Get Into UX: A foolproof guide to getting your first user experience job

Why new designers struggle to get into the UX field

The UX field has been booming for years now, and as a result, a landslide of new talent has flooded the market. All of the newcomers want to learn UX quickly, within weeks or months, and get a paid job. Only a fraction of them succeed. Why? Well, UX is too complex of a discipline to graduate into; it requires months and years of commitment to become good.

On the one hand, you have young designers struggling to find jobs, and on the other hand, managers who can’t find enough experienced talent. I personally attribute this to gurus, bootcamps and other get-into-ux-quick schemes that overpromise, but never really make anyone fully market ready. If you're reading this book, you may be one of them.

While the new wave of UX designers struggle to get noticed, you have UX team managers who are virtually starved for qualified, confident and knowledgeable entry-level or junior designers.

I am one of those design team managers and today I am speaking to you, the newcomer who may not know where to begin. During my typical work week, I might review ten to twenty (sometimes more) candidates, and it’s gutting when only a small fraction of them could be considered for the role.

I’ll now walk you through the reasons why these candidates can’t get in; I’ve observed these same issues over many years of hiring UX designers and researchers.

1. Lacking a fundamental understanding of UX

Many designers tend to use experience design methods and frameworks on repeat without considering if such tools are appropriate in the context.

When reviewing entry-level portfolios, I see case studies that all use the same workflow and showcase the same artefacts: user interviews (often questionnaires), personas (often with elements that designers would never use to inform their work), empathy maps (that have no connection to anything else in the project), sitemaps, wireframes, mockups, etc.

UX stands for quality. It also means that to achieve quality, you will need to use different tools based on what’s most appropriate and cost-effective. It's widespread to see juniors who use a set toolkit without understanding why those tools are needed or how the information captured would inform their next steps.

UX is deeper than a set of skills, it is a complex network of understanding, a combination of analytical and emotional intelligence, that feeds into this work.

2. Mistaking UI for UX

Roughly nine out of ten junior UX portfolios I review focus on UI outcomes, patterns, branding and other glossy material. While these artefacts are part of the user experience design, they are not as important as the underlying user research.

When it comes to good UX, UI might be one of many ways to improve it, but it is not the only one, and it’s not comparable to the full scope of UX. When working with junior designers, I constantly challenge them to consider if the UX work they are busy with could be done without adding a UI solution – the usual answer is no. That's precisely the issue.

In reality, UX is a process to deliver a better user experience. While designing experiences you might not even get to work on anything interactive, and that's OK!

The key is to apply proven methods to understand the users deeply, and then provide them with better ways to achieve their goals. That’s not always accomplished through UI design.

3. Lacking commercial experience

If you are hoping to gather enough commercial experience after you finish your course, studies, bootcamp, books, etc., you have started too late.

In practice, you should be freelancing, doing projects, spending every waking hour practising UX and ideally doing so for real businesses, their customers and users then capturing it all mercilessly. I will share more information later on about how you might do this without burning yourself out.  

4. Listening to yay and nay-sayers

The industry is full of loud, highly opinionated UX specialists who have made it either too quickly or have been doing UX for a decade or more. They’ve become successful but also bitter and uninterested in new designers, methods and trends. As a result they are detached from the reality and struggles that the new generation of designers face when entering this competitive job market. They are the nay-sayers.

As gatekeepers, they have power over who gets their foot in the door in the industry, but their decisions are often extremely biased, making it difficult for newcomers to become successful.

On the other hand, you have the yay-sayers or, as I call them, false enablers. They are the inexperienced designers who evangelise and try to teach others the UX before they fully understand it or can caveat it end-to-end. They are giving advice when they, themselves, are not yet experienced enough to understand the field and its complexities.

Both parties are often out of touch. Ultimately, the contradictions and general noise distract juniors from becoming confident enough in what they know. It stunts progress and leads to unrealistic expectations and frustrations. 

5. Being too picky

UX is a career path that takes a lot of effort and time. These days, many learning providers promise instant job opportunities at big tech, FANG (Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google), trendy startups and other companies with fantastic benefits. These are the companies that look killer on anyone’s resume.

However, many of those great opportunities are location-dependent; they require years of demonstrable experience and can be counted on fingers…globally. Even if juniors aim for something less, the number of seats in established design cultures will always be limited, and those seats will mainly require experienced professionals.

Entry-level internships and graduate programmes are also too few to count on, and there’s never a guarantee they will lead to extensions or permanent opportunities.

6. Focusing on short term opportunities

As I hinted before, user experience is not a discipline a person graduates into overnight. It takes time to be ready for it and even once you’re ready, it could take years or decades to become proficient at most (and probably never all) UX skills.

This truth is often unsaid when junior designers are learning and trying to break into the field.

After finishing a course or bootcamp, it won’t take long for a designer to realise that the market requires a deeper knowledge - there are simply too few openings to support a sudden influx of graduates and newcomers. Frustrated, they apply to every opening they can find and usually end up doing UI/UX or UI work, rather than truly user-centred UX.

Starting with UI is one of the common ways you can break into the field and then develop your skills, but it comes with a price. This one, and many other considerations, will be deconstructed throughout this book.

7. Poor portfolio case studies

When I say ‘poor portfolio case studies’, I mean any of the following: 

Case studies unrelated to the prospective employer, their industry, complexity, design maturity, type of work and so on. For example, if all the cases in your portfolio are desktop UI/UX work, but the place you're applying for is a mobile app maker, then chances are you won't get in.

Not telling a compelling story that engages and explains the work you’ve done to the hiring managers. I’ll expand on this in chapter V: Demonstrate the evidence.

Mistaking UI work for UX by focussing on the glossy outputs instead of the proper way to arrive at more meaningful outcomes.

Displaying questionable work examples (such as illustrations, branding, video work, etc.). If you do so, make sure it's an obvious add-on, or better yet, put it in a blog post alongside actual UX case studies.

Focusing on quantity over quality. These case studies have a lot of flashy, floating mockups but very little storytelling and substance that would showcase your understanding of UX, of the issue at hand, of the user needs, and other factors.

Case studies that are either too general or made to impress your peer designers. Many entry level designers learn by copying the more established ones. What they often miss is the consideration of who is the target audience for the portfolio itself. For example, did you consider that your portfolio needs to speak to the hiring manager, not to other designers? Ironically, junior designers often forget to apply UX design methods to their own portfolios. This shows immediately!

8. Looking for a silver bullet

Many designers-to-be are looking for the silver bullet when it comes to UX education.

I could bet that you picked up this book thinking that it would singlehandedly open the doors into a UX career. That’s only partially correct. You'll need to invest time in learning, practicing and collecting evidence to become hireable.

UX is an extensive field and a collection of a lot of complex skillsets that can only be developed through rounds of real-life exposure. Putting those skills into practice and solving real issues is what will grow your inner designer and do so exponentially.

Many designers opt for a single source of truth and expect excellent outcomes, but exposing yourself to many appropriate sources of knowledge will help you to become a pro sooner.

In summary

Are you guilty of any of these mistakes? 

If you can’t recognise which of these issues are holding you back, you could seek feedback from more senior peers or UX design communities on social media. Ensure that you also ask for feedback throughout the process of applying for jobs and interviewing.

The idea here is to capture insights as though you were approaching a UX project, and to commit to remediate issues with appropriate actions. Addressing these mistakes can boost your chances of landing a UX job.

In the following few chapters, we'll dive deeper into exactly how to fix these mistakes.

Is this book for you?

This book is for you if you want to:

Set yourself apart from the majority of entry and junior-level applicants by genuinely understanding what UX is and what it isn't. It's time to distil it into an effective workflow that adds clarity and pulls you out of the crowd of the unsure.

Set up your UX career for long term success; learn the craft that is challenging, rewarding and future-proof.

Overcome the self-sabotaging actions by focusing on the right things. Have you ever wondered why some UX designers get ahead quickly, while others take much longer? Hint: it's rarely to do with external factors.

Shorten your journey from beginner to pro by using field-proven strategy and specific tactics. You’ll learn how to go from awareness to 'can do' without getting stuck.

Ace your UX portfolio, resumes, and interviews by showcasing your skills in the right way and for the right audiences. We'll unpack the essentials to get your foot in the door. 

This book will not:

Make you a professional UX designer or user researcher overnight. You need to have a growth mindset, a passion for user-centricity and you should understand that this is a journey which will require unrelenting practice.

Improve your UI skills or shorten the time you must put in to develop the technical design skills. If you want to learn a UI craft, reading a book is not the best place to start. Granted, I'll share some great resources that will help you develop those skills, but it won't be the primary focus of this book. Some UI skills can be acquired from books, such as technical and process skills like design systems or interaction principles. But that is not what I plan to cover. The best way I can recommend that you acquire UI skills is through inspiration from other great designers. As you grind through pixel-pushing repetitions (however harsh that sounds, it comes down to putting in long hours of experimentation with… pixels), eventually your UI and visual skills will improve, you'll develop your own sense, taste and style, and if it’s what you're after, you'll become a master UI designer. 

Be a single source of truth. As a UX designer, and a professional it-depends'er, you'll realise that there are many sources of truths. You'll need to explore many inputs until you can connect the dots and converge into a cohesive narrative for your users. It's the same with this book – it's another set of information signals that should validate what you already know, correct the rest, but more importantly, point you in the right direction and toward other actionable resources.

How to use this book to get the most out of it

To get the most out of this book, I'd strongly recommend reading it from cover to cover, even if you're a seasoned UX designer or researcher. 

The first part of the book is very slow in its development, and the latter gains a sort of breakneck speed that makes it quite inconsistent. That's intended. 

I wanted to ensure that we cover any and all gaps in your understanding before getting into actionable advice. As noted earlier, a lack of fundamental understanding of UX is one of the key issues keeping junior designers out, so it’s important that you know where you stand as a designer and what skills you still need to develop. 

The book is therefore split into 4 parts, each containing a handful of chapters with specific advice:

I. Where you are

If in doubt, UX it. By that I mean, that you shouldn’t follow your instinct to jump ahead and start working on any immediate fixes. Instead, as you would during the start of a typical UX project, I want you to go through this chapter with an exploratory discovery mindset. Start with understanding what UX is and what it isn't. This is crucial in order to align on what you should expect from a career in user-centered design and research.

This primer section sets the foundation for the transformational things to come.

II. Where you’re going

Without knowing your end goal, how will you know what steps you need to take to progress? There are a lot of niches and industries within UX to choose from, and the journey to your ideal role may vary depending on which one you’re interested in.

So in this part, I’ll help you plan your career development. You’ll set a vision and an end goal to ensure your long term success. Most importantly, you’ll then define the smaller steps to that goal so that you can start taking action now.

III. How to get there

In order to land a UX job and arrive at your goals, you must gain enough experience in UX. 

This starts with learning. You need to expose yourself to the appropriate material that will ensure you genuinely understand what the UX process is about, and more importantly how to do it. In this section you'll find handpicked learning resources, as well as advice on how best to approach them.

But passive learning is not enough. You need to apply the frameworks, methods and tools learned; practice your UX skills. Practice is essential to breaking into the field because the use cases you learn about in courses or bootcamps are far from real-world situations. As you practice your skills you will also gather evidence that you can do UX, which is what you need to get hired. Not sure where or how to practice? I'll share examples of how to find those opportunities and how to use them to boost your portfolio. 

You'll soon understand why your portfolio (evidence) is the single most important thing that works as a testament to the strength of your UX skills and commercial experience. I’ll also advise you on how to document the challenges, research, process and outcomes as evidence for your portfolio case studies. 

With your portfolio sorted, the last major hurdle to getting hired is the application process which I’ll break down in detail so you know what to expect. To succeed in this process you need to find the opportunities that are suitable for you, then market yourself and your capabilities correctly. I’ll share specific advice on how to approach all of this so that you can nail your interviews and get hired.

IV. What to do once you get there (the bonus part)

What’s next once you land that first ideal job? You continue to build forward momentum in your career. I’m including this section to help you focus on the right things to get ahead once you are in your first UX job.

This book is peppered with online resources and links to supporting materials. If anything I wrote or included raises your eyebrows, engage with it. Reflect and note it down. Don't just note the things that pleasantly surprise you but also anything you disagree with. You can learn from both examples, if not now then maybe later on as you get more experience and connect more dots.

As you will soon understand, learning does matter but it is what you do with what you’ve learnt that matters more. The secret sauce to getting a UX job is taking action. And on that note, let's get into it.

Part 1

Where you are

Chapter 1

Understand what UX is and what it isn’t

"If I had only one hour to solve a problem, I would spend up to two-thirds of that hour in attempting to define what the problem is. ¹"

Unknown professor at Yale University

Every entry-level, junior and sometimes even senior designer will make one particular mistake throughout their career. It’s especially common among those who are transitioning into UX from related fields. That mistake is misunderstanding what user experience design is.

People with minimal experience, usually on the receiving end (e.g., tech-savvy people, customers and users), tend to mistake user experience for intuitive user interfaces.

While sometimes an intuitive UI is a good user experience, there is more to UX than just UI. In fact, most UX work is invisible and hard to define.

As a precaution and without boring you to death, I'll quickly run through the vital aspects of what makes UX so powerful. In just a few pages, you'll be able to distinguish what user experience is and what it is not. This information should then help form a strong baseline for you to continue further. 

In the long run, understanding the fundamentals will also allow you to plough through the interviews and truly impress potential employers. How? You’ll stand out from the crowd of designers who don’t have a strong grasp on what UX is.

1 This quote is often credited to Albert Einstein in one or all of the following forms: If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution. If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. "Given one hour to save