I knew that my search for my first official UX gig was going to be challenging, but honestly, I didn’t expect it to be this difficult.
Maybe in a different time, it wouldn’t have been this tough, be many companies are still reeling from 2020, and perhaps hiring junior talent isn’t on the top of their list of priorities.
So far, I’ve learned that it’s absolutely possible to put too much time into your job search activities. I’m about to end my first month of job searching, and I’ve found that each time I log onto Linkedin and start scrolling or visit a job board, I start to get more irritable and depressed. This tells me that it’s time to take a break and focus on something that I can accomplish right now. I can’t force junior design job listings to appear, or for people to respond to my messages and applications, but I can cook my kids one of their favorite foods, or workout, or do something else that’s still important to mine and my family’s wellbeing. Job searching isn’t everything.
Another somewhat frustrating discovery I’ve made is that many companies want to hire senior, experienced designers, but very few want to participate in building one. I think we can all agree that the modern hiring system is fairly broken, and it’s all too apparent in the heavily gatekept UX scene.
I think we’ve all heard something similar to this Peter Schutz quote: “hire character, train skill”. It sounds great in theory, and I’d say many hiring managers, if asked, would agree with such a statement. However, finding companies/hiring managers that live by such a statement has been no easy task. In fact, I haven’t found them yet.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve run into plenty of senior designers and other professionals who agree with the above statement wholeheartedly. And I deeply appreciate them. They know what it’s like to be eager to grow, learn, and have the characteristics of a great designer, but be stuck at square one. I deeply appreciate advocates like this. Keep doing what you do!
I’m by no means throwing in the towel, and I’m still in the early stages of this part of my journey, but I’m still searching for that company can see through the apparent lack of experience and can appreciate what eager young designers truly have to offer.
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