8 things those successful job-landed UX students have: a Design Mentor's observation

Hi there 👋

I was a bit quiet on an email recently, as I'm working hard on my day job as a designer/side hustling as a content creator, and also trying hard to not be replaced by AI. I'll share an experiment I did about AI later.

As for today, I want to share more about the happy news I got from my design mentee: she started her study as a high school teacher, and now she got a UX design job offer and officially started a designer career! Yeah!

There are a few things in common among those students who landed designer jobs, and if you know what they are, you can prep for your designer career as soon as possible.

Besides this short read, there're a few other things I'd like to share - enjoy :)
 

8 things those successful job-landed UX students have: a Design Mentor's observation

Received a message that one of my students got a design job offer! I mentored 10+ juniors and helped them transition from different industries to land design jobs, including working at multinational companies. Here're a few things I noticed that all job-landing designers have 👇

1. They knew and used their unfair advantages. A mentee is good at focusing on consuming lots of information, and she landed a research job. Another mentee used her sales skill from her previous role to negotiate and get a designer job.

2. They all have working experience. It might be a harsh truth for UX roles: if you just graduated from any school, it will be tough to find a job. UX is about solving complex problems with a team, and people with previous working experience are more likely to get a UX job.

Getting some transferable working experience will be a good starting point if you're a graduate. E.g. sales, customer service or marketing. For graphic designers, starting with brand design, marketing design, or UI will be good.

3. They all failed a few times. Nobody landed their first job from their first application. Actually, most of them started from small jobs such as a 2-weeks contract or volunteering research. Those small steps build their confidence, experience and stories for their portfolios.

4. They are all good at communication. It's not about extroverts or introverts, native speakers or non-native speakers. They could reach out and ask questions or support, and they are not afraid to say, "I don't know".

This is also an inspiration for me: communication is the most valuable skill for any professional - it's transferrable to any job and is definitely a timeless skill. Trends come and go, but the basic ways of communication haven't changed for hundreds of years.

5. They all have a mentor(not a teacher) - this is especially important for a junior designer. By talking to their mentor(me), they can map out blind spots to improve, sense-check their portfolio and receive feedback.

6. They learn design by doing it. Those mentees who were learning while doing a full-time job just found something at work to work on as a designer. They adopted the UX approaches they learned to a real problem. Others did side projects or volunteer work.

They all got a good story demonstrating their design skills and understanding to solve a problem, not just reciting the theory from books.

7. They didn't complain. They all had ups and downs. They had doubts and thought about quitting, and I'm happy that they shared these with me. They all have imposter syndrome, but none of them complained.

One of the best things I've learned from design is that there's no infinite resource like time, effort, money or people. You always need to use what you've got to achieve the best value - that is what design means.

8. They deal with constraints well. A mentee struggled to keep the learning momentum while she took a part-time job and needed to drive 8 hours per day for 2 weeks. Together, we designed an audio-learning approach so that she could learn stuff while driving (safely, for sure).

By doing that, her learning progress wasn't impacted much. Analyse the resource and make rational decisions, reflect and tweak to improve rapidly. Constraints are a designer's best friend.

What do you think? Do you find anything above that you are good at, and any other things you'd like to improve? Reply to let me know your thoughts and plz share with the people whom you think will need these 😊

What I enjoyed recently - Creating AI artwork!

I made a children's book for my daughter with #AI (via #midjourney) - in just 2 hours! Will share details soon!

Bear Academy #46 Brendan Jarvis: What I learned from podcasting
Brendan Jarvis shared what he learned from 2 years of podcasting experience on finding and interviewing top UX influencers.
Here to listen

Quote
You can learn valuable things by asking the right people the wrong questions. If you’re talking to the wrong people, it doesn’t matter what you ask.
-- Just Enough Research by Erika Hall

Thanks for reading! I'll see you in a couple of weeks :)

Bear from Auckland