Your UX job search is costing you 5-figures, see how with this job search ROI calculator

Sarah Doody [00:00:00]: The more jobs you apply to, pretty safe to say, you’re gonna get more rejections. Right? And so it’s not just about the financial impact of a job search that is not leading to interviews and job offers. It’s also about the emotional impact as well. Hey. I’m Sarah Doody, a user researcher and product designer with twenty 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.

Sarah Doody [00:00:51]: So whether you’re stuck in your job search or wondering what’s next in your ux career, you’re in the right place. Your UX job search has already cost you 5 figures and you probably don’t even realize it. So today we’re gonna run through the numbers. We’re going to talk about real life scenarios and show you how to make smarter and data driven decisions in your UX job search just like a product person would. Right? So money, it is a taboo topic. It’s not as though all of us just sit around and casually talk about our salary with friends or colleagues. Right? But if you are serious about your career and about advancing your career, you cannot avoid the money conversation. And think about it.

Sarah Doody [00:01:44]: Right? You would never launch a product without first understanding its potential ROI, timelines, opportunity cost, etcetera. So why don’t we do this in our UX job search? And this isn’t meant to be an episode that is instilling fear or guilt or anything like that. It’s really helping you separate your emotions from the data that may not be in front of you right now, but by the end of the episode, you will have the data to make more data driven decisions and potentially less emotionally driven decisions in your job search. So in this episode, I want to look through three real life UX job search scenarios, kind of people at different stages and with different goals, and do the math together concerning their job searches. So how we’re gonna do this? We’re gonna look at a UX job search calculator. I made this in Google Sheets. It’s pretty awesome if you ask me, and you’ll be able to see in real time as we go through these numbers. So if you’re more of a visual person, just follow along.

Sarah Doody [00:03:06]: Or if you’re listening to this right now, click in the show notes to go watch the video version of this. And you’re gonna see us look at the numbers so we can make data driven decisions in our UX job search and avoid emotional decisions. Alright. So the first UX job search scenario is someone who is mid level in their career. And let’s imagine this person was recently laid off and they used to make a hundred thousand dollars. So in our job search calculator, we’re gonna type in a hundred thousand dollars just as I have here. When we type that in, that tells us that their monthly salary is $8,333. Right? Now if this person has been unemployed for say six months, that is potentially six months in lost income.

Sarah Doody [00:04:06]: And let’s actually add that to this because we didn’t have it, but I think it’s helpful to see this. So let’s call it months unemployed. This person has been unemployed for six months, right? So months searching for a job, let’s change that to six six months. Great. Now let’s think of some other variables here in this person’s job search, right? So how many jobs have they applied to so far? Let’s say they’ve applied to 50 jobs and let’s say they have landed four interviews and now how many hours have they spent applying for jobs? Let’s estimate three hours per job as we see right here. Now let’s look at the numbers, right? So first number I’m really curious about is this one: What is the job search efficiency or like the conversion rate of how many applications they’ve submitted and interviews they have secured? Well, that’s 8%. Not great, right? But what we really are interested in is this: the actual cost of your current UX job search. So I’m gonna open up this section, and let’s think about it.

Sarah Doody [00:05:27]: Based on spending three hours for each job that we’ve applied to, that equates to one hundred and fifty hours that this person has spent on their job search so far. And when we think about how much money the the hundred and fifty hours equate to, we end up with about $7,200 That’s a lot of time, right? And we calculate this in this calculator by thinking about your original annual salary of $100,000 which gave us an hourly rate of $48 right here on this row 19. So the number we really, really need to think about here is this one. Your job search going on for six months has cost this person $50,000 in lost salary. Right? Because they haven’t been working for six months. Plus, we could potentially also add this $7,000 of literal time that they’ve spent applying to a 50 jobs. Right? And so the takeaway in this scenario for this mid level UXer who’s applied to 50 jobs and only got four interviews, the takeaway is this. You might think you’re playing it safe by DIY ing your job search, but that’s a really slow path to take, and it actually might be the most expensive path when it comes to your UX job search.

Sarah Doody [00:07:10]: Right? When you hear the word DIY, you think scrappy, cheap, saving money, etcetera. But when you look at the numbers of this, it kind of tells a different story. Right? Alright. Let’s move on to our second situation. This person is a career switcher. They are pivoting from another industry. Maybe it’s architecture or education or being an attorney or a nurse or something like that. Right? And this person is targeting a salary of $90,000 So let’s plug that in $90,000 great.

Sarah Doody [00:07:47]: And that gives them a monthly salary of $7,500 great. Now how long has this career switcher been in their job search? So they’ve been in their job search for nine months. And how many jobs have they applied to? Let’s put this one at a hundred. And let’s say they’ve landed five interviews. And sure they’ve spent three hours on each application just for consistency. Okay. So looking at this person’s numbers, first of all our conversion rate. Right? How are we doing from applications to interviews? 5%.

Sarah Doody [00:08:26]: Okay? Not ideal, but let’s look down here at the current cost of this person’s job search. So what we want to focus on, and I’m just gonna hide this one, maybe you guys can edit me hiding that, but let’s look down at the cost of this career switchers job search, right? In this person’s case they’ve spent three hundred hours applying to jobs, like a lot of hours. And those three hundred hours for this person translate to $12,981 based on an hourly salary for this person of $43 Now their nine month job search means that this person has $67,500 in lost income, which is a big deal. But it’s not just about the money that you are not earning while you are navigating your job search alone. It’s also about, like, the intangible things, the emotional things. Right? It’s about the emotional cost of rejection of the 95 jobs that this person applied to that they did not get an interview for and instead received that rejection email, right, which can often lead to imposter syndrome, doubt, redoing your resume, redoing your portfolio over and over and over. And the problem with playing the numbers game in your job search is that you are making yourself susceptible to rejection. Right? Because the more jobs you apply to, pretty safe to say you’re gonna get more rejections.

Sarah Doody [00:10:20]: Right? And so it’s not just about the financial impact of a job search that is not leading to interviews and job offers. It’s also about the emotional impact as well. And, also, I think we could say there is a cost of burnout in your job search because you spend so much time going to Google, going to chat GPT, going to groups you belong to, etcetera, trying to learn or reverse engineer how to create a resume that leads to interviews, right, and a portfolio that leads to more interviews, etcetera, etcetera, and trying to gather more and more information and tips and tricks when in reality, tips and tricks aren’t enough. It’s really about having the right strategy for your UX job search. Also, for people switching careers to user experience, another thing that can often happen is while you are applying to jobs and then receiving rejection emails, you start to think to yourself, man, I think I have a skills gap, so I need to go take this certification and get that UX course. Maybe I need to go get a master’s. And you start to get into this habit of overlearning in order to compensate for this perceived, and notice I said perceived gap in your skills. Right? Because as a switcher, even though you did not have the word UX in your previous job titles, you were potentially doing UX related things, which on its own should be enough.

Sarah Doody [00:12:13]: But because you’re applying to so many jobs and not getting interviews, your brain starts to think, nope. It can’t be a messaging problem. It must be a skills problem. And so you get into this cycle of overlearning. And for you, the main takeaway I want you to think about is this. It’s not that you’re underqualified as a career switcher who’s moving from one field into user experience. It’s that your career materials, meaning your resume, portfolio, LinkedIn, etcetera, they are not aligned with what hiring managers and recruiters are looking for. Alright.

Sarah Doody [00:12:52]: Our third scenario is the junior designer, someone that is getting their first job in user experience. Maybe you’re fresh out of a master’s program, a boot camp, you’ve been teaching yourself UX, whatever your path into user experience is, let’s address your ROI of your job search. So you just graduated, your target salary, let’s say that is $70,000 Let’s plug that into our calculator. $70,000 great, which translates to a monthly salary of $5,833 Nice. Now your job search has taken four months. Okay? Cool. And let’s say you’ve applied to 75 jobs, and you’ve landed two interviews, and sure, you’re spending three hours per job just for consistency. Now the the conversion rate of your job search for applications to interviews 2.67%.

Sarah Doody [00:13:54]: Not good, right? So let’s look at the numbers though. You have spent two hundred and twenty five hours in your job search applying to those 75 jobs. Those two hundred and twenty five hours translate to $7,500 just in time of you applying to the jobs. And in your case, this means that your four month job search has resulted in $23,000 in missed income. Right? If we look here, that’s our number, $23,333. Now let’s think about how we solve that problem. We saw the data. Let’s dive into some of the mindset and emotional things that could be keeping you in this cycle of applying, applying, applying to more and more UX jobs and not getting interviews or offers.

Sarah Doody [00:14:58]: So, you’re probably struggling with challenges around lack of clarity in your job search in terms of how do I network? What makes a great portfolio? Should I follow-up? How do I send cold emails? Etc. Right? So you’re reworking your resume. You’re redoing your portfolio over and over and over and over, and you’re not sure what is good enough. Right? Because you’re chasing this non existent perfect portfolio and you’re totally overwhelmed with conflicting advice on LinkedIn, and you’re like spinning in circles trying to figure out who do I believe, who’s telling the truth, who’s just posting clickbait, etc. So the takeaway for you, the junior UX designer who’s trying to get your first job, is this. You don’t need to take more courses. You don’t need more information. You need clear feedback that does not conflict, that considers you as a holistic person, and you need a structured process so you can finally build traction in your UX job search and not apply to 75 more jobs.

Sarah Doody [00:16:10]: Alright. So in these three scenarios, all of these people have been in what I like to call the DIY approach to their job search. Meaning they’ve been piecing together information, tips, templates, free advice, other things to try and essentially build their own how to get hired in UX program or curriculum. Right? They’re trying to just get information and figuring out as they go. And that can work for some people. But let’s be honest, It is exhausting. It’s time consuming. And as we saw from our job search calculator, it’s very expensive.

Sarah Doody [00:16:53]: And what I see with people who work with me inside my UX job search accelerator is that they often end up getting hired faster and seeing salary increases. So they’re not spending another six months on their job search, therefore, they’re earning a salary more quickly. And how does this happen? Well, their job search, it goes from kind of this like piecemeal and haphazard approach where they’re piecing together information and tips and things. And instead, it becomes more intentional, more strategic, more efficient, and leads to better results. Alright. So let’s look at the job search calculator again, but through the lens of someone who decided to stop DIY ing their job search and instead decided to get help from us inside our UX job search accelerator career strategy lab. So now let’s look at the literal return on investment of this person joining career strategy lab. So back to our calculator.

Sarah Doody [00:18:05]: Alright. So career strategy lab, you can join it for six or three months. We’re gonna go with six for this example. Six currently costs at the time of this recording, $4,300 if you pay in full. So if this person got the salary increase of 15%, like we said, their new yearly salary is $115,000 salary increase of $15,000. And with career strategy lab costing 4,300 for pay in full, that’s a return on investment of 249 percent. Now let’s do kind of an average example. Right? 25% salary increase.

Sarah Doody [00:18:51]: In this case, the person’s new yearly salary bumps up to $125,000 an increase of $25,000 Now, the ROI of career strategy lab goes up to 481%. And then if they were to even get a salary increase of 35%, which we have definitely seen happen, That means new salary, $135,000 because a 35% or $35,000 salary increase, which equates to 714% return on investment. The question really isn’t, can I afford this? It’s can I afford to keep DIY ing my job search? When we look at the numbers, the numbers help us make data driven decisions, not emotionally driven decisions. And I know decisions like this can feel very big, but in many scenarios, even in my own life and my business, I really make a point to separate emotions from data so I can see things clearly and not get caught up on the emotions. I literally just did this today on a call with Erin on our team, and she kind of had a gut instinct about something. And I said, well, let’s look at the data. And we looked at the data, and the data agreed with what her instinct was, but we were able to have more confidence when we literally looked at the data. So the longer you wait to shift your approach to your UX job search, the more it costs you financially, emotionally and professionally.

Sarah Doody [00:20:38]: And if you want to see what your UX job search is costing you, you can get a copy of this job search calculator to use on your own. It’s quick, it’s easy, you just type in some variables and it does all the work for you. It’s made for UX people just like you. So you can grab a copy at careerstrategylab.com/calculator, and we will email it to you. Remember, data creates clarity, and clarity builds confidence, and confidence is what gets you hired. Before I go, I want to invite you to DM me your job search calculator after you get your copy and you fill it out. So if you decide to get a copy of this and put in your numbers, I’d love to see your copy of it. Feel free to email it back to me or send me a d m on LinkedIn.

Sarah Doody [00:21:40]: You could use this as a gut check before you say yes to joining us inside our UX job search accelerator, or maybe you come back to us six or twelve months from now and decide to join us. Either way, I hope this job search calculator helps you get clarity, get out of only looking at your career situation through the lens of emotion and helps you see the importance of looking at things with hardcore data. Alright, that’s all for today. I’ll talk to you soon. 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 work, or just being ready for the unexpected, then I invite you to watch my free UX job search workshop at careerstrategylab.com/hired.

Sarah Doody [00:22:47]: And please feel free to send me a DM on LinkedIn. I would love to hear from you.