Job hunting can be a painstaking process. Reading through enough job descriptions to find a few suitable roles to apply to takes hours. Not only the time and effort, but the amount of self-questioning that arises during the process is what makes it emotionally draining. The majority of people would rather make compromises in their current place than start interviewing again. However, both building experience and increasing the salary commonly requires changing employers and facing the process of marketing yourself.

A good amount of advices circling around in the industry about how to find a design job. The majority of them are either general or idealistic, and some may even harm your reputation (such as cold messaging people for referrals on social platforms). Below are a couple of tips from the design or tech realm that align with reality.

Have a clear preference of working model

Remote and hybrid models (commonly 3 days office and 2 days at home) dominate the industry since the pandemic. That gives a lot of creative freedom and saves a lot of commute time for the designers. In countries with strong tech industry (US, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Australia and so on) it shouldn’t be a problem to find a place that fits your preferences if they include remote setup. No need to compromise for an onsite-only job if you’d prefer a couple of days working from home. Set out your preferences before starting the application process, because they need to be clearly communicated during the screening calls. Please feel free to use this job preference template to crystallise your ideas.

Keep your application funnel fed

It is said that the average response rate for job applications is about 10%. If you target well, (meaning you pick jobs that your skills are matched to), it can go up to 20%. If it goes significantly higher, you have probably under-priced yourself. It can happen if someone enters the job market with too general research on the salaries. Different industries value design and tech roles differently, for a medical company for example, design is rarely seen as vital, while for a gaming company it is vital. Overall the more relaying the industry on customer perception, the higher the designer is valued.

In general, when looking at the application funnel, you may apply for around 30 out of 100 relevant job ads. The rest would fall out of your interest because it requires additional skills, does not match your preferences, or operates in an industry that is not comfortable for you, etc. Of those 30 applications, 3-6 will likely call you in for an initial interview, which is a screening call with the recruiter or internal HR person.

What the screening call is looking to find out is:

  • You can speak English and communicate clearly.
  • You are looking for a job. You would be surprised how many applicants just wants to know their price to justify their raise request for their current employer.
  • You are available within a reasonable time frame.
  • Your salary expectation falls within their budget (feel free to ask about their budget unless you have your fixed numbers).

From these 3-6 screening calls, you’ll have about 1-2 progressing forward to the next interviews, and there is usually one or two more. As you can see, you need to constantly feed the funnel with new applications until you get an offer. You can find the Job portals for UX/UI designers’ job search to feed the funnel.

How to increase the response rate?

In every stage, the number of positive responses can be increased.

  • Application stage

Make sure your CV is well-structured (you can use the CV example for design/tech jobs) and your portfolio is neat (see the portfolio structure guide), and most importantly apply only for jobs that have high keyword overlap with your CV. No point in collecting rejection by applying for only partially relevant jobs. It would just discourage and waste your time. After reading job descriptions for a few days, you will be proficient in using keywords. The use of keywords and job titles is constantly evolving, so it’s important to be aware of the current meaning of the terms and revise your CV in every two years.

  • Screening call stage

Practice some professional small chat, because these screenings are usually audio only and are quite short (10-25min). You therefore have little space to show that you have a charming personality that everyone would love to work with – and that is the other core question of this stage apart from the logistics mentioned earlier.

  • Interview stage

Be prepared with answers to the most common questions because they are not intuitive to answer well. Especially those that focus on failure and require you to give a realistic but harmless answer that fits with your career goals. A vast number of interviewers will ask variations of the same handful of questions. Have a written, printed, rehearsed answer for the most of them. The list will grow as you partake in more interview and your ability to mix and match the answers will grow as well. For starters, feel free to use the sample list with design interview questions.

Wait for the follow up email

Always wait for the follow-up email before evaluating your interview performance. Interviewing is a matchmaking process with a company, more specifically with a small group of people you’ll be working with. Just like on a date, there will only be a handful of people who will reveal their true feelings about this match. Most of them will try to get along and keep smiling, even if they decide it’s not a match in five minutes after starting the discussion. Sometimes you have a clear sense that you’re being judged (interviewer forming preconception instead of genuinely listening and connecting to the candidate), sometimes the wall is much less obvious due to the interpersonal skills of the interviewer. You’ll see clearly what happened when receiving the follow-up email (or not receiving it at all – no feedback is clear feedback).

Look for several different job titles

Filter for at least 3-5 or even more different job titles during your job search. The meaning of UX and UI changes by company, by industry and by trends. For example, the meaning of Visual Designer has shifted from Graphic Designer to UI Designer in the last couple of years. The title of UX Designer has started to shift towards UX Researcher. In the meantime, Interaction Designer became almost synonymous with UI Designer, while it was closer to what is now a UX Designer. At the same time, the generalist UX/UI Designer is most commonly referred as a Product Designer. Look around on the Job portal for UI/UX designers’ job search what is the current state of the titles in your focus area.

To be sure that you indeed apply for relevant roles, don’t just rely on the title. Always check the task list and try to locate things that you’ve done in the past. If the job description is unfamiliar, the company likely associate the role you’re searching for with a different title. For example, if a UI Designer role requires a GitHub account and front-end coding skills, that means they are actually searching for a UI Developer (AKA Front-end Developer).

Prepare a few different professional summaries

You’ll see in the UI/UX designer sample CV, that it starts with a short, professional summary (achievement summary, or elevator pitch, or highlights, or professional statement or unique selling point/USP). Regardless of its name, it is the most influential section of the document, providing a concise summary of a candidate’s core qualities.

The professional summary is a brief, 2-3-sentence overview, containing:

  • your years in the field (or passion if you’re on entry level)
  • specialization
  • honours/highlights (if any)
  • the most recognisable company names (pick 1-3 that are best respected in your area and/or target industry) or your strongest skills that is most valuable for that position

This is not a ‘set it and forget it’ task. It’s important to review it based on the callback rate and the types of offers it attracts. Different summaries may be necessary when targeting different industries or positions.

Summary

You certainly don’t need a new CV for every job, it’s a good idea to pinpoint target the industries or companies you want to work at. In a following article, Effective job search to get your first or next UX/UI job – Step 2 – Interviewing, we will discuss in more detail the best steps to take when you have caught the attention of a company and wish to proceed with them to the next stage.