The Path to a UX Career

As with any decision to start out on a new career path, a fledgling UX’er will face the conundrum that Experience breeds Experience. That is to say, if you don’t have any commercial experience to your name, it is sometimes pretty hard to get your foot in the door.

This week I wanted to ask whether any readers have tips or tricks they would give to Graduates/ Juniors or Designers/Researchers from a different background looking to effectively push the re-set button on their career.

Depending on their vacancy, companies can afford to be selective on the candidates they choose to put forward to interview processes. So the question remains, what can you do to make yourself stand out if you are new to the industry?

We would suggest: 

• Attending careers fairs
• Networking on social media
• Strengthening your online presence – align all online profiles with the same skills and photo, interlink effectively
• Blogging about industry topics and gaining followers
• Taking a step down in your expectations (salary-wise) – One step back for two steps forward
• Building up freelance experience
• Working for free – we wouldn’t suggest this in the long run but a client project on your CV will look good whether you were paid or not
• Ensuring your CV and portfolio market your skills well – ask an expert to check. Include lots of key words to ensure you show up in searches
• And if you don’t have a portfolio – create one – online or in PDF form
• Opening your mind to opportunities –  give that company you’re not sure about a shot. If you’re invited to a face to face meeting you will know for sure
• Keeping your CV on all possible job boards and online communities for job seekers – you never know who is looking where
• Attending workshops / UX skill training events – various agencies in London facilitate these
• Attending industry events – IXDA, UXPA, for instance

It would be great to hear if anyone has any further suggestions. Please do email me.

We Are Going Social! Are you?

At the moment we’re on a huge ‘Going Social’ drive here at IC Creative. No, that doesn’t mean popping down the local for after-work drinks every other night (although, if you’re ever in our part of the world you should visit: The Swan at Three Mile Cross, Reading http://www.theswan-3mx.co.uk. What we’re doing is getting our voices and our faces (sorry in advance) out there, in the hope of connecting, communicating and ultimately promoting discourse around the subject of User Experience.

LinkedIn is of course the business networking tool to use, and like most we are riding the Twitter bandwagon. But we’re currently on a mission to open our eyes to the numerous sites and tools aimed at enabling interactions - many of which have been designed by you!

Putting the question out there to you guys – which are the social media and networking sites you’re using at the moment? Are there any up-and-comers which we should know about? Have you had a hand in designing anything like this, which you’d like to showcase here?

I have very recently started toying with About.me - appealing because of its’ simplicity and aesthetic appeal. If anyone fancies ‘Complimenting Me,’ that would be great because so far I’ve only received the default About.me compliment and am feeling unloved! http://www.about.me/samanthaemmett  

Looking forward to hearing back from some of you with some interesting social sites for creative/ UX people!  

As always, you can email me.