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Unconventional advice for students & junior designers

First, an icebreaker.

Hi! I’m Neil. I’m a UI/UX designer at Google, embedded through a creative agency called Left Field Labs. I work on a team called Creative Engineering. I’m 21 years old. I graduated from UC Berkeley a few months ago with a degree I made up, after dropping out of one of the world’s best computer science programs, which was terrifying. Somehow, I ended up here, largely without guidance. Now, I’d like to offer you some guidance of my own.

Obligatory disclaimer.

Firstly, my views are my own, and don’t necessarily reflect the views of Left Field Labs or Google. Secondly, I want to tell you what worked for me, and how it might work for you. You could probably do the exact opposite of everything I outline here, and still have a wildly successful career in design. My goal is that this piece will help you arrive at the path that works best for you.

You are required to be unconventional.

Mike Buzzard (zopilote.co), a UX manager at Google, writes:

The path to a career in UX isn’t clear… As modern product design concepts, tools, and processes continue to become more specialized and complex, it’s apparent that higher education is struggling to keep pace.

Our industry is emerging and that poses huge challenges; as designers, we don’t have the luxury of tradition. If you’re like me, you’ve spent a lot of energy envying the linear trajectories of your pre-med friends. Breathe. Embrace the process. And read Gladwell’s David and Goliath if you feel like your back’s against the wall.

Be the only designer in the room.

If you’re in college, your friends may be going to career fairs & info sessions, following the structure of typical on-campus recruiting (OCR). OCR allows companies—usually the tech giants—to lock in new hires by October or November of their senior years. Some companies do hire for design roles during the Fall recruiting cycle, but from my experience, that’s quite uncommon. Still, there are a few ways you can capitalize on the recruiting cycles. Firstly, follow Rosa Koolhoven’s advice:

The golden rule of networking is: Go to events that are completely outside of your field. Make sure that you are the only designer at an event and the opportunities will be endless.

This absolutely applies to career fairs. Go to events for business majors and chem majors and find out if any of the attending companies are hiring for design roles. If you feel like the odd man out, that’s okay! Do your best to manage the awkwardness and the returns will follow.

If you live in the Bay Area, it can sometimes seem like even the coffee shop you’re in is oversaturated with designers. Don’t worry—that’s just your bubble. It will shock you how many people don’t know a single designer. And by having conversations with these people, you then become the one designer they know.

Get rejected on purpose.

You should start attending networking events & applying to jobs as soon as possible. Take all the phone screens you can get. And let them reject you.

The hard thing is, startups and agencies almost always hire for immediate needs. If you take an interview in October, and disclose that you can’t start working until you graduate in May, a startup recruiter won’t be able to hire you. But, now you’re on their radar. And rejections aren’t permanent. And the need for new work will arise. Every 2–3 weeks I get an email from someone I haven’t spoken to in months saying that they have a new opportunity & want to chat. These things take time. Start laying the groundwork as early as you can.

The language you use is crucial.

If you do design work, and have ever gotten paid for it, you are a freelancer. Say it out loud as many times as it takes until you believe it.

Small digression: in case you don’t already know this, as a designer, you can either work in-house (i.e. you work for Google), through an agency (i.e. you work for Left Field Labs & Google is your client), or as a solo freelancer (ie you work in your pajamas & Google is your client).

You don’t have to graduate with a design degree to land a freelance gig. I landed my first two clients on Reddit, the summer before my freshman year of college. When you’re looking for work, distance yourself from your identity as a student and embrace your capabilities as a design professional. When you approach potential new clients (the technical term for this is lead generation), market yourself as a freelancer. Especially for one-off projects that are, say, under 10 hours of work, your clients won’t care at all that you’re in school. They won’t care at all about your GPA. They just want solid deliverables.

Also, drop the formality. When you’re in an interview, or having a coffee chat, or sending a follow-up email, let your language flow. Relax the muscles. You’re in a creative space, and your personality matters a lot. When I was freelancing, I landed a lot of work through Facebook Messenger and absolutely no work through LinkedIn.

Focus on the people.

A lot of junior designers fill their portfolios with self-initiated projects. You’ll find tons of speculative redesigns & case studies on uxdesign.cc, elsewhere on Medium, on Dribbble, on Behance, etc. This kind of work is great for building hard skills, and can help fill in the gaps in your portfolio. But, in my opinion, the work you do for other people is more important.

When you work on a team, or with a client, you’re building relationships. You may find this cynical, but often times these relationships are more important than the quality of the work. When design teams open up new roles, they’re not just looking at raw talent. They’re looking for people they can collaborate with. Call it culture fit, call it favoritism — at the end of the day, people like working with people they like.

HOW I GET MY WORK: https://t.co/FFLYQqZru4-0% @Dribbble-20% @Behance-0% Friends/Word of Mouth-%80 Relationships are very important.

 — @DannPetty

Curate.

To build a good portfolio, you need to build a body of work. In the arts this is called an oeuvre. There’s a lot of debate on how much work should be in your portfolio, whether you should diversify or specialize, whether you should focus on visuals or telling a story. But there’s one point that I’ve rarely seen contested: your portfolio should be curated.

Your portfolio is not a collection of everything you’ve ever made. It’s not your most recent work. It’s your very best work. This requires you to be self-competitive: all of your new work should compete against your old work for a spot in your showcase. Keep the larger body of work in your back pocket, in case you need to present it during a portfolio review or show a potential client.

When deciding what makes it into your portfolio, prioritize work that’s shipped. Bonus points if you can show metrics, for instance, how much your landing page redesign improved conversion. Regardless of who the work is for, or what capacity you worked in, having your work make it to production is a big deal.

Old tools work.

Your portfolio doesn’t have to showcase every software program you know how to use. In UX, new tools are released on the daily—literally. Keeping up with these tools is important (ProductHunt is a great resource), but not mandatory. Companies can’t afford to adopt new software due to the extensive training that would require; Sketch, Illustrator, and Photoshop are still the core tools of most design teams. Focus on getting really, really comfortable with these. Then learn basic prototyping with Invision. For the most part, everything else is a nice-to-have.

Lastly, ask for help.

Generally speaking, designers are really kind people. Most of us have struggled a lot, personally and professionally. If you’re struggling, ask for help. Most of our education in this industry comes from online resources, but there’s nothing quite as valuable as talking to people.

❧

A bohemian handbook for aspiring UX designers was originally published in uxdesign.cc – UX Design Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.