, super helpful. Alright. Well, let’s give a big thanks to Jaden for giving us their time and just their really candid and honest feedback. I think it was a big encouragement to a lot of people just in general related to their career and job search and the job market and the prospects of, you know, being able to find that next opportunity that really, really aligns with what they’re looking for.

Sarah Doody [00:17:12]: So thank you so, so much. We’ll talk to you soon. 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. 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.