Overcoming the Moment of Doubt

If you’re currently applying to user experience jobs in today’s crazy market, you have to adopt a singular objective: to overcome the moment of doubt. 

Not your doubt. The hiring manager’s. Let me explain.

Right now, the UX job market is a mess. Many of the folks I’ve been coaching don’t realize just how much the market has changed over the last few years. 

That ignorance gets them into trouble, because they’re applying for jobs as if the market still worked the way it did the last time they looked for work — maybe five years ago, maybe even longer. Then they’re surprised when they apply for jobs and hear crickets — and they don’t know why.

One reason is that they don’t realize that hiring managers have changed how they hire. Hiring isn’t the same as it was five years ago. What worked then to get through the screening process, get into interviews, and get a job offer doesn’t work now.

It’s become harder to hire UX people 

A big reason is that it now takes much more effort for a hiring manager to get the necessary approvals to hire someone new to their team. Many organizations are desperately trying to keep their payroll expenses down, so they’re very reluctant to open up a new position. The hiring manager must make a strong case with a clear payoff for the organization to finally secure permission to hire someone.

Therefore, it can take months, or even a year or more, just to get approval to bring on a new UX person. Right now, many executives would rather hire developers or spend their money on AI tokens. 

Therefore, each UX hiring manager has to go through hell and high water to make a strong case for hiring someone from the outside. So, they build their case with a backlog of essential work that’s just not getting done right now. 

They demonstrate how much pain the organization is feeling because that work isn’t getting done, and how much better things will be when it does. The hiring manager must promise to their executives that the new person will blast through all that essential work, and the organization will see immense benefits almost immediately.

When the permission finally comes, the hiring manager is now on the hook. They have to find someone who can immediately begin tackling that backlog of work.

What it was like five years ago

Which is what now makes hiring very different than, say, five years ago. Back then, these same UX hiring managers would’ve been told, “Go build a team. Put together five or ten talented UX folks to tackle our future work.”

They’d make plans for a mixed team of product designers, researchers, and content folks without really knowing which projects these new hires would be working on. 

That was ok. The manager would figure it out after each UX person joined the team. 

Hiring qualified UX folks was a different challenge back then because there weren’t enough qualified people looking for new work. It would take months, maybe a year, to fill all the positions on the new team.

The managers just needed people who could do a great job on design, research, or content work. To get one of those jobs, all you had to do was prove you were good at some discipline of UX and could handle similar work. Your past project work didn’t have to match what the team would need, because nobody knew what the team needed. 

To be a strong contender, you just had to convince the interview team you could handle anything they put in front of you, that you’d mastered all the basic skills and techniques, and that you were a quick learner. If you pulled that off, the job was yours.

But that’s not how it works anymore. Today’s hiring managers aren’t building up big teams. 

Most only get one open position at a time. Possibly only one this entire year. That one person will need to achieve everything currently on that backlog of essential work that the hiring manager has promised to their executives. 

No matter how unlikely it is to find someone with all those skills, today’s hiring manager is singularly focused on discovering a candidate who can do all of that work. They have to be. They promised.

Hiring managers are more picky

Hiring managers are now way more particular about who they fill their only position with. Demanding requirements, forty years of a maturing UX field, and a market where hundreds of people apply to each position give today’s hiring managers permission to be quite picky.

Therefore, when a hiring manager reviews your application materials, such as your résumé or portfolio, they want to see their work. Not your work — their work. They want to see their backlog.

They are seeking solid evidence that you’ve done their work before. The accomplishments you list and the projects you describe need to be almost exact matches to the work they’ve promised will get done. Not close matches — almost exact matches.

If they say, “We’re seeking someone who will be involved in every aspect of the feature development process, from wireframing the next great product innovation to tweaking pixels right before launch,” then you’d better describe a project where you were involved in every aspect of the development process, from wireframing to tweaking pixels.

If they say, “We’re seeking someone who will transform intricate health data and ecosystem information into clear, user-friendly experiences that increase engagement and transparency,” then you’d better describe a project where you transformed intricate health data and ecosystem information into clear, user-friendly experiences, resulting in increased engagement and transparency.

That’s what they’re hiring for. If you haven’t done what they’re looking for, they will skip to the next person in the pile.

Matching the position’s job description is essential

Many folks applying for jobs today don’t realize how important it is to match the position’s job description. They think they can still get by with a résumé and portfolio that show they’re good at design, research, or content, without addressing the specifics of what the hiring manager thinks they need. And then they wonder why they’re not getting a response.

You have to overcome the moment of doubt. That comes when the hiring manager starts reviewing your résumé and portfolio, and then they wonder whether you’re an ideal fit for the job. When they can’t see how your past work describes what they need their new hire to accomplish, it creates doubt in their mind. They start to doubt that you’re the person they’re seeking.

Now, if your résumé or portfolio clearly shows that you have done the work before, you’ll go into the Yes pile, where you’re likely to be invited to the next step in the process. 

If your résumé or portfolio doesn’t mention anything the hiring manager needs accomplished, then you will probably end up in the No pile. At best, you’ll get a polite rejection email. Or, unfortunately, you may never hear anything from them because they’re just overwhelmed by the sheer number of unqualified applicants.

However, the worst place to end up is the Maybe pile. That’s the pile hiring managers use when they aren’t sure. It’s not no, but it’s not yes.

Hiring managers I’ve spoken with say they plan to revisit that pile after they’ve reviewed every other applicant, spending more time on the dubious applications to see if there is anything to them.

That sounds promising, but here’s the thing: every hiring manager I’ve talked to has said that they never actually went back to the Maybe pile. Either the Yes pile had enough candidates to continue, or they just collected more applications. 

It turns out that the Maybe pile has the same outcome as the No pile. Candidates don’t move forward.

If you have the experience the hiring manager needs, you don’t want them to have any doubts that you belong in the Yes pile. (And, you shouldn’t be applying if you don’t have the experience. That’s just a waste of everyone’s time.)

Overcoming the hiring manager’s moment of doubt

You need to overcome their doubt by making sure that the first thing that jumps out of your résumé or portfolio is a clear, detailed description of how you’ve done the work they need. You want their immediate thought to be, “Oh my goodness, I think we’ve found our person!” You want to get put into the Yes pile right away.

The market has changed. How hiring managers hire has changed. Your job search process also needs to change. 

Your résumé and portfolio must tell a story that addresses what the hiring manager is looking for. Your application must clearly demonstrate that you’ve done the work before, that you did a great job the first time, that you’d love to do it again, and that you’d do a great job for them.

That’s how you overcome the doubt and get into the Yes pile. And that’s how you’ll get your next job in UX.

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If you are looking for your next UX job and found this video helpful, I have something else you might like.

We’ve launched a new course, UX Job Search: Stand Out in Today’s Crazy Crowded Job Market. In this course, I dive into a full analysis of the best practices for navigating today’s UX job search.

Over the five weeks, I’ll teach you how to figure out what specific hiring managers are looking for in their new hires, how to create stories that grab their attention, and how to manage all of that when you’re applying to multiple jobs simultaneously.

We’ll also explore the best ways to structure your résumé and portfolio for today’s market, and how to put together compelling case studies that are attention-grabbing, while showing off your experience in a way that resonates with the hiring managers. 

We’ll answer some of the tricky job search questions, like how to show your impact when you don’t have access to numbers, how to handle work that you can’t share because of NDAs or because you no longer have access to screenshots, and what to do when confronted with design exercises or other questionable interview practices.

Find out more: UX Job Search: Stand Out in Today’s Crazy Crowded Job Market