In this AMA, Amy and Laura (or maybe her doppelgänger) answer some listener-submitted questions.

- Hiring managers want UX rock stars, so how do you get hired if you've had the misfortune of working in places where you weren’t supported or were underutilized, and didn't get to have much impact or work on cool stuff?

- How do you describe work impact on your resume if it's not tracked or measured, a project got canceled, or you got laid off and don't know what happened?

- What should specialist designers do in a job market that favors generalists and visual design skills? Is a generalist path still viable?

- A role for Senior UXR at Amazon wants 6+ years leading research projects with demonstrated impact. Would academic research count toward this?

- I was recently interviewing for a job and the salary I discussed with the recruiter was $105K-$110K CAD. I got the job and now they’re offering me $82K-$90K CAD. Is there a way to re-negotiate this offer?

- What’s your take on engaging with LinkedIn content that's critical about the inhumanities of the job search?

Bonus: find out how Laura really feels about Figma.

Please support our work by leaving a rating and review, telling your friends, or throwing us a few gold doubloons!

Transcript

-

Episode transcript

Got a hiring topic request? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn and we can cover it in a future episode.

Please support our work by leaving a rating and review, telling your friends, or throwing us a few gold doubloons!

A lack of standardized definitions for UX research roles and levels across companies presents a challenge for job searches, hiring, promotions, and career planning. 

Amy chats with Lawton Pybus and Thomas Stokes of Drill Bit Labs about their research on the state of UXR job leveling, qualifications, responsibilities, and compensation for IC and manager roles. 

Join us for a fun discussion of what they learned and actionable recommendations for how you use their new data-driven leveling framework to design a more effective and efficient job search, hiring process, team leveling infrastructure, and UXR career plan. Plus some an update on the UXR job market.

Come for the insights, stay for the research nerdery.

Please support our work by leaving a rating and review, telling your friends, or throwing us a few gold doubloons!

Links

Transcript

The research: What we can learn from UX Research job descriptions (three part series)

Drill Bit Labs Newsletter

Why is the tech job market still so bad? Why are the mass layoffs still happening? Why is hiring so broken, and whose fault is it? Job seekers, hiring managers, and recruiters alike will want to tune in to my conversation with recruiter and founder of Hire Breakthrough, Kimone Napier, for some commiseration and perspective during this defeating and demoralizing time. 

We also talk what exactly an ATS is and why you don’t need to worry about it, what companies are legally allowed to verify about your past employment, and building a resilient career in uncertain times.

Please support our work with a rating and review and telling your friends. Or, you can throw us a few gold doubloons!

Got a request for a topic or guest? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.

Links

How to navigate the ever-changing job market

Hire Breakthrough

Weekly Job Leads 

Kimone's LinkedIn

Building a resilient career in uncertain times

Amy chats with writer, podcaster, speaker, Pokémon enthusiast, research champion, and founder of User Research Academy, Nikki Anderson. Nikki provides sage advice for taking your job interviews, resume, and portfolio up a few notches, and shares the most common mistakes she's made as a candidate and what she's seen as a hiring manager.

She also imparts a supportive message to job seekers, and realistic perspective on the current and future state of UX during a very challenging time for everyone in the community. The chaos and uncertainty of mass layoffs and AI have led many to ask, is UX dead? Nikki believes that UX will persist and encourages us to use this moment as an opportunity for a conversation about reimagining and rebuilding in a better way. 

Links

Episode transcript

Join Nikki's User Research Academy

Subscribe to Nikki's Substack

A UXR Resume Journey (Nikki's comprehensive guide)

Nikki's guide to case studies

Please support our work with a rating and review and telling your friends. Or, you can throw us a few gold doubloons!

Got a request for a topic or guest speaker? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.

Amy chats with coach Roberta Dombrowski about the experience of interviewing for tech jobs as “an only”. If you’ve ever been an “only” (woman, person of color, neurodivergent, queer, etc.) or first of your kind on a team, this one’s for you. Hiring managers, recruiters, and anyone else who cares about other people, can also learn a thing or two about creating an inclusive hiring process to set “onlys” up for success.

Roberta is the founder of Learn Mindfully where she helps onlys reestablish their relationship to work, themselves, and the people they work with, through an integration of head, heart, and body. 

With more than a decade of experience designing employee and customer experiences and working with leaders at companies like Adobe, Instacart, Shopify, ServiceNow, and LinkedIn, she is dedicated to leveling the playing field at work and believes that leaders at all levels can spark change.

Links

Episode transcript

Navigating Job Search Bias

70+ questions to make sure your next role meets your needs

More resources from Roberta

Please support our work with a rating and review or a throw us a few gold doubloons!

Got a request for a topic or guest speaker? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.

Senior Product Design Manager and respected UX community contributor Mitch Clements shares how he created an attentive, fair, and effective hiring process to scale his 26-person (and counting!) design team at Encino. UX hiring managers and job seekers will appreciate Mitch's reflections on:

• Lessons learned on screening and interviewing candidates in a crowded market, from entry level to advanced practitioners

Links

Episode transcript

Mitch's website and coaching services

Mitch's LinkedIn

Please support our work with a rating and review or a throw us a few gold doubloons!

Got a request for a topic or guest speaker? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.

Leadership coach, design executive, and founder of Happy Path Sally Carson. Sally shares her hiring insights and job search advice based on 20+ years in tech, including her time as a hiring manager and leader of design teams at LinkedIn and Cisco. We talk about:

Using a "jobs to be done" framework to craft your resume, portfolio, and other materials according to the needs and goals of your audience

Insights into how recruiters use LinkedIn search and filters to find qualified candidates (Sally's team worked on variety of features for finding talent)

Tips for optimizing your LinkedIn profile that go beyond the basics (like adding skills tags to your jobs so you come up in search)

One Weird (Smart) Trick for figuring out how to talk about the business impact of your work

How managing up *might* help you avoid a layoff

Why design and tech professionals need to learn AI now

Something about bras for dogs?

Links

Episode transcript

Sally's website

Keep your job in 2024 by managing up

Adding business results to LinkedIn profile

Importance of adding skills to LinkedIn profile

The AI Dilemma - from the Center for Humane Technology (vimeo)

Free LinkedIn Learning AI course

Please support our work with a rating and review or a throw us a few gold dubloons!

Got a request for a topic or guest speaker? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.

Amy chats with Dave Miller, an 18-year talent management veteran and founder of Design Citizen, a human-centered recruiting and career advisory firm for product and creative professionals in tech. 

Tune in for lots of gems as Dave shares his insights on past, present, and future tech industry and job market trends (good news: things are looking a bit better!), with a healthy mix of reality check and optimism about the impact of AI on tech professionals. 

Dave actually walks the talk in his work with candidates, emphasizing fair pay and respectful hiring processes. If you're looking for (or hiring for!) positions in product, design, research, marketing, and related roles, get with Dave stat! 

Links

Episode transcript

Please support our work with a rating and review or a throw us a few shillings! This shit costs money after all.

Got a request for a topic or guest speaker? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.

In this special episode swap, Amy joins Jeremy Miller, host of Beyond UX Design, for an in-depth conversation about the state of the UX job market.

We touch on some familiar topics around the mass tech layoffs, but the primary focus of our discussion looks at how job seekers can manage their response to layoffs and navigate the job search during a chaotic time.

Plus a fun April Fool's Day Joke... 

Links

Check out Jeremy's Podcast, Beyond UX Design

Grab his book, Beyond UX Design: Master Your Craft Beyond Pixels and Prototypes, for 10% off

Watch the recording of our live Q&A on the state of the UX job market

Episode transcript

Support our work:

Please rate our show, spread the word, or hit us up with a lil contribution! This shit costs money after all.

Got a hiring topic request? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn and we can cover it in a future episode.