UX Hiring Insights: Ben Peck on UX Generalists, Soft Skills, & Standout Portfolios

Intro: [00:00:00] Hey, I’m Sarah Doody, a user researcher and product designer with 20 years of experience. In 2017, I noticed something a little ironic. UX and product people, despite being great at designing experiences for other people, often struggle to design their own careers. That’s why I created Career Strategy Lab and this podcast to help you navigate your UX job search, grow in your current role, and avoid skill and salary plateaus all in a chill and BS free way.

So whether you’re. Stuck in your job search or wondering what’s next in your UX career. You are in the right place.

Sarah Doody: Ben, I’m really excited to chat with you today because one of the reasons I wanted to have you on my podcast is really to help. Break down some myths when it comes to UX hiring and hear like directly from someone who is involved in hiring.

So thanks for joining me today.

Ben Peck: Yeah, happy to be here.

Sarah Doody: part of, uh, why I also wanted to [00:01:00] talk to you is really just help people get a sense of like what goes through the head of someone who has hired in the past. So, that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re continuing this series on UX hiring and I’m just gonna introduce people to you and then if you wanna chime in with anything you think I forgot, just let me know.

But Ben Peck is the director of Product Design and global strategy at Andino, where he leads large cross-functional design teams working across commercial small business consumer analytics, design systems, data. More. And Ben has a really interesting, broad and really influential background. Ben, I really see you as also just a community builder because he’s the co-founder of something called the Front Conference one of the largest product and design events in the mountain West, and spent 11 years as the executive director of Product Hive.

A really [00:02:00] awesome community of almost 10,000 people, 9,000 I think product and UX people. Ben, thanks for being here. Did I forget anything?

Ben Peck: Nope. I think you got it pretty well. I appreciate the intro.

I definitely feel like a community first person for sure. Uh, it’s been a big part of my experience myself as well as just, I’ve been so involved in it for such a long time. It’s a big part of my career for sure.

Sarah Doody: And you and I actually both are in Utah and I moved here a while ago. But I have found Utah is such like a community forward place. I mean, I used to live in New York City and there is community, but it just feels different here and, one of the reasons why I thought maybe I should move here is because when I heard they call Salt Lake Silicon Slopes, I thought, I think that’s where I need to be.

’cause I’m such a skier and I love startups and tech and all of that. So, that’s a little bit more about Utah in case [00:03:00] anyone is wondering what’s up

Ben Peck: I was, I was gonna call you out if you didn’t, if you said something other than skiing, that’s the real, that’s the real reason you moved here.

Sarah Doody: Well we’re, you know, the beginning of this season is somewhat questionable, but uh, normally, normally, uh, it’s pretty epic, but we’re only a couple of weeks in. Alright. So I would love to hear a little bit more about like, how did you get into this world of. Product design. What was your kind of, uh, origin story, if you will?

Ben Peck: Yeah, I, I mean, I tell this story a lot, but I, I had this dream. In college that I wanted to go work for Pixar. That was my main dream. I got, I got, swindled into a graphic design program ’cause the Amazon, like the animation teacher wasn’t, was on sabbatical. And then I got [00:04:00] introduced to graphic design and went on a, uh, a study abroad to Switzerland and kind of just fell in love with graphic design. Out of college, I, I quickly got into the, the web design world. And then the first five years of my experience, I, I wanna say I was in agencies or marketing agencies and kind of worked with a lot of different customers, different clients, and, and then I got myself into the tech industry. So, I got myself into the tech industry by actually. Having this crossover design developer mentality. So right out of the gate my first job, they said, we love your design skills. We’re gonna teach you how to code. And so very much for the first five years, maybe seven years of my experience. I was designing and developing what I was designing, and I got into software because they needed somebody.

Uh, I was hired by a CTO who needed somebody who understood software design as well as just good design skills. [00:05:00] And kind of helped them build a design system. And kind of worked my way into, into software design in that way. And then I moved into. More traditional ux, doing user research let go of the development side of things.

’cause you can’t be everything all at once. And kinda worked my way into more of the traditional design wire framing user testing, uh, visual design, prototyping side of the world. And then for the past seven or eight years, I’ve been managing teams, growing and managing teams, and been enjoying it.

Sarah Doody: Yeah, and I, I think it’s safe to say, would you consider yourself a generalist?

Ben Peck: Yes. And it’s interesting because, uh, early on in my career, I’ve been doing this 20 years now, and I was very embarrassed by that. Like I felt like the industry wanted. More specialists. They wanted people that were really good at one thing. And then maybe a, maybe some, it was a benefit to be good at some other things, but they were building specialist teams. I feel like [00:06:00] right now it is, uh, more than ever really good to be a, a very, a good generalist to know more things and be good at some, or you might like some more than others or. Parts of it, uh, but I think I’m pretty proud to be a generalist.

Sarah Doody: Yeah, I, I would call myself a generalist also, and I just think. it allows you to like shift on a dime and transform into what you need in, in your own career or what the company or client may need. So I think it’s such an underrated way to approach your career. You know,

Ben Peck: I would say on the generalist front though, too, like just over my career, I, I didn’t realize how much my role. Would evolve. I thought coming into the industry that I, I would have a, a craft and a practice that I would go and do, and I would do that well for many, many years and it wouldn’t change, but it, there’s new things that we learn, new tools that come out, new [00:07:00] capabilities, and just adaptability of, of being a generalist I think has, has. Helped me in my career from next job to the existing job that I’m in evolve with the businesses and the industry.

Sarah Doody: I think that idea of adaptability that you said is so key. And I, I think you’re right. Like in the job market today, it’s easy to read job descriptions and think no companies want specialists, and I think. The same thing or two different things can be true at the same time, right? Lots of companies do want specialists and other teams are embracing generalists.

So I think the narrative that, you know, you have to specialize, especially early in your career I always tell people like, don’t worry about it. You know, like, choose your own adventure. Everything’s gonna be, everything’s gonna be okay. But what would you tell someone earlier in their career if they were feeling pressure to like commit to a.

You know, kind of like a major in their career, if you [00:08:00] will.

Ben Peck: Yeah, I think there is an aspect of. Just knowing what you can do well or what the role requires. I think that there, there is an aspect of that that’s pretty, pretty core. What would I tell myself? I would tell myself to not be so, and this is very much me, but when I came outta college, I went into a web design. Like role and web design wasn’t the really exciting place to be at the time. It was magazines and brochures and branding and, and all of this stuff. What I would tell myself is that you don’t know where that’s gonna take you. You don’t know where uh, a role or a, a position could lead you to. I could have gone into product management, I could have gone into development.

I could have gone into just where I am today within design. Uh, but the path isn’t always as clear as you, you imagine it to be [00:09:00] when you’re. When you’re kind of in that realm of forcing yourself to pick something or choose a direction.

Sarah Doody: Yeah. You said you went to Switzerland. Do you follow Swissness or Tina Roth-Eisenberg? Do you, you know, you lived in New York for a while, so I’m sure you crossed paths with her.

Ben Peck: Yes, I have followed her for many years. Interestingly enough, uh, the conference, Brooklyn Beta,

which she was very involved with, and creative mornings and all of that stuff. Inspired me to create front and the product Hive community here in Utah

because it was something that I thought, this is amazing.

I love it. I love the, the small community. I love the the culture of, of that mentality and what she like drives. It was something I, I thought we needed in Utah and I, I just kind of ran with it, but yeah.

Sarah Doody: she just reminds me of such a brilliant generalist like, like we were talking about and [00:10:00] side note for anyone in the Salt Lake area the Creative Mornings community has restarted. I forget who is organizing it, but it is back, so you can find out more on Creative Morning’s website, but

Ben Peck: I was excited to see that. Yeah.

Sarah Doody: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been to, I’ve been to a few when they’re kind of like closer to my end of this city, but it’s a great group. Okay, let’s move into a little bit more around hiring and the job market and things. And I’m curious if, if, are you hiring right now outta curiosity? I forgot to check. Yeah.

Ben Peck: currently we do not have any openings active right now, but we we have two that were on the docket of potentially opening up here soon, but yeah.

Sarah Doody: Okay, so let’s kind of take this from a kind of a, a broad and then we’ll narrow it down. But I’m curious, you know, when those postings are live, and you don’t have to tell us what they are, but like, what are some common traits that, that you’re looking for in [00:11:00] candidates?

Beyond the hard skills, let’s say. So I.

Ben Peck: yeah, so soft skills are pretty hard to, uh, to look at it. It is a, a definite part of the, the job, and we definitely look at, look into. Those skills and we look into those and the, the best way to to do that is through conversation and storytelling through their websites. But we’re constantly looking for. Collaboration. We’re constantly looking how they, uh, interact and do interviewing with, with user interviews. We also look at the way that they look at curiosity and, how do they handle ambiguity. Uh, so that’s definitely part of our interview process.

Sarah Doody: another thing that I like about your background is you’ve led teams and worked at companies in so many different industries, and maybe you’ve experienced this too, but people often say to me like. I have worked [00:12:00] in say, FinTech for 10 years, and I really wanna, and FinTech, let’s say B2B for example, but I really wanna get into healthcare, for example, more consumer side.

And they get stuck in their head and think that because they’ve never worked in B2C or healthcare, they will never be qualified. And my stance is kind of. There’s a lot of transferable skills, regardless of what you’re working on and what industry. And I’m curious what you would say to someone who might be in a similar boat and that they wanna switch either industries they’re working in or types of products in what are some kind of crossover skills that you think, you know, that person could really lean into in terms of communicating those things on their resume portfolio, et cetera?

Ben Peck: Yeah, I think there is an aspect, there’s a little bit of truth to, if you’ve worked in B2B for a while, it’s easier to get another job in B2B [00:13:00] in general, and then if you’ve worked in B2C, it’s a, it’s a little bit easier to, to get another job in B2C. Luckily, I’ve, I’ve had the pleasure of, or the, the luck of being able to work in a B2B. And a B2C environment. But the, the crossover there I think is really interesting. I think people who say, take that example of FinTech and healthcare, I think there is some correlation of the complexity of, of those two industries that there’s a lot of crossover. No one should not consider somebody in the healthcare. For a, a FinTech or FinTech to healthcare. As a, as an example. But say I was in FinTech and I was in B2B and I wanted to move over to a, a very B2C product. I think what I’ve learned over my experience is that there’s a slight different way of working, but the majority of the way that they work is the same. So, I really do think that there’s a, a lot of [00:14:00] crossover, but the, the finickiness of a B2C customer and how you sell it to millions of people at a very low cost versus fewer people at a very high cost in the B2B world, there’s just different mentalities of how you research, how you roll out the, the product. I’ve never really looked at either one of those as a disadvantage by any means across industry, even location or global or, uh, all those types of things that go into it as well.

Sarah Doody: Yeah, I think when you, you know, when you get to back to the, the basics of product development and what makes great. Products and ideas actually successful. There’s a lot of commonalities in terms of just the basic stuff that unfortunately a lot of teams skip over. But I think you’re right that that lens of how they approach that is very different because, you know, if you have [00:15:00] a like.

Enterprise product that people are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for. There’s a lot of risk there to roll out a new feature. You know, it has to be pretty, pretty baked or else you’re gonna hear about it from those customers who are paying you tons of money every year and they’re not gonna be happy.

Ben Peck: Yeah, the, the, there’s a really interesting aspect of the communication strategy around the rollouts

from a B2B, from a B2B perspective. The rollout of, of new features and new improvements is very, feels. Very internalized where B2C products, it feels very purely marketing oriented. Hey, this is coming, this is just was released, or, uh, it’s to everyone as opposed to this select set of customers through customer success is how they roll those those things out. It does also change the way you communicate with your customers or gather feedback from those customers or be able to get. User interviews or user [00:16:00] research associated with them. So I think all of those are transferable by, by any means. So I.

Sarah Doody: I think you’re right. I mean, it’s like we said, it’s basic things, basic skills, not, not basic, but transferable skills. And. It’s more about how they, how they approach the product. Okay, so let’s imagine it’s, I don’t know, February, and you’re hiring for these two roles and you go in on a Monday morning, turn on your computer, and you’re going to go through the however many applicants for these two positions.

I kind of wanna get inside your head of like, what is your approach to. Doing that initial pass to decide like who gets that first interview, let’s say. So let’s start there.

Ben Peck: Uh, do we wanna talk about the recruiting piece of it, the, the how they get screened [00:17:00] versus

what I’m doing specifically as the hiring manager? Or do you want to talk about just me as the hiring manager?

Sarah Doody: That’s a great question. I think it would be really interesting for people to understand your relationship with your recruiting team and how maybe they are doing an initial vetting for you. I mean, it’s gonna be different for every company, so I’m really curious how it works, you know, in your experience.

Ben Peck: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s important for us to, to just acknowledge, and I’m sure you get a lot of this with it, with a lot of what you do. But over the past three to four years. The amount of applications that come in for an actual role has skyrocketed. Like there is an enormous and more amount of of. Applications coming through. So that work is actually getting put on a recruiting team in a lot of ways that I work directly with my recruiting team to help them understand the things that I’m looking for, the things that they should look [00:18:00] for in portfolios and. Tell them what I wanna actually go and look for. A lot of recruiting teams actually wanna narrow it down to a very small amount of people, and I actually wanna see more than they actually think I wanna see, because I think it’s important for me to actually see their portfolios, see who the applicants are. They’ll narrow it down by location. Maybe they’ll narrow it down by maybe some of the industry experience that we’re looking for. But I also make sure that they take into consideration people who are trying to change industries or change

from a product manager to a designer or a designer to a pm. And, uh, so it starts a lot with a, a conversation with my recruiting team to, to help them understand how to best screen for me starts there. And then after they’ve screened a lot of those, I’ll, I’ll take a pass at going through each one of the portfolios. I don’t know if a lot of people who apply for jobs [00:19:00] understand the hiring manager the visibility that hiring managers get into seeing maybe 10 30. 40 portfolios back to back right after one another.

And you can start to see the commonalities, the, the things that seem similar and the things that are different that seem stand out in, in different ways. So I’ll go through those portfolios and, and find the ones that, uh, I feel like one are applicable to that might have. Complexity. So I’ll look for complexity in projects that they’re doing. What is, how complex was the problem that they were trying to solve? Also just what was their experience with the process and then how realistic were they, were the constraints within the

environments that they, that they went through. Now, people coming out of college, there might not be as many constraints that they have, or [00:20:00] we might not judge that as strongly as people who have had five or six years of experience designing for software and the case studies that they share.

But, uh, yeah, I don’t know if there, that’s a good start to the

Sarah Doody: Yeah. That’s a great start. I was taking some notes so I don’t forget some follow up questions. But you said like the experience of going through portfolios back to back to back and how you’re noticing kind of the things that they all may be doing the same or that things that they’re doing differently that help them stand out.

I’m curious if any kind of trends, for lack of better word, come to mind in terms of. And, and you choose however you wanna answer it. Either like the, the mistakes that you see in portfolios that make you think, I’m not gonna look at that one any further, or what you see in portfolios that make you wanna learn more about that person and help them stand out.

Ben Peck: [00:21:00] Yeah, I think of a portfolio very much like the first chapter in a book. You’ve

gotta have a hook of how interesting is this gonna be, that how much I’m, I’m gonna put into effort to read the whole book. And one of the things, the big mistakes that I see a lot of. People do is that they put the final result of a, of a case study at the very bottom, and depending on how long their case study is, I may or may not even get to. What is it that you accomplished or a, a quick summary of that, put that at the top, and then tell me the story of where and how you got to this like end result. Uh. I think that that’s one of the big, bigger mistakes or maybe from my own human fault of, of being a hiring manager. I may not even see the best of their work, or I might not be able to go through all five of your, your [00:22:00] case studies. I might only pick one or two and see if it grabs my interest of what I’m looking for. And if I, if I. Don’t do that with every single one of ’em. Or if I layer on 40 of those that I go through in a week, you, it’s really difficult not to get to, Hey, show me the punchline of what you, what you accomplished, and a summary of it, and then tell me, and then I’ll go deeper into, oh, this sounds interesting.

I’ll look into it a little bit more. But it very much starts with a scan. And while I’ll say like. Resumes are important and kind of just getting a general sense of your experience. I spend less time on the resume than I just do in the portfolio. Like it, uh, the resume almost is a, is a second check of the quality and the, the experience and then the portfolio.

If the portfolio is amazing and they only had two years of experience, but I’m looking [00:23:00] for a. A really senior person and they show senior level talent. I’m not gonna say, oh, they only have two years of experience. And discount them for the role or the opportunity

Sarah Doody: Right. Yeah. I think there can sometimes be a disconnect between, you know, the literal number of years of experience someone has versus talent and, and ability to, to do the job that is needed on your team and at your company. And I, I experie this quite often when candidates get so stressed out about the number of years of experience they have.

And I tell them similarly like, communicate. skill and your strengths in your portfolio and the literal number of years of experience may not be as as big of a factor, even though it says it on the job description. Right. The job description is, I look at it really as guardrails. You know, not like a mandatory list of things, and you have to tick every single box.

Ben Peck: Yeah, I, I will say [00:24:00] with some a TS systems, those years of experience do get

filtered out and that’s probably where it hits and hurts the most with some people. Depending on the size of the business that you’re, you’re applying for. ’cause if it’s a really large business, yeah, you’ll. Probably have a harder time getting through that. If it’s a more mid-sized to small company, they’re, they’re probably not gonna have those systems in place, and we will, we’ll just go off of what, what they’re finding, just finding the best talent.

Sarah Doody: Right. You made me think of a question that is somewhat outta order, but I’m gonna ask it anyway. So regarding the a TS and how the a TS, one of the things it can do is help do that initial filtering based on key criteria of, you know, years of experience, location, et cetera. And I’m curious. What is your experience with, and either when you’ve applied to jobs or when you are hiring [00:25:00] with people?

Reaching out to you, sending you an email, a LinkedIn message, et cetera, either before or after they apply because I hear, you know, don’t do that and I hear Sure. Do that. So I’m curious what, what your, your stance on that is with the idea, to your point of highlighting the experience you do have so you’re not automatically discounted.

‘Cause you don’t have. 5.5 years of experience or whatever it is.

Ben Peck: Yeah. I am on the side of do send the message like if you have some sort of connection or you have a way to contact the hiring manager and you know who the hiring manager is. I think it benefits you to say, Hey, I applied for this job, and I wanna also send you a message to say, Hey, I, I, I applied for your, your role. Will I be able to see every single one of those? I may or may not, may not see them. They might get lost in the [00:26:00] shuffle and LinkedIn’s messaging isn’t perfect. But an email, a message, I think goes, goes a long way. What I will say is a little bit of a hack is actually sending a message to somebody that’s not the hiring manager because the hiring manager gets flooded with those messages.

In addition to going through all the applications. It’s hard enough for us to keep track of all the names of all the portfolios of everyone that we’re already looking at. And then the messages on top of that does become a little bit challenging. I think it does allow you to take a second look sometimes. But if you send it to somebody who’s not the hiring manager, somebody that’s on the team, I, I would say my best hack as a, as an applicant was. Uh, reaching out to the more junior people on the team. So, ’cause they don’t generally get messages, they’re the ones that are the ones that are usually sending the messages but don’t get the messages because they aren’t the [00:27:00] hiring, they don’t have seniority per se, but they’re the most willing to respond back to a message to. Maybe even tell it to their boss, Hey, I got this message from this person. Would have you take, taken a look at them. I think that goes a long way. Uh, but yeah, that’s where I sit on that.

Sarah Doody: That’s a good hack. I, I hadn’t thought of that yet and I. Like the idea of, you know, kind of going through the side door there and thinking of the people on the team who are, are not inundated with messages all day long. Right. Also, one of the things I tell people is like, to avoid the risk of being ghosted in LinkedIn messages also like.

Ask a simple question. Maybe it’s about the culture or the product or something, because then it’s not just, Hey, can you do me this favor and funnel my application along? But you’re pairing that with a question that is not related to you applying for the job, and you might be [00:28:00] more likely to get a response.

Ben Peck: Yeah, I agree. I would also layer on that, sending those messages more regularly. Not when you’re trying to hire, uh, of just, Hey, how’s the team? How are things? Do you like it there? Go a long way when you come around to this. I, I knew I am looking for a job. Do you have any openings? You’ve already started a conversation with people and maybe that’s just the community person in me because I am, I almost answer most, if not all, messages that come my way if I can. Uh, I’ve found that I need to tell people when I can respond if I can’t respond if I’m too busy, but I think it goes a long way.

Sarah Doody: Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of that whole philosophy of like investing in relationships before you need to leverage them, right? Yeah.

Ben Peck: Yeah, exactly.

Sarah Doody: I wanna just ask another question about [00:29:00] portfolios, because this one comes up all the time. You know, you mentioned storytelling and one of the top tips I think out there probably on the internet is like, tell a story.

Tell a story. But what do you look for in terms of storytelling in the portfolio and showing and demonstrating the, the process.

Ben Peck: Yeah, I, I wanna say I look for highlights. So I do look for this combination of, uh, imagery plus the story itself. Uh. Because they can come across as all feeling like case study’s all feeling very similar. And if the story is really long, it’s very unlikely that I’m going going to be able to read the whole story. But I will say the ones that I like or the ones that just really stand out, seem to have this like [00:30:00] small amount of information with, uh, imagery that that can help.

S that’s easily scannable. I will say that it, it sometimes doesn’t have to do with the full story either. You don’t have to always have a full case study of a beginning and an end, that there was a project, there was a problem.

You, you created a solution and this was the results. I, I think it’s as basic as that. You don’t have to go through. Every single detail of the whole experience that you went through. But seeing those key points or the, those key milestones, I think is what matters the most personally.

Sarah Doody: Yeah, I think there definitely needs to be a balance in the, the length of the portfolios. ’cause to your point, you know, you’re going through 30 or 40 in a day, there’s no way you’re reading every single word. Right. But I think too, it’s really important that people give equal [00:31:00] attention to. The content and the design, I think it’s very easy depending on what type of designer UX person you are to either spend too much time fussing with the design and then your story lacks or you spend so much time with the story.

The design lacks, right? And they like, similar to designing a product or even just think of a startup homepage or something like, it’s the combination of the design and the elements on the page that make it a good experience. And I think sometimes that just goes out the window for people when they’re working on their portfolio.

And I get why. But it just, it just is something that I see all the time. I’m curious if, if you experience that.

Ben Peck: Yeah, I definitely have seen some where they told the full story in writing, but then the imagery or the content that went along with it wasn’t as easy to follow or I didn’t get as much of the story if there was a, a good combination. There’s also some that. [00:32:00] Have imagery, but you can’t really see it very well, or you can’t look at some of the details when you want to dig deeper into it. Some of that may be intentional, some of that might not, because that encourages you to reach out to them and, and ask them more about it, or it, it means somebody else. Did give me more, more details. One of the things that I recently did last time I looked for a job was I created little five minute. Walkthrough video at the very top that kind of just did a quick summary that they could kind of walk through or just watch quickly, and then they could go into the actual story of, of what it was about. But there was a, a quick screen recording or a GIF or something like that that they could see that kind of gave them a highlight of it all.

Sarah Doody: Did you receive any feedback about that when you were applying or do you remember?

Ben Peck: I definitely got a lot more people viewing that. I used it in my messages, so not only [00:33:00] did I put it on the portfolio pieces, uh, of case studies, but I would use that little five minute snippet of, or three minute snippet when I sent a message to somebody to take a view and I used. A Loom Loom video, so I could see how many people were watching it

and how often I would see it versus page views and, and whatnot. And you could, you could tell that that was a, an easy thing for them to go and see. Instead of going into taking the time to look at a portfolio, remember it, where did that link go? They see the message, they watch a quick vi video and decide whether they wanna pursue something or not. Even if they didn’t respond to me I was getting people to see. The work at least.

Sarah Doody: Mm-hmm. And if I, if I. I put myself in the shoes of someone hiring if I watch a three or five, you know, minute walkthrough. It also is helping me learn how that person communicates verbally, which for some roles is really important because, you know, you’re [00:34:00] presenting to clients, stakeholders, et cetera. That can be an important thing as well.

Ben Peck: Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah Doody: I thought I thought of another question on this topic. So one thing I see, and maybe you’ve seen it as well, is. Sometimes in people’s portfolios, they either just like embed a Figma prototype or something or in whatever tool they’re using. And I struggle with that because it is easy to get lost in that prototype if you’re viewing it for the first time and or you’re like a recruiter who maybe has never used Figma or Framer or whatever.

So I’m curious if you’ve experienced. Being on the receiving end of those things and what happened?

Ben Peck: Yeah, I agree. I think that depending on the port, the prototype, it could be very robust. And if you know Figma and you click somewhere else and see that where it lights up or where you [00:35:00] can click that makes sense. Some people don’t always leave that in, so you don’t actually know where you can

go with the prototype. I highly recommend you do more of a. Even a screen recording click through versus putting that prototype in there because it’s much easier for you to tell the story for one and have them go through that process of what you, what it was designed for, or what it was meant for. But I, I do agree. I think that that’s gonna get even more complicated now that we have AI tools like Figma Make or V zero or all whatever AI tool of the flavor of the month that you’re, you’re using. Because then it becomes almost impossible to know the capabilities of the prototype you could have spent three months on a prototype and it’s fully robust, but I don’t have the time to go through and figure out what, what’s fully functional and what’s not.

Sarah Doody: I think it’s, if you’re applying for a role, you wanna try and [00:36:00] control the narrative and the first impression that people have about you. And I just think using a loom as simple a tool, as Loom is to just record a verbal walkthrough is a great way to eliminate the risk that someone gets lost trying to navigate your prototype or.

Doesn’t engage with the right parts of it and doesn’t get to see like the part of that prototype that was so amazing. You know? So I think the voice, the narrative walkthrough also allows you to add that context. And to your point earlier, you know, it’s about that combination of, you know, the images and the highlights and not just expecting someone to go through a 150 screen prototype or something.

Ben Peck: Yeah, I, I agree. I mean, the best of both worlds is to have a video, a loom, but then have a link to, for them to go and look at it. And play with it [00:37:00] themselves. They, if they really wanna dig, dig into it, they can go and play with it themselves, but they actually got to see the thing that you wanted them to see through a video

for sure.

I wanna be clear about the images in a port portfolio. When I say images, it doesn’t necessarily need to be design images. It can be user flows, it can be diagrams, it can be anything like that. It’s, it’s really what’s your thought process and how you think through and come up with solutions or problems

Sarah Doody: Because, you know, at the end of the day, you’re hiring this person to do a job on your team, and the job doesn’t start with a beautiful, polished screen. Right? We need to see how they, how they arrived at that. And e even if, you know, I, I tell people if you made, you know, a, a awesome homepage or user flow or something, and.

You got it wrong the first time. That is a great part of the story to tell, right? Like, this is where we started. This is why we, [00:38:00] we realize it’s incorrect. This is how we pivoted. Like it’s just a natural part of what we do. And so often I, I hear from people, you know, they think. Because that first version of the homepage wasn’t right.

It’s like they are a failure. And I just say, no, it is just how it works. You know, if I had a dollar for every screen, I got wrong on the first time, like I wouldn’t be sitting here.

Ben Peck: I agree. I, I will say one of the harder ones to decipher that takes more time is when they share

say a workshopping session where they have sticky notes of things that they went through and, and problems that came, became commonalities. There’s no way I can read through every single one of their sticky notes, and it’s kind of nice to see that they went through that process, but they, I feel like a big miss that a lot of ’em have is they don’t summarize it really well.

They don’t summarize what came out of all of the [00:39:00] thinking.

Into the problems that needed to be addressed and why they decided on those problems to be addressed. That, that’s the part I’m looking for. I like to see a quick snapshot of that thinking and the, the process, but how did you get down to the problems you needed to solve?

Sarah Doody: Yeah, I think you know, the same also applies to user research, right? Like I see in a lot of portfolios, just screenshots of. Autogenerated like pie charts and graphs of the result of a survey or whatever it was. And I always tell people that means nothing to me. Like I don’t wanna sit there and look at these pie charts that have no context.

I want you to tell me, based on the research you did, like what is this? Pie chart or graph or whatever it is telling you, right? As, as the designer or the researcher, et cetera. So, yeah, don’t make, don’t make me think. I guess we could summarize that with,

Ben Peck: Yeah, for [00:40:00] sure.

Sarah Doody: I’m curious, in your experience hiring, you know, there’s so many people wanting to switch into user experience from related or unrelated fields, and has there been a time where you’ve come across a candidate who was switching and maybe.

This was going to be their, their first job, or maybe they had previously made the switch. And, uh, what stood out about them and maybe what were some of the strengths that they brought as someone who, you know, had not started their career in user experience?

Ben Peck: Yeah, I have thought about this one a lot since the, since I’ve hired a lot of career transitioners, so. A recruiter or a teacher. We’ve hired, we have multiple teachers on our team actually today that used to be teachers that, that pivoted into ux. I think, uh, as we’ve looked at [00:41:00] those applicants or as we’ve looked at people who are, are interested in, in transitioning into UX is what I, what I see with a lot of those people is that they are afraid to take the current. Experience that they’ve already had in a different industry and how it, how it applies to UX and or they want to kind of almost forget what they did in this other industry and just kind of start from the scratch or present themselves as starting from scratch when in some ways they are, but in a lot of ways they aren’t.

Like the recruiter was an amazing researcher. The Teachers are amazing at presenting. They’re amazing at managing a crowd of, uh, questions coming in because they’ve dealt with that for so many years as a teacher. They lean in. I, I would say lean into those, those experiences and showcase them as. As [00:42:00] strengths that they have because they are strengths, and if I’m not looking for them and they’re not highlighting them, it does make it more difficult for them to, to transition into a different industry from the ones that are a little bit more adjacent, like product into UX or UX into product or a developer into ux.

I, I think those. I’ve seen the most success in those scenarios happen internally, uh, more, more often than I I left my job to go to a new job, to that, in that role. But that’s my only, my experience in that realm.

But I, I see it happening for sure.

Sarah Doody: Yeah. I think, you know, so many people coming to UX from another, another career there’s like this angst around the fact that they’ve never had. The letters UX in their job de descrip or job title before. And I just, you know, in conversations with [00:43:00] them, they realize I have been doing research, like you said about, about the teacher.

For years I just didn’t have that in my job description. Right. And so I think part of, part of what I end up doing is helping people realize they do have this experience. It just didn’t have a formal title.

Okay. Ben, you are a community builder. We know. So what, what is the role of community in your career?

Maybe you can tell us how it’s helped you in your career or, you know, the, the benefits that you see from maybe people in your community sharing with you. The value of being a part of something like product Hive.

Ben Peck: Yeah, I mean there’s, there’s definitely two sides of that. For context, I had been in the industry maybe 10 years, and that was as a hybrid designer. Developer had tradition graphic design, the whole [00:44:00] reason. I started and helped start Product Hive was because I felt like I needed to learn from other people and experience those other people. And the more I leaned into that and the more we created that community and we just leaned into sharing what each other does within a, within work, it fostered this like, I don’t like to use the word networking because it’s not networking. It’s really just. Information sharing. It’s, it’s experience sharing.

And when you do that in a, in a shared group, I think it really helps you understand how to do your job better, but then also what other businesses are like and what other teams are like. And I’ll say from my own experience, those 10 years after I kind of helped start Product Hive, I, I think I’ve found every single job I’ve ever had. Through connections or people that I’ve met, [00:45:00] not even talking about a job or looking for a job, but just talking about about their job in their role, and then when a job opportunity or role came about. We had the connection or relationship that we needed to, to make that job. Even my job, I, I moved to new, to New York City for two years.

I built a community here in Utah, but I left to New York. Like you said, you lived in New York City. It’s massive. Millions of people. There’s lots of smaller communities. I still got the job I got in New York City because of somebody who attended my conference up front, like. The, it was somebody I had just met.

It was an attendee. And there, those connections that you make in person, I think go a really long way. And I’ve heard story after story from the people in the community that that’s how they find their next job or make the next connection or learn the thing that they didn’t learn through [00:46:00] school or through some other method.

Sarah Doody: It’s not an accident, you, you named it Product Hive because you know, it’s like this place where people being share information learn, build each other up, et cetera. And I just think. You know, the past couple years have just been so wild in the job market, in the world and I think people are really craving community.

And you know, even when I started Career Strategy Lab community was not on the bullet list of what we were doing. It was. It existed in that I needed a place to be able to communicate with everyone in the program, but it wasn’t, you know, something similar to productive, for example. But now with 750 alumni, we are experiencing like alumni hiring each other, which is wild to me.

Like four people have been hired at Liberty Mutual just because. [00:47:00] One got hired and then, you know, so on and so forth. And one of the things I’m thinking about for this, this coming year is just what does community mean in terms of what I’m doing? But yeah, it’s really important and I think, I think the stat is 85 or 75% of jobs are found in or filled through word of mouth, relationships, et cetera.

So yeah.

Ben Peck: Yeah, it’s very much, something that you have to do and work for and you have to spend the time doing. Uh, but it, it’s very much worth the effort to just get to know people, understand things. The connections that you make do last longer than you think that they’re going to actually last.

Sarah Doody: Yeah, and you know, you, you may make a connection with someone, meet them at a conference or something and you know, it’s easy for a year or two or whatever to go by, but they contact you or you contact them and it’s like you [00:48:00] pick up right where you left off and they help you get hired or something. You never know what’s gonna happen with those relationships.

Ben Peck: A lot of people rely on just their schooling alumni or their. Past coworker connections, and I think those go a long way. But if you add on your, your program or if you add on a community, a free program community, or if you attend a conference they, they go a, it goes a long way for

sure.

Sarah Doody: Yeah. Okay. I have one more question and then we can move to our lightning round ’cause I think we’ll have time for it. Okay. What is one piece of advice you would give someone who’s looking for a job right now? It can be Anything that comes to mind.

Ben Peck: Uh, I think I would go to that. Go talk to. Every person lowest on the, like, earliest in the career at the places that you’re most interested in or you’re seeing job [00:49:00] opportunities, just go talk to them, see if they like the job. Don’t even ask them to like, push your resume through. Just send a message to them and, and ask how they’re thinking about the job, what they like about it, what they don’t.

Sarah Doody: Yeah, I, I would guess maybe some of them may also be more unfiltered than more experienced people. You know, they might just. Tell you, like tell it like it is, versus maybe someone more senior might be more um, I don’t know, political about their response. Who knows? Okay. Lightning round. What was your first real job ever, let’s say after high school?

Ben Peck: Uh, it was painting with my father. He had his own painting company, PEX Painting.

Sarah Doody: Is there one lesson you learned from painting that has stuck around with you?

Ben Peck: Yes. It’s not every part of the job you love. Like I hated sanding doorframes, but you have to sand the [00:50:00] doorframes if you wanna paint them. feels more satisfying to paint them. It’s not as fun to sand them, think. I think there’s, every job has that same

thing

Sarah Doody: maybe, maybe you can outsource sanding, uh, to your kids.

All right? If you could do any job and money didn’t matter, the hours you need to work, didn’t matter, what would you wanna do?

Ben Peck: I think it, like, first thing that comes to mind is, is cooking. I think. I don’t, I don’t know if I would wanna be like in a, in a restaurant. Under the pressure and like intensity of cooking, but I, I think I would really enjoy just cooking,

Sarah Doody: Very cool. Okay, if you had an interview coming up in four days, what’s one song on your like pump up playlist.

Ben Peck: uh, believer by Imagine Dragons.

Sarah Doody: Ooh, I love that one. [00:51:00] All right. Let’s see. Let’s say you get the job that you’re hypothetically applying for, what are you gonna do to celebrate?

Ben Peck: Definitely go out to dinner. That’s my, uh uh, that’s my go-to with my

wife. We always go out to dinner.

Sarah Doody: What’s your, where would you go? In case anyone local is, uh, is listening and needs a restaurant recommendation.

Ben Peck: Downtown. Salt Lake City, copper, onion.

That one’s a great one.

Sarah Doody: they have the best cauliflower. And the ricotta fritters are so good.

Ben Peck: They are. They are so good.

Sarah Doody: okay. And let’s rewind time a little bit. What is one piece of advice you would give, you know, your, your younger self earlier in your career?

Ben Peck: I would say the world doesn’t have as much how do I say this? Uh. Criticism [00:52:00] around what is right and what is wrong to, for your career, like the people around you and the industry and their opinions might seem one way, but the world just kind of goes with the flow and and evolves over time. So lean into that.

That’s what I would say.

Sarah Doody: I love it. It’s just, it’s something that people tend to overthink so much and, uh, it’s better to keep moving forward than just waffle in indecision, in my opinion.

Ben Peck: Yeah.

there, there isn’t a, this is the way that there is a this, there is a way, basically

that’s the way I would change it.

Sarah Doody: I, I listened to this podcast with this Harvard professor. Her name is Ellen. Langner, I think, and she, I’m gonna butcher the quote, but essentially she offers advice around when you’re stuck on a decision. And she says, just make a decision and make the decision, right, because [00:53:00] you’ll never know what it would’ve been like to choose option B if you choose option A.

So just decide option A and do your best to make it work, you know? And that really stuck with me. So, yeah. All right. Ben, thank you so much. This was so much fun. I learned a little bit more about you too. I’ll never ask you to, uh, do painting or sanding.

Ben Peck: I’m not for you,

Sarah Doody: I don’t know if I’ve ever, I think I have sanded things in wood shop class in high school, let’s see. I think that’s all. So thank you for joining us. This was great.

Outro: Thanks so much for listening to the Career Strategy Podcast. Now make sure to follow so you don’t miss an episode, and you can check out all of our episodes at careerstrategylab.com/podcasts now to learn more about how to apply UX and product strategy to advancing your career. Whether that means leveling up in your current role, getting a new role, getting freelance [00:54:00] work, or just being ready for the unexpected, then I invite you to watch my free UX job search workshop at careerstrategylab.com/hired.

And please feel free to send me a DM on LinkedIn. I would love to hear from you.

Post Roll: Hey there. Before I go, I wanna speak to you specifically if you’ve applied to 50, 100, 200 or more jobs and you haven’t secured an offer or interviews yet. First of all, I want you to know it’s not your fault. It is challenging out there and learning how to navigate the job, search, interviews, negotiation, et cetera.

It is not something that we are taught. Your boss is too busy to help you. Your friends just give you vague advice. Your family doesn’t really know how hiring in UX works. This is why I created my career strategy lab, UX job search accelerator. [00:55:00] If you are tired of your DIY approach. Not leading to the results you want, then I challenge you to consider.

Maybe it is time for a pivot, just like products pivot. Maybe your job search needs a pivot too. So head over to careerstrategylab.com/apply to learn more or have a call with someone on my team or myself so we can answer all of your questions. Hope to talk to you soon.