How Kristin Got Hired As A UX Designer Job With Only 2 UX Portfolio Projects

Kristin Kaineg [00:00:00]: You realize, hey, this isn’t just me. I’m not the only person that struggles with X, Y, Z. No matter how many years of experience, no matter what amazing company names you have on your resume, everyone struggles with this stuff because it’s not something we have to do every day. And yeah, it can be intimidating, but when you step out of that silo and do it kind of in community, I think there’s such empowerment with that.

Sarah Doody [00:00:32]: Hey there.

Sarah Doody [00:00:33]: 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.

Erin Lindstrom [00:01:10]: Hey, this is Erin. I am one of the coaches inside of Career Strategy Lab, and I want to let you know that this episode you’re about to listen to, number one is awesome and number two is actually from our open house. So in this conversation, you should know that there were other people on this call and there was a live audience. So if some of the editing seems a little bit weird or abrupt, that’s why it should still make sense for you. There’s so many gems of wisdom to grab from this episode, so we hope you enjoy. And if you do like this format where you really can get to know.

Erin Lindstrom [00:01:40]: Someone and learn more about their career.

Erin Lindstrom [00:01:41]: Journey, please let us know. You can send Sarah a LinkedIn message or you can email hellorady.com we love the feedback and we want to create more of what you enjoy and find helpful. All right, let’s get into the episode.

Sarah Doody [00:01:54]: All right, I’ve been told you cannot hear the chickens in the background, but I’m currently in Hawaii and the chickens decided to come and announce themselves. So if you hear chickens, that is why they’re actually really beautiful. So, anyway, Kristin, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about what you’re doing right now in your role and what you were doing before this role, so people can kind of get a sense of your before and after.

Kristin Kaineg [00:02:24]: Yeah, so I’m currently working in a government contract position for the Department of Energy, and I’m working on an internal. Well, it’s not a fully internal application, but it’ll be mostly used by internal people, and it’s a larger project, but I’m specifically working on a very small part that is currently done in a manual process. So we’re trying to make everybody’s lives a little bit easier who goes through this and they use Excel a lot, so. So we’re just trying to facilitate this process in sort of a larger grant process, a grant application and awarding process and like managing that throughout the life cycle of it. I am doing a lot more UX UI work than I did in my previous job. My previous job I was working for a financial services company and they might have called me a designer, but I was doing mostly copy edits and just pretty much attending to tasks that came in on a automatic basis and it was just essentially pulling and play with that. So I, I’m definitely fortunate to be able to move back into the design space. Not that I wasn’t doing design before, I just design would be a stretch from what I was doing.

Kristin Kaineg [00:03:36]: So in the program I was considered a switcher because in my previous life I was a graphic design professor at a four year university. So I sort of shifted into the industry from there.

Sarah Doody [00:03:47]: Right. And we’ll get more into your experience as a switcher. And one thing that, that strikes me about your experiences is you came into Career Strategy Lab, but one of the first things we do is have you go through creating the career roadmap. So essentially a product roadmap, ish for your career. And I’m curious if you want to share how that process of creating that career roadmap, essentially a miniature user research project on yourself, where you are asking yourself questions, you’re asking other people questions, you’re gathering lots of qualitative information to then really guide you through that process of creating a resume, creating your LinkedIn, et cetera, et cetera. And in a perfect world, I would not let anyone touch their resume or LinkedIn or anything until they finish this roadmap because it’s such an important step in clarifying your vision. It’s like if we try to create a product without a product roadmap, you know, incoming disaster. Right.

Sarah Doody [00:05:00]: And same thing applies to this. So I’m curious, you know, reflecting back, how did that step of creating your career roadmap influence you as a person, as a professional, and also really how you approached the resume, the LinkedIn, the networking, the portfolio, et cetera?

Kristin Kaineg [00:05:19]: Actually that was such a key part for me and it helped me identify not necessarily what I was doing wrong, but what I was wasting my time on. You know, I kept applying to positions, but I wasn’t being intentional about it. And so number one, it helped me identify like sort of the size of company in which I prefer to work for. It helped me identify the types of things I wanted to work on versus what I was currently working on and what I had done in the. And then, you know, rolling into my, my compass statement, you know, that really helped leverage the information I needed to have to improve upon my Resume and my LinkedIn and my portfolio thereafter. So I really liked that I just had it up the one where you have the three columns where you do the bridge and you say, where am I now? Where do I want to be? And you know, what’s stopping me? Like, that was something I had done from another CSL open house I had attended or something before I joined csl. So I had already had. And I was like, this is exactly what I need to identify where I want to go.

Sarah Doody [00:06:22]: And so what I loved about CSL is how it stacked up and, and made things sequential. So it sort of gave me that discipline that I needed that I wasn’t doing outside of my job to apply and be where I am today.

Kristin Kaineg [00:06:34]: Yeah, I think it’s so easy to just jump into rush mode and I need to update my resume. I need to go to coffee meetups, I need to go to in person online meetups, I need to update my, you know, portfolio, all of the things. But you kind of end up just running around like a, no pun intended, like a chicken with its head cut off as we were talking about the chickens here in Hawaii. But with the compass statement, it helps serve as like that North Star. So that when it is time to decide what bullet points do I put on my resume, what projects do I put in my portfolio, what could I highlight in a cover letter or which jobs should I even apply to or entertain? It makes all of those decisions so much easier because you have this kind of filter to run all those decisions through. One thing that we keep hearing over and over is like the ability to no longer do this all in a silo on your own and have a community, I think helps so much with accountability, first of all.

Sarah Doody [00:07:46]: Right.

Kristin Kaineg [00:07:46]: But also the kind of confidence level setting, if you will, and that you realize, hey, this isn’t just me. I’m not the only person that struggles with X, Y, Z. No matter how many years of experience, no matter what amazing company names you have on your resume, everyone struggles with this stuff because it’s not something we have to do every day. And yeah, it can be intimidating, but when you step out of that silo and do it kind of in community. I think there’s such empowerment with that. And I’m curious if you have anything else around the idea of the community and how it maybe impacted you. Whether it’s accountability or who knows what.

Sarah Doody [00:08:36]: It just helped level set. Like I’m not alone. And it did make me more accountable to the deadlines I needed to set for myself to get through the program. You know, it also gave me that motivation. Right. And then not only that, seeing other people’s either hearing their compass statement or their work, it helped inspire me to sort of build upon what I needed to do next or, you know, think about, oh wow, that’s so cool. How might I take that and apply that technique or tactic to something maybe that’s not right for my work? But you know, just thinking about how they thought through the problem was really helpful. And just the mindset calls that, that I joined on, I think they’re on Wednesday were just really helpful in navigating the ups and downs that you face during a job search.

Kristin Kaineg [00:09:20]: Right. Like the job that I had, I wasn’t going to be let go or anything else like that. I just wasn’t happy. And so obviously the first start of the program, I knew I wasn’t happy, but it helped me identify why I wasn’t happ what I needed. But then, you know, just applying like a chicken, you know, like going back to chick, applying like a chicken with my head cut off. I you then you just come down and then you’re just like, oh, I’m never going to get there. I’m like, maybe this is what I’m meant to do. But as you start to organize and build upon sort of shifting from I can’t do any better to I have the skills and these are the things I need to layer up in order to present myself.

Kristin Kaineg [00:10:02]: And you know, I have it all there. It’s just reorganizing and unveiling the important parts, you know, because just things get dug and you things that you don’t necessarily think weren’t important end up becoming things that you need to highlight or emphasize a little bit more. And I think just the community helps sort of highlight that. Like, hey, you know, maybe you should think about this or you know, and it was just key. So I would agree that community was an important part of CSL for me.

Sarah Doody [00:10:29]: Yeah, the mindset calls are so popular and for all the reasons you’ve just described. Right. Like, sure, it’s very helpful for someone to tell you what if you replace this word on your resume with this word or you know, tactical stuff like that. But it’s equally helpful to have a place where you can tackle topics like confidence, mindset, time management, productivity management, you know, feelings of inadequacy because your previous company or boss, you know, didn’t value you and stuff like that. And when you combine that very tactical element with this very heart element, let’s say, I think that’s really what helps people move more quickly and more efficiently in their job search because you’re not getting stuck like in the quicksand of all this negative thinking and stuff that’s swirling around in your heads. But one thing I want to touch on is the more tactical stuff. I’m curious. You know, we talked about the, the career roadmap.

Sarah Doody [00:11:38]: I would love to shift more into things like resume, portfolio, et cetera. I know if you’re on LinkedIn or social media or medium.com, that’s the age old debate that’s never going to end. I guess around like these mythical rules that your portfolio has to have three to five projects and we say this all the time, that actually that is false. You can get hired with a portfolio with just one project in it if you do a really excellent job at explaining what you did, why you did it, how you did it, et cetera. And it’s not just like this cookie cutter checklist style portfolio.

Kristin Kaineg [00:12:18]: I did feel, I think when I w. When I left csl, I had two really well rounded projects and I felt very confident going in and applying to the positions that I did with those two projects. I did end up adding two more in like a sort of a different way. What I found really hard is the amount of time I had spent on my other two case studies and trying to get some other things done. But I was able to use that template at a smaller scale for something that related to a position. And they really liked how I incorporated. Even though it wasn’t necessarily a project, it was more about management and sort of an efficiency that I did at a place I worked at before. They found that to be really interesting and asked a lot of questions about that.

Kristin Kaineg [00:13:04]: So not only did I have the two that I felt were really strong, I had sort of this other one that expressed sort of the skill and system that I implemented for a team. So awesome.

Sarah Doody [00:13:16]: Well, and I think one thing that strikes me about you, Kristen, you are a designer. And you know, when it comes to like the design of your resume, the design of your portfolio, or the writing of your resume, the writing of Your portfolio. You know, you may have thought, oh, I’ve got this, I’m a writer or I’m a designer or something. But it’s hard when you’re doing it for yourself. Right? And I think that the sooner you can recognize that, the faster you can kind of stop kind of massaging words and designs based on what you think is necessary and see it through the lens of that recruiter, that hiring manager who has minutes or seconds and design and create content for them versus what, you know, your bar is. One thing I kind of want to end on is what advice or words would you have for anyone that might be on the fence about joining Career Strategy Lab? And if there’s any advice you have about how to succeed in Career Strategy Lab, I’m sure they would welcome that.

Kristin Kaineg [00:14:31]: Also for me, I agree the structure and the critiques were key, and I took advantage of all of them. And I even, you know, signed on for an additional. I signed up for three months, so I. I signed up for an additional month so I could get that feedback that I knew I wanted and needed on the, the portfolio that I was working on. I think one of the things that, Sarah, you had said is, for me, like, I was a designer and I felt like I could just do this. And I was very particular about my typography as I was going into it. And I was, you know, there are some things that I had sort of led up on, but, you know, I had certain rigid rules from, you know, being old and having started in print and not thinking about it from the recruiter’s point of view. So I really sort of letting go.

Kristin Kaineg [00:15:14]: And it was very hard for me to work in the template to start because I’m like, I can’t work in Google Docs. But it did force me to focus on the content and really build out what I needed to in order to get where I am today. Because before it was very vague and it was. It really wasn’t saying anything to help me stand out, whereas the. The template and a lot of the things really did. So I think, number one, it’s okay to ask for help. Getting feedback from other people on this work is really going to help you move forward. And number two, like, it’s okay if it’s not perfect, but going back to your point, Steve, like, even if you just updated a little bit, getting that, you know, feedback, you know, like, to.

Kristin Kaineg [00:15:54]: To continue making that progress, like any little bit of progress was progress. And so that was really important for me. Yeah, I mean it. And the other Thing I really liked is the voice of CSL and the things that you put together. It’s very focused and going back to a lot of the things that are out there. Even after I left CSL and I sort of went through a period where I was like, I’m applying to everything again, you know, and then I asked a bunch of people about my portfolio or my case study, and then they were, like, giving me all other feedback. And so what I really liked is that. That concise voice that helped me feel confident about what I was putting forward, because we all know that portfolios and case studies are very subjective.

Kristin Kaineg [00:16:36]: And, you know, everybody’s going to have an opinion about where things should go and. And how it should be done. And I believed in the templates and the. In the products that you provided to help me build upon and make the things that I had better, you know, and that was key for me. So. And. And everybody’s going to have an opinion. So, I mean, you just have to say, you know, what I’m doing right now, I believe in it, and this is what I’m going to put forward.

Kristin Kaineg [00:17:01]: And you might not 100% agree, but I’m not doing it wrong. It’s just not the way you would do it. So I think that’s key.

Sarah Doody [00:17:08]: Yeah, it’s like when you have, you know, many, many, many different inputs, it makes it hard to take action because a lot of those inputs can conflict. And if you want to make progress, one of the ways to do that is to commit to a certain method or, you know, approach and just follow that. It’s like, I have a friend that’s a physical therapist, and we often discuss similarities in the work we do. And she says, people come to me and they’ve been piecing together YouTube videos and Instagram physical therapist influencers and blah, blah, blah. But they’re doing all these exercises that, like, conflict and don’t help because they’re not, like, rooted in the same approach. So, yeah, I. I can see kind of your perspective there, Kristen. All right, I think that’s all we have time for, so I want to first say thank you to Kristen for graciously giving their time and answering tons of questions.

Kristin Kaineg [00:18:15]: Thank you for the opportunity, and anybody can reach out if they have questions.

Sarah Doody [00:18:19]: Awesome. So that’s that. I hope you have a great rest of your day, and we will talk to you soon. 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.

Sarah Doody [00:18:54]: Catch you later.