How to Get a UX Design Job: Create a compelling portfolio, submit a stand-out application, and ace the interview to land your user experience dream job
Page 7
About this portfolio and my design process (1 page)
Case studies (five case studies that vary based on the job description – 10-12 pages)
What people say about me (testimonials) (1 page)
“Thank You” page with contact info
I include a lot of case studies but you don’t need that many. Remember, I’m old. You need two or three good solid case studies in your portfolio. Beyond that, focus on quality, not quantity. Don’t show any work that you feel is subpar or that you can’t tell a good story about. Explain your process for every project (it’s okay if it’s different from project to project…the design process is heavily influenced by timeline, budget, type of project, etc.). Try to show project diversity if you can. It’s nice to have examples from different platforms and industries, like websites, web apps, native mobile apps, retail, financial services, etc.
Don’t be afraid to include personal projects that show off your creativity and thought process. One of the case studies in my portfolio is the website I built for my husband’s business (he does sporting event halftime shows with our dogs). For that project, I used tools that I don’t normally use in my day job, like WordPress and Google Analytics, and I also handled all his branding and marketing assets, like logos, business cards, banners, t-shirts, etc. I did the website singlehandedly, so all the design decisions were mine (for better or for worse!). And it’s easy for me to talk about the results, because I’m tracking them first-hand every day in Google Analytics.
Case study content
Remember middle school math class and “show your work”? It’s applicable here. Just like your math teacher had no way of knowing how you got to that answer if you didn’t show your work, the person looking at your portfolio has no way of knowing how you got to that polished pixel-perfect screenshot in your case study unless you show how it all evolved.
You can use the handy-dandy STAR approach to structure your portfolio content.
Situation
Set the scene. Include the company name (and what they do, if it’s not clear) and a project description. What was the business goal of the project? If you were redesigning something, include a “before” picture of the website/app (especially if it’s horribly ugly).
Task
What was your role on the project? What were you responsible for? What deliverables were you tasked with creating? Who else did you work closely with (other UXers, business stakeholders, developers)?
Actions
What was your design process? What did you learn about your users? What design decisions did you make and why?
This is where you get into the details about what you did. Show your understanding/empathy for the user and how you reached your design solution. Include photos or screenshots of the process and talk about any tricky design challenges you came across and how you solved them. It’s okay to talk about mistakes and how you dealt with them, too. Mistakes are made on every UX project – the design process is messy.
Some things you could show:
Screenshots (before & after)
Site maps
Sketches (whiteboard or paper)
Wireframe/prototype screens
Analytics screenshots
Storyboards
Journey maps
User/task flows
I don’t know why, but UX people love to show (and see) photos with Post-it Notes in them in their portfolios and on their websites. I guess Post-it Notes are sort of the unofficial UX symbol, the “UX bird.” If you’ve worked on a project where you used Post-it Notes, and you have a photo of them that helps you tell your story, add it to your portfolio. It’ll catch the recruiter’s eye, if nothing else.
Results
Show the final design, the solution you landed on. What was the outcome of the project (did it meet the business goals)? If possible, link the outcome to specific actions you took or decisions you made during the project. If your team did usability testing you can also talk about those results. What did you learn from the experience?
Plus a Little UCD
Step through the user-centered design process in your head to help you fill in any gaps. You could mention:
Collaborating with the business to understand their goals.
Conducting research to understand users’ goals/needs.
Sketching and designing solutions (user journey, storyboarding, task flows, wireframing, prototyping, visual design, iterating).
Usability testing.
Working with engineering to build out design (creating design assets or specs or style guides).
Measuring results (metrics or other success criteria as defined at the beginning of the project).
UXers love to talk about the importance of telling stories. Your portfolio is a great place for storytelling. Bring your projects to life, like you were explaining them to someone in person and spreading the project artifacts out on a table in front of them.
NDA Work
Some of the projects I’m working on right now aren’t available to show to the public. They’re either product designs in progress or internal applications that’ll never be accessible to the public. So I won’t be putting any screenshots of them on my website where anybody could see them or happen across them in a Google search. But I’m happy to talk about my overall process on my website and show examples of the types of deliverables I produce and screenshots of work that has launched and is already out there for the world to see.
Work that isn’t public yet or that’s under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is tricky to show in a portfolio. Most employers are going to respect it when you protect the work of other employers or clients, understanding that if they were to hire you, you’d protect their work like that, too. There are some ways around it, most of them subpar, such as recreating the work with different content/branding, blurring out screenshots, or substituting all the content with Lorum Ipsum text. But looking at a wireframe that just says Header 1, Hero Image, Client 1, Client 2, Lorum Ipsum blah blah blah isn’t going to tell hiring managers much about why you made the design decisions you did. It just looks like a generic template at that point.
If you signed an NDA or an intellectual property agreement before you started designing something and it’s now public, it should be safe to put the screenshots in your portfolio. Anybody can see the screens now. If it’s something behind a login but it’s still available to the public (meaning somebody can pay for it or sign up for an account and get access to it), I’d also feel just fine putting that in my portfolio. If you still feel uncomfortable, add that case study to the PDF version of your portfolio but don’t put it up online anywhere (or password-protect the PDF).
Pro Tips
If you have a website, make sure you include the URL in your portfolio (I put mine in the footer).
Don’t use colored backgrounds on your PDF pages! If people want to print out your portfolio they will be irritated. I made the original cover page of my portfolio turquoise blue with white text, then later (after I had already sent it to somebody) realized how much ink that would use up.
Put page numbers on your portfolio, too. If you’re walking through it with somebody you want to be able to say, “If you flip to page 7, I can walk you through the case study for Company X…”
Like a good UXer, test everything out before sending it to somebody else. Email the PDF to yourself and print it out. Email the URL to yourself and click on it. View your portfolio from your phone.
Start keeping a project scrapbook (a folder on your laptop is fine) and update it as you work on projects. Include project artifacts/deliverables, notes about major milestones/decisions, design sketches, wireframe/prototype screenshots, plus photos of whiteboard sessions, workshops, user research, usability tests, etc. It is so much easier to do this while you’re still working on the project or very shortly after (within two weeks of wrapping up) versus trying to dredge up all these details months or even years later.
9
Cover Le
tter
Cover letter, whaaat? Didn’t those go out of style in the nineties?
Believe it or not, many of today’s online job applications require that you attach a cover letter (or type one into a text area on the application). There may also be times when you contact a recruiter or hiring manager directly via email about a job, which is essentially a cover letter as well.
Cover letters, albeit one more step in the tedious job hunting process, are the perfect opportunity for you to tie everything together. They are direct communication between you and the company, and a good one will bring context and personality to your resume and portfolio.
Like your resume and portfolio, your cover letter should be customized for every job you apply for. In fact, it should be the most customized thing you create. Don’t just crank it out as an afterthought before you hit submit on the job application.
Your goal is to convince the hiring manager that you are interested in their job, not just any job you can get.
For starters, stick with the same design style as your resume and portfolio (the pretty PDF versions). Use the same fonts, colors, and spacing. You could actually use the exact same header from your resume for your cover letter. Save the cover letter as a PDF so that all of your documents are in the same easy-to-open format.
The entire letter should be no longer than one page.
There is no one-size-fits-all cover letter, and how it’s received will depend on who’s reading it. It’s going to be very subjective. But don’t let that scare you into writing a safe, boring cover letter! Aim for a conversational non-pushy tone, which will go a long way toward making your cover letter stand out from everybody else’s lame-ass stole-it-from-a-template cover letter.
Here’s a good format to follow:
Greeting
If at all possible, avoid starting the letter with “To Whom It May Concern” or “Dear Sir or Madam.” That just sounds awful. It’s like getting junk mail in your mailbox. In 1957.
LinkedIn makes it relatively easy to find a contact name to address the letter to, whether it’s the hiring manager or the HR person in charge of hiring (if you’re applying to a small company or startup without a big UX team, this may be the only applicable name you can find.)
If you’re at a total loss, go with something like “Dear Hiring Manager” or “Dear HR Manager,” or “Dear Human Resources team.” You could even just say “Hello,” or leave the greeting off entirely.
Top section
Write one or two paragraphs that talk about why you’re interested in the position and what you admire about the company or what you have in common with it. It’s okay to sound excited as long as you’re not over the top about it. It’s also nice to let them know where you heard about the job posting (as long as you don’t do it like in the “Lame” example below).
Try to give a specific reason for why the job is exciting to you in the first paragraph. Also, make sure you include the job title (copy it exactly from the job posting) in the first sentence, so that a recruiter or HR person who is skimming it can quickly understand the context.
Example first sentence:
Lame: “I am applying for the UX Designer position as seen on LinkedIn.”
Good: “I’m interested in joining your team as a UX Designer because I’ve been a fan of
Find ways to align your values to their mission statement. Here’s an example:
“I am impressed with your company’s mission and passion – my 16-year-old son has just started researching colleges and the thought of him weighed down by student loan debt stresses me out.
If you’ve read great reviews about the company on Glassdoor or a complimentary article in the New York Times, let them know. It shows that you did your due diligence researching them and that you appreciate why their company would be an awesome place to work.
Middle section
Your cover letter should not just regurgitate your resume in paragraph form. The person reading your cover letter already has your resume and can refer to it if they want.
That being said, it’s okay to mention your resume with something like this: “As you will see from the attached resume, I have consulted with several startups on fast-paced and innovative web and mobile projects.”
Include a paragraph or two that highlights your experience, education (if relevant), and anything else that demonstrates why you’d be a great fit. Don’t actually say “As you can see, I’d be a great fit” because that’s presumptuous, and sounds like you copied it right off a cover letter template. Let the recruiter or hiring manager reach that conclusion for themselves.
If the job description asks for SaaS knowledge, include a sentence or two about any SaaS projects you’ve worked on. If the description mentions specific design activities (like user research or prototyping) or deliverables (like customer journey maps) briefly mention your experience with them. If it’s relevant, talk about your experience collaborating with users or engineers or stakeholders. Bonus points if you can weave any or all of this naturally into a paragraph about your design process and/or user-centered design.
Also, try to read between the lines of the job posting to see what they really need. A startup is going to need somebody who’s independent and proactive and willing to jump in and take on whatever is necessary. A large UX team is going to need somebody who plays nicely with others and is good at following an established process, presenting to stakeholders, collaborating with other UXers, etc. Show that you understand what they need.
Don’t parrot the job description back at them. If the job description reads, “We are looking for someone who has a passion for creating beautiful digital interfaces from start to finish,” do not say “I am passionate about creating beautiful digital interfaces from start to finish.”
Bottom section
This just needs to be a paragraph summing things up and thanking them for their time and consideration.
You can also let them know you look forward to hearing from them, but don’t be obnoxious about it.
Obnoxious: “I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you soon.” (Even worse: “I’ll call you to schedule an interview.”)
Better: “I appreciate your consideration and look forward to hearing from you.”
Wrap up with something simple like “Best,” “Sincerely,” “Warmest Regards,” or my personal favorite, “Best to you and the team.”
10
Website
If you’re designing for the web and calling yourself a UX designer, it does make sense to have a website. It’s also nice to have a home base that you can point people to from social media and where you can showcase your portfolio. You can use Google Analytics to track visitors to your website, too.
Mine is just a simple WordPress site hosted on Bluehost (bluehost.com) – I chose a theme (Avada) that I could customize (colors, fonts, layout, etc.) because some of the WordPress themes look slick but are terrible from a usability standpoint. You don’t want to represent yourself as this badass UX designer but then have a website that’s hard to use or has obvious design issues. I want some control, man.
I don’t have any experience with Squarespace or Wix or any of the other website builders so I can’t comment on them, but it doesn’t matter what you create your site in as long as it looks nice on the front-end. You’re not applying for a coding job, so who cares if your backend code has Squarespace comments all over it?
The deals are changing all the time, but while I’m writing this Bluehost has a deal for $3.95/month web hosting plus a free domain name (and it comes with website building tools and free WordPress installations). And the Avada theme I bought was $60, so you’re not looking at a huge investment here. You can use a free WordPress theme if you want, but you may not be able to customize it as much as you�
�d like. Make sure whatever theme you pick is responsive and looks good on your phone.
I’m lucky enough to have a unique name so I got lisamurnan.com as my domain name, but you might have to be more creative. You could include your middle name or initial along with your first/last name, or come up with a company name or add the word “consulting” to the end of your name or something like that.
Site Layout and Design
My site is very simple and just has a home page, an “About” page, a “Work With Me” page (with sub-pages for my process and the different consulting services I offer), a “Contact” page (but contact info should also be on every page), and a section for this book and its resources.
You can include a blog if you think you’ll be able to keep up with it, plus anything else that you feel would add to your site’s user experience. It depends on who your target audience is and what you’re trying to do.
Keep your site really clean-looking. If you’re not a visual designer don’t stress out – it doesn’t need to have fancy logos or graphics on it. I just used a Google font for my “logo” (my name), found some cool designy-looking art on Shutterstock for my hero & background images, then scattered photos (both my own and free photos from Pixabay) throughout the other pages.
For the headers and body content, I used two Google fonts (one serif and one sans serif) that looked good together – if you search on “google font combinations” you’ll get some great recommendations.
Then I modified the default colors for fonts, buttons, etc. and voila, a nice professional website.