Why you're not getting any interviews.
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- Опубліковано 13 лип 2024
- If you have the experience but are not callbacks, here's why... a heart to heart talk based on the advice I've gotten from veterans in the industry. 🫡
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I’m Lily, a product designer (UX) in San Francisco. With no connections, I hustled and broke into Silicon Valley after arts school. I've been featured at Apple News and Business Insider. Subscribe to get my career + interview advice on how to do the same!
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This really hit me at the right time. I watched this right before sitting down with a more senior designer who looked at my resume and portfolio and finally FINALLY, someone gave me an honest no bs review. I can do a lot better. what i have isn't the best that I can do. I'll speak for myself in that i needed to be humbled because at this moment no i dont deserve the high paying job because my craft isn't showing that is what im going for. For the life that I want i need to put more time and respect into my craft.
Props to you to be able to take that feedback. It's not easy having to continuously evolve, and that's life. Self-awareness is one of the most important traits I've seen for designers, because we have to be objective about our own work (otherwise, how can we improve?). You got this!!
You hit the nail on head here. I think most designers are stuck somewhere in that valley. I’ve been there for years. We went from having an expectation of portfolios looking like dribbble to looking like these super tidy and elaborate case studies with clear and linear beginnings, middles, and ends. Most design jobs don’t look like either of those.
As someone not in this field this sounds exhausting and demoralizing. This is like the definition of being in a rat race. I could never persoalnally live a fulfilling life if i beleived that my future success was dependent on how well I could appeal to my employers. I'm not disputing anything you're saying, but it's extremely saddening for me to hear people are living their life like this. I hope it brings you true fulfillment otherwise on the flip side of your argument you could be spending the best years of your life trying to achieve something that won't matter to you later in life. Again this is just an opinion from an outsider and I don't mean to judge or offend at all, it's just quite shocking to hear these things you mentioned in the video.
i dont understand what your saying. My interpretation of the video was that people need to strive for a higher standard when it comes to design work. This is true in every design industry. A strong portfolio conveys knowledge, understanding, storytelling etc., all of which are so important when designing a product. These are skills that over anything benefit an individual and their own careers the most whether your working for a company in the so called rat race, or starting your own business.
@@lei9149 I definitely understand that interpretation and I do see that message in what she was saying. At the same time I also hear a lot of things about how your worth in the industry is about how you weigh up against your competition and that if you don't strategically position yourself for high value work you will lose access to the opportunities that make you valuable. Also implying that if you miss those opportunities you're setting up your future self to be in a downward slide that you'd be incapable of pulling yourself out of once you're there. It's almost to say that the stakes to making the correct strategic moves right now are so great that the wrong ones will doom you. This type of pressure to measure up against your peers sounds like an anxiety ridden and unfulfilling life to me. It makes me sad that there are people who think their success and prosperity is directly related to how well they fill these roles and produce for their industry. Its such a great amount of pressure and seems dehumanizing to me. Being a whole person is so much more than being productive and competitive or successful in your career. It's hard for me to explain but in my opinion it's a position where you either end up feeling like a huge failure or you end up feeling like you "made it" but don't have anything meaningful to show for it.
I think staying stagnant is the riskiest thing in life. I hear you on how exhausting it is, because it totally can be. My bed is one of my favorite places on earth. However, I have to protect my future self-and in order to do that, I have to strive. That's life, I guess. Everything you want is outside your (and most people's) comfort zone.
I had this conversation with someone the other day, but we eventually came to the conclusion (and agreement) that the tech field is not necessarily a rat race (even though it might seem that way from time to time), but the industry is constantly changing and standards are getting higher. More companies are reducing product design head count and it's more important than ever to stand out from other candidates.
Any job that pays a lot of money either ask for a lot of time and dedication up front (ie Doctor or Lawyer) or expect you (without saying) to keep learning throughout your career (Pilot, Stock Broker, professional athlete, or any role on a tech product team)
@@btonekid1992 This is one of the best comments here-you're spot on. Doctors/lawyers have expensive, fancy schools with high fail rate and cost of education which increase the barrier to entry.
You can't desire to be highly paid and not expect tight competition. After all, every one wants financial security.
Good luck on your upcoming interviews. Maybe i’m living in the clouds but I believe that what’s meant to be yours, already is. Stay positive and enjoy the present moment ☀️🙏🏽
You are completely right, I’m in a position where I send but I don’t have response back and I pretty sure I need, not only to learn new things but improve my portfolio, I’m doing a few courses and I’m working on the projects and documented on medium to showcase not only my craft but my storytelling skills and process, thanks for your video, it really open minds, we have to strive for better opportunities if we want to develop as designer
You got this! Learning doesn't stop in this field.
I really love your content and I find it useful because so many people are going through this right now.
This is excellent insight. A designer's superpower is always innovating their craft. Great advice and good luck with your interviews!
Insightful video highlighting the importance of a strong design portfolio in securing quality job opportunities. Emphasizes the need to continuously improve craft to avoid getting stuck in mediocre design teams. Encouraged to reevaluate my portfolio to showcase my best work. Valuable advice shared in the video!
This is the advice I needed to hear 💯💯💯
Thanks for your honour sharing. Good luck to your interview!
An other thing thst will stop you from changing company and getting better job is all the NDA about project you work on. I have 1 real world project in my portfolio since all my jobs are NDA and none have shipped yet. Or ever will. Which sucks big time.
You can share NDA work in a presentation lol. No one is going to tell.
So true!
Love the video! I'm currently an undergrad student and haven't been successful in landing interviews for UX/product design internships. My portfolio isn't that great and most of my projects are conceptual. What are some ways in which I can find opportunities/products to better my portfolio and avoid joining a company that has low design maturity? Any advice would be helpful!
hey lily, any thoughts on how to improve your craft especially to stand the test of time & against AI? What would you focus on in terms of specialisms or skills?
I agree with what you are saying. But also I am seeing more small, non-design-led companies on the market now. They are looking for designers who will be a helping tool rather than thinkers. So it's easier to get into those. I wonder in a long run, where do we go.. "design as a tool" that helps product&business to draw out their ideas, or design-led orgs.. Not sure. Product & design could merge at some point into one visionary professional?
Design suffers from a particularly frustrating problem because *everyone* (even people that don't understand good design) has an opinion on your work. And it's expected to be right there out in the open for everyone to review. What if accountants had to publicly disclose all their past tax filing details? This would be an absurd ask in any other job market, yet we designers just happily accept the status quo.
I feel like the threat of AI has been overblown, at least in the UX Design field. Sure it's been hyped up a lot but on a day-to-day basis it hasn't made my job as a designer any easier. There's no way in hell I'd use a design made from a prompt because it invents components out of nowhere which aren't part of the existing design system and can't be reused (engineers mention this exact same problem with AI coding, 3D modelers say the same thing with AI-generated 3D models), and it only provides surface-level solutions to problems that need a deep, detailed, custom-tailored solutions.
I agree but I think investors are anticipating AI improving at a rate to replace many tech roles within 3 years, hence the current cuts now.
I so hope that you are right, or ai will get better. I hope in the case it gets better and the jobs are cut, the universal income will be established so we can enjoy life while ai is working. (i am being optimistic today, haha)
Ur the best lily
Thank you for these honest and insightful videos! But I must say the 20s and 30s comment hit me in the gut and gave me a pang of anxiety :'( I'm in my late 30s and about to do a ux bootcamp and switch careers but this makes me think that the journey will be even harder than I initially thought. Would you say tech/ux an ageist sector?
Genius!
you already mentioned earlier... the issues is outsourcing, globalization
Yes, and there's still people working as designers and design openings. With lower openings, the stakes are higher, standards are tougher.
So we should basically work more to be able to work even more in the future?
Hard life now, easy life later.
Easy life now, hard life later.
Nice haircut, you provide quality info
I appreciate that!
You’re right. I’ve seen so many portfolios this last year (mentored tonsssss) that are abysmally subpar
Yeah, I've noticed this trend as well from designers who are not getting any callbacks. The market is definitely the biggest factor but now standards for portfolios are higher than ever.
Tech will be smaller moving forward. Boomers are holding on to the leadership roles. Millennials are waiting in the wind for them to leave.
100
From my experience, it's 80% luck and 20% skill. It's really not about being the best or having the best portfolio. It's about just being "good enough" and the rest is up to luck.
If you're not even getting interviews, chances are it's not because of your portfolio. There are often over 100 applicants per job post. Recruiters aren't going to be looking at every single portfolio. Rather, there's a lottery system where fewer and fewer people get selected per round. So you really just need to keep applying to jobs with a very good resume that has all the keywords. That's why they call it a numbers game. So, again, just make sure your resume has ALL the keywords.
Finally, how you communicate and carry yourself is more important than your raw skills.
Are you working in product design and found this approach (tailoring resumes rather than crafting portfolios) to be personally the most effective?
@@Designalily Yes but I am not saying to not have a good portfolio. What I am saying is to have a decent enough portfolio. Why? Because you can burn yourself out even before getting into a job. Applications are stressful enough and applying itself can burn you out. But putting tremendous amounts of effort into your portfolio without understanding the numbers game is like burning yourself for no reason. You think no pain no gain, but here's it's more of high pain low gain.
So have you found tailoring resumes for product design jobs to be more effective than crafting a stellar portfolio? @@XC-Z-cv8qw
@@Designalily Like I said, yes. What even is a "stellar portfolio" and who even decides that? Like I said, resume is more important than portfolio, but that does not mean portfolio is worthless. I've had more success with resume than with portfolio.
I'm not sure what design company you work for, but as I mentioned in the video-if design standards are high, the resume is definitely not more important than the portfolio. It doesn't sound like you've gotten a design job in this market (which I regard as Q3 2023 - until now) through cold applications and tailoring your resumes, rather you may be working at somewhere before the market went downhill or freelancing. Correct me if I'm wrong. I haven't heard tailoring resumes to be a better strategy for design.@@XC-Z-cv8qw