Episode 108
Your UX Career Is a Product: Sarah Doody’s interview on the Awkward Silences podcast by User Interviews
50 min listen
Episode 107
50 min listen

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Episode Summary
Feeling stuck in a UX or Product role that isn’t taking you closer to your career goals? In this episode of Awkward Silences Podcast by User Interviews, Sarah shares how to treat your career like a product, offering strategic and intentional moves to advance your professional life. Discover actionable tips to avoid common job seeker pitfalls, such as endlessly perfecting your resume or UX portfolio instead of testing them in the real world.
Creating a career roadmap is a game-changer in your UX career because it will help you focus on long-term goals rather than just landing the next job. Reflect on past roles, evaluate your personal satisfaction, and use these insights from your career roadmap to shape a future career that truly aligns with your aspirations.
Learn about the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) approach to resumes and portfolios. Instead of aiming for perfection, get your materials ‘good enough’ to start applying and gather real-world feedback. Tailoring your resume to specific job postings involves more than just tweaking vocabulary; it’s about rearranging content so that the most relevant experiences shine through.
Another critical takeaway addresses the UX job search itself. Investigate what you truly want from your next role by creating a list of deal-breakers and criteria before applying. This strategy ensures you only target positions that fit your long-term career goals and personal values.
Navigate the current UX job market with insights on being selective about roles and understand the importance of ongoing self-education and confidence. This episode offers practical advice to break free from the UX job hunt hamster wheel and set you on a path to career success.
Create your dream career, and life
- Learn how to advance your UX career in our UX Career Roadmap
- Watch our free masterclass about the 4C framework to stand out in your UX job search
- Find out what’s included in our UX Job Search Accelerator Syllabus
Discussion Questions About The Episode
- How might the concept of treating your career like a product change the way you approach your professional development and job search?
- Reflecting on the exercise of creating a career road map, what specific steps have you taken or could you take to align your current role with your long-term career goals?
- When considering feedback about your strengths from colleagues or former supervisors, how has that information helped you refine your career strategy, and what unexpected strengths have you discovered about yourself?
- In what ways do you ensure that you are not just applying for jobs but strategically seeking roles that will equip you with the skills, experience, and network needed for future positions you desire?
- How can you balance the need for a minimum viable resume or portfolio with the desire for perfection when preparing your materials for a job application, and what practical steps can you take to achieve this balance?
Episode Notes & Links
Episode Transcript
John-Henry [00:00:00]: So many people are kind of on a hamster wheel of thinking I just need to get a job, but they’re not thinking about, yeah, but will this job equip me with the skills, the experience, the network even that would be valuable so I could become that UX research manager I wanna be two or three years from now.
Erin May [00:00:21]: 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.
John-Henry [00:00:59]: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Awkward Silences. Today, we’re here with Sarah Doody, who is the CEO and founder of Career Strategy Lab. Today, we’re gonna be talking about treating your UX research career like a product. Sarah, welcome. Happy to have you.
John-Henry [00:01:16]: Thanks, Sarah, and I’m excited to be here.
John-Henry [00:01:18]: Got JH here too. Hi, JH.
Sarah Doody [00:01:20]: Hey. How’s it going? It’s doing well.
Sarah Doody [00:01:23]: I feel like as a product person, I always do the cliche of, like, just treat everything like a product. Treat the company like a product. And so I’m excited for this one. It feels in my wheelhouse.
John-Henry [00:01:30]: Yeah. So what does that mean to treat something like a product?
John-Henry [00:01:34]: Treating your career like a product. Yeah. So, you know, I have been, I guess, accidentally working in this space of UX careers, UX portfolios, UX resumes, etcetera ever since 2017. And I identified this problem back in 2017. You know? And looking back, I think it really was my research superpower that led me down this path. But I noticed this irony really where a lot of UX people, regardless if you do research or writing or strategy or whatever, they don’t treat their career like a product. And the byproduct of that is people, for example, staying in roles for too long or accepting a job that really doesn’t align with their career goals, interest values, etcetera, or even simple things like playing the numbers game in the job search rather than doing some research to identify the right roles for them. So that’s kinda where I I went down this path.
John-Henry [00:02:43]: But to me, it is it’s so ironic. And, Erin, you know, it kinda reminds me of working with startup founders. I don’t know if you’ve had this experience, but, like, they’re so close to the product that they forget to do obvious things. And I think when you look at yourself as a product and your career like a product, that analogy of startup founder, it’s exactly the same as you, you know, floundering through your job search or spiraling about some decision in your career.
John-Henry [00:03:13]: Right. Like, just not even stopping to ask Yes. Not the right question, any questions. Like, I don’t know. What what do you want out of your next job? Let’s start there. Are you happy? Just basic stuff. So okay. I’m excited to get into this.
John-Henry [00:03:27]: A really, like, tangible thing that I think maybe all of us could relate to because I’m definitely guilty of this in the past. You know, sitting down to work on your resume or a presentation of your work or something and, like, jumping right into the design of it. You know? Like, let’s fire up keynote or whatever or whatever you make your resume in these days, and that is how you end up with these resumes, etcetera, that don’t communicate the range of your skills and experience, and I think I’m so passionate about this because I see so many talented people really selling themselves short, especially in the job search.
John-Henry [00:04:07]: Right. Right. We’re talking about how everything’s a product in this conversation, but this is where I go to everything is marketing too. Yes. You know? Because yeah. Who cares? Like, if you can’t sell yourself, it might as well you know, you’re the tree in the forest. No one’s around. You gotta you gotta sell it.
John-Henry [00:04:23]: So Yes. Yeah.
Sarah Doody [00:04:24]: Where does somebody start? Like, okay. I wanna, like, wake up and have this realization that I need to be more intentional about what I want and how I present myself. Like, how do you even, like, open that box in the first place?
John-Henry [00:04:35]: Yeah. So I run this program called career strategy lab, and the first step when you join this program, and career strategy lab is this job search accelerator for lack of better word. You could think of it, like, as a startup incubator, but for your career slash job search. So one of the first things we do is this exercise that results in what we call a career roadmap because, guess what, products have road maps. And guess what happens when you don’t have a product road map? It’s, like, not good. So, basically, you’re Juicero probably. I don’t know if you remember Juicero. Oh, yeah.
Sarah Doody [00:05:13]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
John-Henry [00:05:14]: That was early early user interviews. Yeah.
Sarah Doody [00:05:16]: Or, Google Wave is another fun example. Oh, I
John-Henry [00:05:19]: love that. Yeah.
John-Henry [00:05:20]: I was high on that one. It never came to Google.
John-Henry [00:05:23]: Some people were probably born after Google Wave. But, anyway so this idea of the career road map, like, if we think of, you know, steps in product discovery and various elements of UX, research is the first thing. So for people who are thinking, you know, how could I create my own career road map, that’s where you kind of have to do a a miniature user research project on yourself. And I’m sure some people are thinking, oh my god. How do I do that? Like, that would be so intimidating and awkward. But, you know, there’s really simple things you could do. Like, one of the things we do is have people get out a piece of paper or fire up your favorite tool and, like, make a timeline of your career so far, plot out the things that you’ve done, and on that timeline, like, add this element of your personal happiness, satisfaction, work life balance, like, whatever those values are to you. You know, somehow layer those in, and that’s just one example of how you would be doing some user research to start to, you know, reflect on where you’ve been.
John-Henry [00:06:38]: And there’s so many ways you could do this, but this is just one of the examples. And another thing we do is we tell people to contact people you have worked with or for in the past that you have good relationships with and, like, ask them what strengths they think you have, for example, because I know in my career, I’ve had situations where people say I’m really good at something, and I thought, how the heck do you think that? But then years later, I think they were so right. You know? So we make it really easy because we give people, like, questions to basically cut and paste and stuff, but that’s how you would start creating this career road map.
John-Henry [00:07:18]: Yeah. And on that, Sarah, I feel like that’s research. Like you said, you don’t have to just take it all at face value and use it. You take it in and do some analysis and figure out what you wanna use when you sell yourself. Right? Like Exactly. Yeah. What feels true to you? What feels what fits the narrative you wanna sell when you I like how you’re describing. It’s almost like a customer journey map, right, of here’s my professional life and when I was happy and sad.
John-Henry [00:07:40]: Yeah. I imagine this appeals to a lot of researchers.
Sarah Doody [00:07:43]: Right?
John-Henry [00:07:43]: This is the work you’re doing all the time anyway. You get to apply it to yourself in your career.
Sarah Doody [00:07:48]: Yeah. It’s like a career journey map. You know? Mhmm. Mhmm. And, you know, based on the research you gather, then the next step is to really start to make a more tangible, you know, product strategy slash product road map. And when I think about a career, I think about that in a quite granular fashion by thinking about what are the goals I have, and it’s kind of up to everyone how far you wanna go out with your goals, but I recommend, you know, twelve months or so because things change so fast. But think about, like, twelve months and then break that down to quarters. And in each quarter, think about what are the skills you wanna develop? What areas of, you know, research do you wanna become more adept in? Because I think in UX and research especially, I think people are stressed out with thinking they have to learn every new software and every new method and every new this and that.
Sarah Doody [00:08:54]: And if I was just starting out right now, I would be equally as frustrated. There’s just so many people out there. You know? But when you break it down into these yearly kinda goals and quarterly focuses, almost like you’re building your own professional development curriculum. You know?
John-Henry [00:09:11]: Mhmm. Yeah. Okay. So you’re gonna come out of this with, like, some realizations. Okay. I realize I’m happiest when I’m getting to, like, coach or mentor or something. Right? And so then the idea is that the strategy and the road mapping is kind of, like, bringing that into, like, well, what path could I go down from here? Right? So, like, that in that example, like, maybe I should go into, like, try to get my way into, like, a management track because I think that would, like, align. Is that kinda what you’re saying?
Sarah Doody [00:09:30]: Exactly. And, you know, it’s thinking about the future roles you want so that you are acquiring the skills you’re going to need now to get that job you want two years from now. Because a lot of people, especially thinking about what job you wanna accept next, so many people are kind of on a hamster wheel of thinking I just need to get a job, but they’re not thinking about, yeah, but will this job equip me with the skills, the experience, the network even, that would be valuable so I could become that UX research manager I wanna be two or
John-Henry [00:10:08]: three years from now. Yeah. On that note, right, so different people in different markets in different situations can sort of afford to be choosier or less choosy depending on some of those internal and external factors. Right? How much experience do you have? What’s going on in the market? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So what is going on in the market? It’s been a wild time in the sort of job market. So could you just kinda lay this down for us in terms of where are we right now? If I am a UX researcher or an aspiring UX researcher, what am I entering right now, and how should I think about how choosy to be or not choosy to be or what should I know? Macro.
Sarah Doody [00:10:45]: Yeah. So macro, and I will caveat all this by saying this is not based on, like, quantitative data, and I am not gonna source anything. This is all just
John-Henry [00:10:56]: Sure. We love qualitative data.
Sarah Doody [00:10:58]: Yeah. This is all just, like, anecdotal observations, you know, as I observe the people in my career strategy lab program go through the job search process and, like, what I see on social media, etcetera. And I think that, you know, recently, Facebook and or Meta and Netflix and some other places announced layoffs and stuff, and I think that creates this knee jerk reaction in the industry. And I don’t see UX slowing down. I don’t think that is a domino that’s going to kick off some two or three year, you know, freeze. And the reason I think that is if you think of the world we’ve just gone through in the past two years with the pandemic and such, like, that has forced so many companies to go digital. And as like, think of brick and mortars and stuff, combined with companies needing solutions to allow them to work remotely, if I put those two things together, I think it’s a safe gamble to think that the field of UX is not going anywhere or slowing down because we need people to help those companies go digital and create, you know, the software that we’re all using and going to use to work remotely.
John-Henry [00:12:29]: Yeah. I would agree with that. Like, the overall trend of the number of UX opportunities or research opportunities, I think, is gonna continue to go up. Right? There might be some short term fluctuations or dips or tough spots, but I I think you’re right in the in, like, the macro sense. The thing I I wanna go back to just to to kinda, like, connect another point with, like, kind of that reflection and ask yourself questions. A number of years ago, I actually read a book designing your life, which kinda had some of these prompts in there about, like, what do you want from your career and work view and all this sort of stuff. And I did that, and it was awkward to sit there and, like, write out your, you know, plan and reflection and stuff. Mhmm.
John-Henry [00:12:59]: But what I found out of it was once I had done that and then I was, like, interviewing for different roles, I was much better at telling my story of, like, what sort of thing I was looking for. And do you see that too with the people you work with that, like, not only does this give you, like, a sense of where to look, but then once you go look there, you’re, like, a more compelling candidate because you you kinda know what you have opinions and you know what you want.
Sarah Doody [00:13:18]: Yeah. 100000000%. When people get hired out of career strategy lab, we have them fill out, like, kind of an exit survey slash testimonial, and so many people mention this career road map, helping them do exactly what you said. Because when you have a really clear vision of of who you are, what your skills are, and what you want to do in the future, that, for example, allows you to conduct a faster job search, you know, because you’re not applying to tons and tons of roles. You’re being really strategic. And, conveniently, I have a big database of all of this, and let me just read what someone said. This person switched from administration to content design at a very large financial company, and they increased their salary by a 78%, and they said creating a career road map was invaluable to figuring out what I really want to do as a designer, what my strengths are. I’ve always had a hard time going to bat for myself and really underestimated my abilities.
Sarah Doody [00:14:29]: Doing all the foundational work really helped build my confidence, and that is just one example of many similar statements about that, but I think a big part of that is that confidence component because that is reflected, you know, when you get to the interviews, and that can sometimes make the difference between whether or not you proceed in in the interviews or not.
John-Henry [00:14:55]: Yeah. Yeah. And then the other part, I guess, of that is, like, when you are interviewing and on your job search, there are all these other artifacts. Right? So you have your story and what you’re looking for, but then you have a resume or portfolio or other things. Like Mhmm. How how do you factor in the, like, thinking about those things like a product and and weave that in?
Sarah Doody [00:15:09]: Oh, yeah. This is great. So, one thing we are very strict about is, you know, based on five or six years of research, a big mistake so many people make is that they try and perfect their resume, their portfolio, their this, that, the other. And one way that we are trying to redirect people away from perfection is to remind them, like, hey. Let’s go back to your product roots. What do we do? We make an MVP and not like a duct taped together MVP. Right? I don’t really love this whole, like, minimum lovable product language, but I’m like, let’s make something that is good enough that we’re not embarrassed by, but that we feel like is a honest effort that will allow us to test if we’re on the right track. And so when I hear people saying, I’ve applied to 5100, two hundred, four hundred jobs and have not had an interview or had, like, five interviews, I think to myself, they definitely went down the perfection path.
Sarah Doody [00:16:21]: And the side effect of pursuing this perfection is that you are not getting stakeholder feedback early enough. Or another way to say that would be you’re not testing your resume fast enough. You’re not testing your portfolio fast enough. So in career strategy lab, we say you are gonna make your minimum viable resume, your minimum viable portfolio, and we are going to green light that so you don’t have to agonize about is it ready or not, you know, and then you’re gonna go start applying because the little tiny tweaks that people spend all weekend making, at the end of the day, that person who is looking at your resume portfolio, etcetera, they probably wouldn’t know the difference. You know? So this MVP approach, it’s not just about getting your materials ready faster. It’s getting your materials ready so you can apply, so you can test to see if those materials actually actually work because we’ve had many, many people say, and I’m paraphrasing, but, like, I didn’t even finish the resume module, and I made some small changes, and now I have x number of interviews. Or I tweaked my LinkedIn profile based on lessons, you know, two, three, and four, and the next day, I had x number of messages from recruiters for roles that I’m actually interested in. So to me, like, as the product owner of career strategy lab to get, like, totally meta, that’s how I know the curriculum is working when I receive feedback like that.
John-Henry [00:18:05]: And so, practically so so you have your minimum viable resume, portfolio, LinkedIn profile, and you start putting them out there to apply. Like, we’re not going for statistical significance quantitative. Right? Like, this would take a very long time.
Sarah Doody [00:18:20]: Right.
John-Henry [00:18:20]: So you’re just trying to, like, get it out there. And, like, tactically, how do people get that feedback? You know? Because most, right, depending on who you’re applying to and the volume of resumes and so on, you might not hear anything. So is that is that enough signal to go off of, or do you ask the recruiter? Like, please just give me some feedback, any feedback, because I’m trying to iterate on this thing. Like, help me do that. Yeah.
Sarah Doody [00:18:43]: Yeah. So I think there’s kinda levels here. I think the big red flag is if you’re not getting any interviews, then something is drastically wrong. With there’s a couple of variables involved, though. Right? It could be your resume, your portfolio, your LinkedIn. It also could be that you are applying to jobs that are not a right fit for you. And, for example, I literally am hiring for a UX designer role right now. I just pressed publish last night, and I was reviewing some of the applications this morning, and it’s not to work with me personally, it’s because the company hired me to help them recruit, and the company needs people to be available to work synchronously during specific hours.
Sarah Doody [00:19:31]: So I put this on the job description, etcetera, and I have a bunch of applications from people in places like Dubai or elsewhere where it would be the middle of the night. And, sure, like, could that theoretically maybe work? I guess, but I personally don’t think it’s a good, like, situation if a candidate is going to be up all night to do this three month contract, you know? So, that’s an example of where I mean those candidates might not hear back, some of them might, but they probably applied to the wrong role. Does that make sense? Does that example? Yeah.
John-Henry [00:20:10]: It’s like a product market fit thing. Yeah. It’s like, you didn’t build the wrong product. You just tried to get it in front of the wrong people.
Sarah Doody [00:20:17]: So I think the kind of level one of assessing are your materials working are you even getting interviews? I think, you know, UX people love to complain about the hiring process and how unfair it is and blah blah blah, but let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the people doing the hiring, right? If I’m receiving 400, six hundred, one hundred applications for jobs, do I personally have time to go and give personalized feedback to everyone I rejected? No. You know? That’s just not a good ROI of my time, and so I think, you know, some people do that and more power to them if somehow, you know, they have time to do that. But I think UX people need to stop expecting that, like, the companies are responsible for telling them what they did wrong because part of my attitude towards this, and sometimes I get, like, really fired up, is, you know, if you can’t figure out, like, the UX of your resume, then how are you gonna do the UX of, like, some checkout flow I need you to do? Like, yes. It’s a different deliverable. But if the hierarchy on your resume sucks, then I’m gonna think like, god. What type of dashboard is this person gonna make? You know?
John-Henry [00:21:42]: Yeah. No. It is really hard to separate that. As somebody who’s hired a lot of designers and looked at a lot of those resumes, it’s tough when you get a resume for that type of role, and it it’s like, this is indecipherable, and I can’t tell what’s important on here. It’s like, it’s hard for me to believe that you’re a good designer. Maybe you are, but, like, you’re not putting your best foot forward for sure.
Sarah Doody [00:21:58]: Exactly. That’s exactly what I mean. And so then I know the listeners are probably thinking, okay. Well, like, where am I gonna get this feedback if the companies won’t give it to me? You know, life is not fair, blah blah blah. And I think, you know, one trend we’re seeing in the UX industry is this, like, current obsession with mentorship for lack of better phrasing. Right? And it’s like the mentor network of this and that and the other. And that’s nice that we are trying to connect each other and form relationships, etcetera, but I think a lot of people who pursue feedback and help through these networks may not realize that a lot of those people who are listed as mentors are currently in a UX boot camp or just graduated more than one, you know, two weeks ago. And, like, this is the literal truth, And it’s like the loss leading the loss.
Sarah Doody [00:22:57]: And I think UX people need to, you know, look at it through less rose colored glasses. I don’t know if that’s the right analogy, but, like, think to yourself, who am I asking for feedback? Are they practically qualified to give me feedback? You know? Like, do they have time to give me feedback? Because I receive portfolios, resumes, etcetera, DM to me all the time, and it’s like, I don’t have time to do this for you. PS, I have, like, tons of hours of videos and tens of thousands of words of articles out there to help you review your own portfolio. You know? So I think that’s, like, be careful
Erin May [00:23:41]: be careful who your heroes are and, like, and, like, oh, some heuristics if that’s such a thing in, you know, career as a product or just guiding principles on how to think about building your career as a product will, in many cases, likely take you farther than expert advice. Well But since we have you, an expert, help them to give us some advice, I am curious, like, where is the best ROI on your time in terms of, like, building, I guess, assets to sell yourself? You we talked about the LinkedIn profile and the portfolio, and then, of course, there’s, you know, who are we gonna apply to? So there’s all these components of it. But where would you spend your time when you get started in this process of figuring out your, next role? We’ve talked about the road map. Mhmm. What’s important to get right? Do people still do resumes? Is that a thing? I don’t know.
Sarah Doody [00:24:32]: Well, so I think the first thing is doing that career road map, whatever that means to you. You know? It could be as simple as, like, a forty minute exercise. But without that, like, you don’t have a compass to guide you with everything else. Right? If you don’t have a clear understanding of your strengths, your skills, your experience, where you wanna go in the future, then your resume will likely not have as precise framing as it needs in order to stand out. So assuming you have this roadmap, north star, whatever you wanna call it, I think to myself in terms of ROI, well, what do I need in order to start applying for jobs? And I think you need a resume. You know? You also need some file that will be able to let you showcase your work. I hesitate to use the word portfolio because everyone says, like, we should not require portfolios. And it’s like, I don’t really care what you call it.
Sarah Doody [00:25:44]: It’s a presentation of your work. You know? However that is. It should be a decent UX. It should not be like a bunch of disorganized screenshots in a Google Drive somewhere with a password, and you don’t give me the password. You know? Right. Right. Thinking about what you need to apply, I would really start with that resume. And then if you nail your resume, you theoretically, by default, should have a pretty darn good LinkedIn too because guess what? They’re pretty much the same content.
Sarah Doody [00:26:17]: You know? And then from there, I think you need to put together your work examples in some presentation. Now there’s the whole debate about should it be a PDF or a website, etcetera, and I have many articles on that, but I will say this: let’s fast forward in this whole process. If you get called to an interview to present a project, are you going to pull up a website browser and, like, start scrolling through a bunch of web pages, or are you going to do a presentation? And maybe I’m biased or just weird, but I think it’s a better user experience to have a presentation. Plus, not to mention, it’s faster. It’s not reliant on Wi Fi in case you’re doing an in person interview and, like, the power goes out or something. You know? So people can read all my reasonings for that on an article I’ll link you to. But, you know, that portfolio, I think UX people kinda just make up, like, how many projects like, you know, the laws of UX portfolios. I’m sure there’s
John-Henry [00:27:20]: Right.
Sarah Doody [00:27:20]: Right.
John-Henry [00:27:20]: Yeah. Yeah.
John-Henry [00:27:21]: Talk about the blind lighting the blinds. Oh. Who came up with these rules? Yeah.
Sarah Doody [00:27:24]: It’s like there must be three presentations, and each one must be, you know, 1900 words or something. And, you know, I’ve seen people get hired with one presentation. So I would say put together one presentation. Once you do one, creating the others will go faster than the first. And if you have one good presentation and everything else we already talked about, you could start applying. You know? And then if you get an interview, great. And in your downtime, add another project to your portfolio. So that’s how I would sequence it because you don’t need to spend eight, nine months, like, getting ready to apply because you’re really missing out.
John-Henry [00:28:10]: We’ve talked to a lot of, like, content designers and UX writers. Right? And there’s a point there of, like, using the language that your users use and and knowing how to communicate with them and stuff. And so I have this belief that if you knew, like, this is my dream role. Right? And you go find a couple job descriptions at, like, five, like, legitimate companies that, like, have that kind of posting up, and you just, like, went through them and kind of reverse engineered it, you’d be able to find a lot of, like, the way on your resume or your LinkedIn that you should be talking about what you do that, like, aligns with the way that people are hiring. They’re, like I don’t know if that’s a good exercise or not, but, like, that’s always where my mind goes of, like, what I might do, but I don’t know if that’s, like, a waste of time or if there’s something to that.
Sarah Doody [00:28:44]: Mhmm. No. I that is exactly what we recommend. Like, look at the job description, see what they’re looking for, and then tailor your resume and portfolio to to that. And the word tailor doesn’t mean create a new one from scratch. It means rearrange the content in your resume and your portfolio such that the things that reflect what they are looking for really stand out and shine a spotlight on that. And honest to goodness, that could be as simple as just rearranging bullet points on your resume or, like, rewriting one or two because this is so serendipitous because I’m I’m hiring for this UX designer role right now, and it’s to work at an ecommerce company. And I honestly haven’t looked at any of the resumes yet, but on the application, we ask, tell us about your relevant experience based on the job description.
Sarah Doody [00:29:46]: And so many of the answers are like, I am an empathetic designer who is passionate about helping change the world through design and insert Don Norman quote. You know? And it’s like, they all sound the same, and I almost might do an article and, like, cut and paste some of these and show how everyone just uses these, like, ridiculous, touchy feely, weird, you know, ways to describe themselves. And I’m like, if you worked for an ecommerce company, tell me about that, you know, and give me an example of how you helped do x, y, and z in the checkout or the, you know, customer subscription area of the account section. You know? And that’s what I mean, and I think I would speak for a lot of recruiters and hiring managers and say that’s what they want you to do. They want you to connect. They don’t want, like, we need you to connect the dots between your previous experience and and the job. You know? And I’m literally, like I feel like I am literally giving people the opportunity to do this by asking, you know, describe your relevant experience based on this role, and I’m just getting, like, Steve Jobs quotes and, like, stuff that sounds like it’s from some laws of UX article.
John-Henry [00:31:03]: So it’s almost like altitude. Right? Like, if you go if you abstract it so far where you’re, like, 30000 feet up, you kind of everyone kinda generalizes to to the same stuff you’re describing. Yep. But if you’re way too down in the weeds, you’re describing, like, minutiae of, like, previous experiences that, like, nobody can decipher. Yeah. So it’s, like, you just gotta find the middle ground somewhere. Right? Where it’s, like, you can tell a unique story that’s relevant to the role, but doesn’t sound like everybody else or something like that.
Sarah Doody [00:31:24]: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in this example, I am just dreaming that someone’s gonna say, like, I worked at BigCommerce, you know, for three years, and I did x, y, and z. I’m like Right. Amazing. Answer the question. Like, don’t I don’t need Yeah. A UX pep talk about how you’re gonna change the world because because listen to this.
Sarah Doody [00:31:46]: Like, your, you know, the jobs to be done thing, like, I, as the person hiring, have a job that needs to be done. And you, if you have the skills to do that job, then tell me the skills. Don’t give me some quote that is, like, should be in a WeWork space.
Erin May [00:32:05]: I’m thinking about, like, what is it that, like, bad user stories, Twitter, whatever? Yeah. I should hate that.
Erin May [00:32:11]: Yeah. It’s like, as a recruiter, I
Erin May [00:32:12]: would like to spend as much time as possible reading your flowery, like, aspirational right. Yeah.
Sarah Doody [00:32:19]: Exactly. Totally. Whatever. I should make, like, some bad I’m not gonna do this, but in my spare time when I retire, I’ll make
Sarah Doody [00:32:29]: The worst resume ever.
Sarah Doody [00:32:30]: Yeah.
Erin May [00:32:30]: But on the hiring side, I’m curious if you have a thought on this. Like, our recruiters, hiring managers, are they good at writing job descriptions? Like, do they know what they want? Are they making it, like, easy for candidates, or should people run away when they see a job description that’s, like, you know, be the UX, UI, PD, PM, like, whatever. Or
Sarah Doody [00:32:51]: So, I mean, this is honestly one of the things I am trying to solve, and I literally tweeted this, like, two hours ago because, you know, it’s no secret job descriptions are not always that good. And I think there’s a couple of reasons for that. I think there’s companies that don’t really have UX teams that are starting to build their UX teams. Therefore, they don’t really understand UX. Therefore, they probably just, like, cut and pasted a job description based on Google results. I think there’s other companies that maybe are larger where people are just cut and pasting, you know, take the Google Doc of the last one, make a copy, shuffle some bullets, ready to go type thing. So, yeah, job descriptions are not always that great. And one of the things I am trying to do with the job descriptions that we write is make it very clear, like, what you will be doing in terms of responsibilities, but, like, experience that would make you very qualified.
Sarah Doody [00:33:53]: So in this job description, we talk about, like, ecommerce experience would be helpful, etcetera. We also have these sections called you would be perfect for this role if and you would not be a fit for this role if. Because as a business owner, I look at the job description, and I needed to do two jobs. I needed to attract the right candidates and let the wrong people know they should not apply. That’s how I think about it. And maybe that sounds like, you know, heartless or something, but it’s looking at this from business and time perspective, and one person this morning emailed me. They applied for the job, and they said because one of the questions on the application is, do you have any questions for us? And they said, the job description is very clear. I appreciate the user experience of the job description clear and concise, and my heart was like, oh my god.
Sarah Doody [00:34:51]: Amazing. But
Erin May [00:34:52]: You get it. Yeah.
Sarah Doody [00:34:53]: But it’s it’s not just the content of the job descriptions. I think it’s also the literal design of the job descriptions because a lot of job descriptions, you know, look like a wall of text, and sometimes that’s because the ATS system that they use to make it, like, for example, with bulleted lists, my, like, number one pet peeve, they don’t put spacing between each line
John-Henry [00:35:18]: item. Mhmm.
Sarah Doody [00:35:19]: And so I put a lot of care and time into making these really skimmable, scannable job descriptions with the hope that people are gonna read it so that they’ll read the you’re not a fit for this role if and not apply if, like, they don’t have ecommerce experience.
John-Henry [00:35:39]: Right. Right. Yeah. I think one thing, as you’re thinking about, like, how you land and, you know, your ideal role and a lot of it is what we’ve been talking about right now is, like, how you present yourself and put your best foot forward and make sure it’s, like, relevant to the role. Mhmm. But it’s also like it the interview is going in both directions. Like, you’re interviewing the companies and the hiring managers as well. Right? Oh, yeah.
John-Henry [00:35:56]: Is that a part of, the stuff that you all work on? I know Yes. Somebody in our team, Paulo, a PM, he was featured in, one of Teresa Torres’s, product talk pieces about, like, his criteria when he was interviewing. Like, I had my own list of questions that I was going in and judging people on to make sure I landed in an environment that I thought would be good. Yeah. How do you help, people think about that side of things?
Sarah Doody [00:36:16]: Yeah. That is a big part of what we do because I a % agree. You know, the interview is not just about them interviewing you. You’re interviewing them. And I think even that framing alone helps take the pressure off a little bit because I think it helps empower the candidates almost. And before anyone applies to a job, we have them create this kind of we call it a career value criteria document, but, basically, it’s like your deal breakers. It’s like if you’re looking for a partner, you know, what are your deal breakers? So we have this deal breaker document that they create, and it’s really aimed to help them do two things. First of all, it’s aimed to be a filter so that they only apply to jobs that meet those criteria, and also it helps give them a starting point of questions that they might ask during those interviews.
Sarah Doody [00:37:11]: And we also have, like, a big document of questions that, you know, they could pick and choose from to ask, but so many people have said, like, that deal breaker list helped them not apply, you know, to certain jobs or a couple of people even ended up having multiple job offers. And to make that decision of what job to take, they went back to that kind of deal breaker list and their road map to think to themselves based on job, you know, one, two, or three, which one aligns with my values, which one gives me, you know, that work life balance, or sets me up for that goal I have in my career two years from now. And I think that, you know, in interviews, if you don’t have a question for them I’m obviously not speaking for every company recruiting, but to me, it’s almost like a yellow flag. Like, you couldn’t think of one question to ask me, and sometimes, you know, it makes me think you didn’t did you even look at our product or check out our about page or anything? Like, companies make it so %. Like, companies make it so easy for you to go find like, go look on Medium or YouTube and find an article their design team wrote and say, hey. I read this article your team wrote. Like, can you tell me more about whatever the article was? Like, that would be amazing.
Erin May [00:38:35]: Yep. Speaking of questions, I know it sounds like a lot of the work that that you do is helping people ask good questions to kind of figure themselves out and figure out where they wanna go and what what they like and don’t like and all this sort of stuff. So I’m curious either what are some of the most important questions to ask yourself or, like, what’s a good framework for figuring out what are the right questions to ask yourself to put yourself in a good spot for figuring out your next step?
Sarah Doody [00:39:03]: That’s a great question. And I think you know, when I started all this, one thing that really surprised me was how many people were joining this program who had, like, five, six, twelve, fifteen years of experience. And, you know, in hindsight, now it’s very clear that the more experience you have, the trickier it is sometimes to kind of figure out what your next move should be. But thinking of the experience and the journey of all those people through our career strategy lab, I think that it really goes back to that road map and asking yourself, you know, doing the reflection of where have I been in my career so far? When was I really fulfilled? When did I feel, you know, supported? Or when did I feel like I was really learning? And going through the steps of, like, mapping out that career journey map, really. And I think that starts to connect all of those dots so you can think to yourself, where do I wanna go, you know, in the future? I think if you just say to someone, like, what do you wanna be doing in two years? Like, it’s such an open ended question, but I think what it’s almost like this career journey map gives you Lego place Lego pieces that you can start to play with, and then it kind of becomes clear what you could build in the future in terms of your your career or the product of you. So do
Erin May [00:40:38]: you recommend then focusing on, I guess, like, your feelings, you know, like your past feelings and what made you feel positively, or there are the other things that are more, I guess, like, mental or or practical, financial certainly or, like, learning Mhmm. Because learning can be an interesting one, which can make you feel a lot of feelings. Right? Like, frustrated at the beginning, like, good once you’ve actually learned something. So, anyway, like, yeah, what figuring out, I guess, what’s important to you as you look back and reflect on how things have made you feel Mhmm. And how do you want to feel in the future Mhmm. And sort of assessing that out. Yeah.
Sarah Doody [00:41:12]: Yeah. I think this is one of the parts of this kind of deal breaker list we have people make, but I really originally created that deal breaker list for the jobs you’re looking for because so many people only look for jobs through the lens of what is this job title and what is the salary? And you don’t have to be living under a rock to know that UX job titles pretty much mean nothing and they change from company to company. So, like, who cares what you’re called? So I created this to help people stop focusing on those things and focus exactly what you said, Erin, on all those other things. So I think there’s, like, how would we phrase this? There are necessary things such as you know you have to make x amount of money or you know that you need to have health care or whatever. Right? Like, these table stakes survival things. Then I think you can look at it through things like opportunities for professional development. And maybe that goes into, like, are they giving you conference budget, or how much mentorship do you need from a boss? You know, this role we’re hiring for, you kind of are gonna be a UX team of one as an individual contributor. Therefore, someone maybe that just graduated from a boot camp and needs someone to triple check their work, like, for everything, it’s probably not gonna work out.
Sarah Doody [00:42:35]: So I think it’s understanding, like, the your needs in a manager, in a company, what skills you hope to acquire, team culture, right, like remote, not remote, hybrid, etcetera, size of team, right, even things like industry. Like, those are all things that people really need to think about so that you don’t accept a job just because it gave you some unicorn title, and then three months later, you think, oh oh, man. What did I do that for? You know? Yeah.
John-Henry [00:43:08]: I think the the money part and just all of that stuff is, like, it’s so important to do ahead of time because I think once you’re later in the process, it’s really hard to be objective about it. I’m just thinking again from personal experience, but did some exercises like this before I joined user interviews and kind of backed into a, like, what’s the sort of threshold for my wife and I to be comfortable and be able to start a family and stuff? And what do I want out of a role? And then I found myself with two offers that were very different and one of which, you know, had more money attached to it. And I don’t think you can make that decision if you don’t have some of that stuff up front. You know what I mean? Because I think, otherwise, you just talk yourself into the, well, more money is good, so, you know, just do this. You know what I mean?
Sarah Doody [00:43:43]: And Mhmm.
John-Henry [00:43:44]: It’s hard to put all those factors together, so it would would really encourage people to do that.
Sarah Doody [00:43:47]: Mhmm. I think there was an article, and I forget who wrote it. I wanna say it’s one of the guys from Y Combinator, so I’m not gonna try and try and attribute it.
John-Henry [00:43:59]: Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Doody [00:44:00]: It was this kinda essay, and it was along the lines of, in your career, there’s a time to earn and there’s a time to learn. And I’ve always remembered that because, like, it’s just such a simple filter, And I think it’s something to keep in mind, you know, for everyone because there could be times in your career where you have two different opportunities. But if you think to yourself, this other job is gonna pay me less, but I get to get experience in this industry or doing this, you know, type of research or working with this size of team or something like that could be a good career move for, you know, two years or something like that.
John-Henry [00:44:46]: Yeah. And it’s it’s super personal. Right? And there’s obviously some privilege and all this other stuff in there. But, like, you can into your own situation of given all these factors in my life. I mean, I have student debt, right, this or that. Right? You know, what do I need to be happy? And then you can kinda, you know, optimize from there.
Sarah Doody [00:45:00]: Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, it I I’m glad you mentioned, you know, it’s we all have times in our career where we just have to take the job. You know? But I think if you do have these other things in mind, I think it just it helps you find the right companies to apply to so you don’t end up somewhere and feel trapped and, you know, not wanna put the time and energy into yet another job search.
John-Henry [00:45:30]: A quick thing I had was just we’ve talked about all the positives of treating your career Mhmm. Like a product. Are there any downsides or or things to be mindful of?
Sarah Doody [00:45:38]: That’s a great question. And I might say get back to me in two years or something. But, you know, I have not heard any negative feedback from people who are, you know, following what we teach and things like that. And I guess if they do have negative feedback, maybe they haven’t told me. But I think maybe, like, maybe the one downfall or risk would be, like, for people that how would we phrase this, for people who are super, super, you know, data driven or who have to follow the process step by step by step and are, like, super rigid, maybe this might not be for you because so many UX people, especially early in their career, maybe you’ve noticed this as well, like, it’s it’s almost like people learning UX are kinda learning a UX assembly line. And one of the challenges with that is that you don’t develop the muscle to, like, be flexible and know, you know, maybe we should stay a little bit longer in the research phase and not just stay here for two weeks because so and so told me it has to be two weeks. So I think for people that, like, are not able to be flexible and bend the rules a little, maybe this wouldn’t be, like, the right approach for you. I don’t know.
Sarah Doody [00:47:06]: But, I mean, that’s maybe a stretch. I just I think it works for everyone that that I’ve worked with so far.
Erin May [00:47:12]: Yeah. Yeah. But and, like, you can’t two by two matrix your way to every decision in
Sarah Doody [00:47:18]: one frame.
Erin May [00:47:18]: Like, so so the framework works. Like, ask yourself these questions. These are clearly, like, good and important things to do, but, like, it also doesn’t mean at the end of the day, you shouldn’t listen to your gut. Right? Like, after you’ve gone through all of that. I think the exercise is important whether you end up following, you know, the framework to the t in the end or not. Right?
Sarah Doody [00:47:39]: Yeah. So you made me think of a good example. So in this road map exercise, we have a bunch of little activities that result in the road map. And sometimes I find out, like, people have been stuck on exercise two or something. And I’m like, why did you, like, just stay on the hamster wheel of exercise two for a month? Like, why didn’t you just think to yourself, is this a good ROI of my time? I’m gonna keep going, you know, instead or that Sarah’s making me do exercise too. Like, I’m not making you do anything, but it’s it’s kind of that idea of, like, if something isn’t working for you, figure out how to adapt it. You know? This is not Mhmm. This is not a paint by number situation.
Sarah Doody [00:48:21]: You know? But It’s your life. It’s your life. Yeah. Yeah.
John-Henry [00:48:26]: There is, like, art and science to it all. Right? Like, in in UX work and in product work, it’s you know, you need the frameworks and stuff, but there still is some judgment and and unquantifiable stuff that goes into it too.
Sarah Doody [00:48:35]: Mhmm.
Erin May [00:48:36]: Sarah, parting advice for our listeners. What should they know if we’ve made it this far? What have we not covered?
Sarah Doody [00:48:43]: I think that the one thing I would impart on people is to remember that your education is never over, and you need to take ownership of that in your career because I think that, you know, many managers and your peers in your company, etc, even if they might be well intentioned, they might not have the time, energy, space, etcetera to, like, do that for you. And I think that’s why I’m really passionate about helping people really own their UX careers. And by learning how to do some of the things we we teach in this career strategy lab, I feel like that helps people own and and feel empowered in the job search. And I hope that that kind of confidence and ownership really translates to other parts of their career as well. Like, you you can’t rely on anyone else for success except yourself.
Erin May [00:49:50]: I like the messages of self reliance. You know, it’s it like we were saying, it’s your life, and so these are some tools you can use to hopefully hopefully get yourself in a place you wanna be in.
Sarah Doody [00:49:59]: Exactly.
Erin May [00:50:00]: Yeah. Sarah, thanks for joining us today. I really appreciate it.
Sarah Doody [00:50:02]: Thank you. This is an awesome discussion.
Sarah Doody [00:50:04]: 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.