Why the coaches in CSL are not UX experts (and why that’s not a bad thing)

Sarah Doody [00:00:00]: Do you want the person that’s been working in UX for 5 or 10 years, but has never coached people in their job search or never hired anyone? Or do you wanna learn from the people that have helped thousands of people and thus seen thousands of resumes, thousands of portfolios, etcetera, and had experience in hiring people.

Sarah Doody [00:00:23]: Hey there. I’m Sarah Doody, host of the Career Strategy Podcast. Many professionals are seeking more impact, flexibility, growth, and let’s face it, getting paid what they’re worth. But how do you unlock this in your career? It starts with strategy. I’m taking you behind the scenes of what’s working for my career coaching clients. You’ll hear strategies and actionable, yet sometimes against the grain, advice for how you can be the CEO of your career and stop Mondays. Ready to level up your career? Let’s get after it.

Sarah Doody [00:01:01]: Hey, friend. Welcome back to another episode of the Career Strategy Podcast. And today, I wanna answer an FAQ that comes into our inbox quite a bit over here at career strategy lab, and that is the question of why are the career strategy lab coaches not experts in user experience? Now before I answer that question, I just wanna clarify what career strategy lab is. So career strategy lab runs a job search accelerator for people that primarily work in the fields of user experience, product design, and tech. And it’s a 3 month program where we guide you through your job search and everything entailed in that, starting with really the very beginning of figuring out what do you actually wanna do, you know, in your next job and thinking about maybe 2 years from now. And then based on that, going through resume, LinkedIn, portfolio, job search, applying, negotiating, networking, etcetera. So this career strategy lab program, I founded it because I noticed a problem. I am a researcher, and I can’t help but notice things.

Sarah Doody [00:02:30]: And I noticed this problem in, my industry of user experience and product design where a lot of people were asking me for advice about this. This is going back to 2017, so it’s not like I just started doing this 6 months ago. And over, you know, that time period from 2017 until now, I have been applying my user research and design skills to creating this essentially product, the job search accelerator inside career strategy lab. And as a part of that, it’s it’s become bigger than me. So I had to hire a team. And in order to serve as many people as possible at a time, I had to hire some coaches. And I made a decision early on that I wanted to hire people that had, number 1, existing coaching experience, because that is a very important skill set. Right? But, also, I really wanted these people to bring skills and experience to the table that maybe I was not as experienced in.

Sarah Doody [00:03:52]: And part of kind of the the mindset or philosophy, I guess, you could say, that I have and that informs this whole career strategy lab job search accelerator is that in your career, you have to think of yourself like a product, what I often refer to as the product of you. And I say this because, you know, after working in this industry for so long, I see a lot of parallels between startups and and products that the companies are selling whether it’s like apps or digital services, etcetera. There’s a lot of parallels between creating and marketing and selling a product that apply directly to candidates essentially marketing and selling themselves to companies. And so just to give you a quick visual, you know, this whole product of you concept, if you think of a Venn diagram, at the center is you, the product of you. And in the three circles, we have the element of design. Right? Because all products need these three things. Great products need design. That’s gonna help, number 1, inform what what features are a part of that product, even the the aesthetics and and things like that, what it does, how it works.

Sarah Doody [00:05:26]: Right? So the design, then we need marketing. Right? Great great products can exist, but no one will know about them unless they have great marketing behind them. Right? And then we need an element of sales. Right? Because products aren’t necessarily gonna sell themselves. Right? At some point, there needs to be, like, a sales strategy and mechanism behind that product. And so when I think of you as a product in your job search and in your career, I think that we need to be focusing on, okay, what is the design of me? Meaning, what are my skills? What are my features? What are my benefits? Etcetera. Marketing. Well, what message is your resume? LinkedIn, job search, portfolio, what you say on LinkedIn, etcetera.

Sarah Doody [00:06:17]: What’s that sending? And then sales, which sales is not sleazy. It’s really about relationships and really leveraging relationships to help you close the deal. In this case, get the job. So I wanted to bring up that philosophy of the product of you, because it’s really gonna help you understand why I intentionally decided not to have the coaches inside Career Strategy Lab be UX people. So before we get to that though, I wanna give you an analogy. So let’s imagine you’re getting married, and you are gonna hire a wedding planner. So, do you want to hire someone that’s been married before? Or do you want to hire someone who is really great at planning, and maybe they’ve planned 200 weddings versus someone who’s just planned their own wedding. Right? You probably want to work with the person that is really hyper focused on wedding planning.

Sarah Doody [00:07:31]: Right? Because they’re going to bring years of experience of planning so many types of weddings, and they are gonna have that amazing collection of knowledge and experience that is going to help them plan the best wedding for you and whatever your, you know, wishes and desires and and criteria for your wedding are because they bring that wealth of experience from their hyper focus on wedding planning. Right? For sure, you can hire your, you know, friend or whoever that got married once, but they don’t have that same knowledge. Right? So that analogy really applies to career strategy lab because it’s the it’s about having the right skills and all that head knowledge of seeing what’s worked and what’s it, what has not worked for a bunch of people versus having a bunch of experience in say user experience, but maybe never having helped people in their job search. Right? Do do you want the person that’s been working in UX for 5 or 10 years, but has never coached people in their job search or never hired anyone? Or do you wanna learn from the people that have helped thousands of people and thus seen thousands of resumes, thousands of portfolios, etcetera, and had experience in hiring people. Right? So I just wanted to start off with that analogy now. Going back to our Venn diagram, the whole structure of Career Strategy Labs job search accelerator is to walk you through designing the product of you, marketing the product of you, and selling the product of you. And when I brought on additional coaches to help me inside career strategy lab, I was really looking for people that fit into one of those 3 buckets. I, myself, am kind of the design expert, I guess you could say, and the user experience expert.

Sarah Doody [00:09:46]: Because I do think it’s important that if you are looking for a job in the world of user experience or product design, that there is value in learning and being coached by someone who has worked in that industry and understands what hiring managers, recruiters, etcetera, in that industry are looking for, especially when it comes to portfolios, etcetera. Also, though, I wanted to find coaches that could complement my skill set and be experts in marketing and sales. And so, you know, looking at the team that, works with me, the coaches inside Career Strategy Lab, they really fill those 2 other circles in the Venn diagram of marketing and sales. We have Becca who has worked in sales for decades, and she’s really great at coaching people how to sell themselves and deal with things in, like, job searches such as, like, handling maybe objections that people might have in the job search. Well, but you don’t have this experience. Okay. Well, maybe you don’t have experience in that certain specific thing, but how can we reframe previous experience to help people see, oh, wait. Even though this person doesn’t exactly match this thing I’m looking for, because you reframed other experience, it helps them see what you do bring to the table.

Sarah Doody [00:11:22]: So Becca is excellent at helping you frame your experience at overcoming mindset stuff when it comes to relationships or networking and things like that. She’s really great at helping you communicate the story of who you are and what you do as you are networking. And then we have Erin who is kind of both, I would say. Erin is really great at marketing and she’s really great at sales, and I think a common thread of Erin’s experience really boils down to storytelling. Erin actually has a background in comedy, and there are so many parallels between comedy and your your job search. Although, you may not think so, but confidence comes up so much in your job search and dealing with rejection. And if if you think of comedy, great comedians need to be really awesome storytellers. They need to deal with rejection, and they need to be really great at improvising and communicating, and Erin is really awesome at helping people inside Career Strategy Lab do all of those things.

Sarah Doody [00:12:35]: And as a result of doing all those things, your confidence grows tremendously. And then we have Steph who has been with me for a long time since 2021. She’s been kind of off and on coaching inside Career Strategy Lab, and Steph comes from higher education and also has a background not in, kind of, the career services element of higher education, but also hiring people herself in in various previous roles. And so she has awesome experience when it comes to really that marketing element and looking at your marketing materials, essentially, your resume, your portfolio, your LinkedIn, all of the the marketing assets essentially, and helping you ensure that they are telling a consistent story of who you are and what you do, and most importantly that they are not just scratching the surface because most people struggle in their job search because their resume, LinkedIn, etcetera sounds like everyone else. And when you stand sound like everyone else, you’re not going to stand out. Right? So, we help you reframe your experience and lock in that marketing for the product of you, so you don’t sound like everyone else. Because think of, like, TV commercials or ads you’ve seen when products don’t sound like all the other products and all the other marketing messages, though there those are the ones that you remember. Right? That’s why certain Super Bowls ads stick with you and others don’t, because they didn’t sound like everyone else.

Sarah Doody [00:14:18]: Right? So design, marketing, and sales. Those are the 3 areas that our coaches are experts in, and collectively that helps you design, market, and sell the product of you. And like I said, since I am the founder and CEO of this whole operation here, I have definitely taught the coaches a lot about user experience. I would probably confidently hire each of them to work on a user experience project with me because now after, you know, months years of working with me, they have been learning user experience. So if you’re wondering, well, how can someone who hasn’t literally done user experience look at my portfolio and give me feedback? Rest assured that they have seen hundreds of portfolios. I have coached them on what user experience is and the difference between what might be in a user research portfolio versus a UX writer or content strategy versus product designer or something. And, also, we’re working as a coaching team. Quite often we are in our Slack channel discussing the specifics of, you know, so and so’s resume or so and so’s portfolio, and bringing our collective knowledge to offer that person advice, feedback, etcetera.

Sarah Doody [00:15:52]: So that’s how I think there is so much value in having a coaching team that are not just, you know, working in the nitty gritty of user experience and maybe each of them has 20 years of experience in the industry, well, that’s great. But if they’ve never been on the hiring side or they’re not good at marketing or the they’re not good at sales, then they don’t have the knowledge and the experience that is necessary to sell and market and design the product of you. Right? And I think this is why maybe a lot of people come to us after they have sought one off feedback from kind of mentors and other sources in the the industry of user experience and product design, sure, they might get feedback, but oftentimes that feedback is so much through the lens of user experience. It’s like change this font size, make this bigger, make this smaller, blah blah blah. But it’s not thinking strategically about no. What is the marketing strategy of your resume? And when it comes to relationships, okay, what are we doing to really build authentic relationships with people and leverage that in our job search? And so many other things that, you know, someone that maybe is only working in user experience, like I said, is just giving you kinda design y feedback, but that that’s only one of the 3 circles in our Venn diagram. Right? So you need to get that holistic approach to your job search to make sure that, number 1, you’re clear on the design of the product of you. Number 2, you’re marketing the product of you very clearly, very powerfully, very authentically, and then you’re selling the product of you through interactions you’re having, relationships you’re building, etcetera.

Sarah Doody [00:18:03]: Alright. So to wrap up, I hope today’s episode has helped you think differently about who you might invite into helping you in your job search and why potentially a non user experience coach might be your secret weapon. Because, like I said, there’s so much more to standing out and getting hired than just getting feedback that is kind of design oriented. And you really need people who can help you understand what makes really powerful marketing, what it takes to build authentic relationships, and and do that, kind of, sales element that we talked about earlier. And so, maybe, if you’re struggling in your job search, I would ask you, well, who have you been asking for feedback from? If it’s only people who are working in your industry, and they have never worked on the hiring side, or they have never coached people through job searches, then that might be a signal that maybe you need to change your approach and look to people who maybe have more experience in marketing and sales, for example, back back to our Venn diagram. Alright. So, if you have more questions for us about our coaching team, their experience, etcetera, just ask us. We’re an open book.

Sarah Doody [00:19:36]: We’d love to answer any questions you have. You can contact us on LinkedIn. You can use the contact form on our website. We’ll link to both of those in the show notes, and I hope this helps you think differently about your current job search or if you are finding yourself in one in the future. Alright. And before I go, if you have a friend who’s maybe in a job search or current or former colleague, this might be a really awesome episode to share with them, especially if maybe they’ve kind of been grinding at their job search for a while and not getting the results they are looking for. Potentially, the thing that could make a difference is that maybe they do need to stop asking for advice from peers in their industry and consider looking, you know, at something similar to what we offer, where we’re looking at things holistically through, of course, design, but also through the lens of marketing and sales. So you can design, market, and sell the product of you.

Sarah Doody [00:20:47]: Alright. I will catch you in the next episode. Have a great rest of your day. See you later.

Sarah Doody [00:20:53]: 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.