I recently graduated and was lucky enough to have a handful of interviews (and was even luckier to find a full-time job). However the first thing I noticed was that for every design related job opening seeking experience with physical prototyping or user research are dozens of jobs seeking experience with wireframes or screen design in general. Of course anyone learn to produce wireframes in day, but what a company really wants to see when they talk about wireframes is the ability to design complex software and web applications. That is largely the piece missing from IxD education and what makes it difficult breaking into the UX field.

But IxD education makes up for that by producing good conceptual thinkers and communicators. I am confident that it was my ability to tell stories about the projects in my portfolio, as Karen talked about in her conversation, that got me my first UX job (and not the wireframes or screen designs because they sorely lacked).

A couple more thoughts for people who are interviewing (based on my recent experiences)…

- Don’t be afraid to apply for a job you are not qualified for. At the company I work for now, I applied for a technology position and was contacted more than 2 months later to interview for a UX internship. During that interview process I was eventually offered a full-time job which had nothing to do with the technology position I originally applied for.

- The questions that your interviewers asks you will tell you a lot about the job. That was ultimately the information I acted on that led to my final decision. I showed a lot of concept videos and scenarios in my interviews and some audiences only inquired about the user interfaces from those videos. When someone finally asked me about the use of video as a prototyping medium or why I made certain decisions about characters in the scenario, I knew that they would be good people to work with.

Some companies have specific and rigid requirements for past experience, education, or industry knowledge. You’re trying to get your resume past the gatekeepers in HR, and their whole goal is to find reasons to turn you away. If they say you need agency experience, and you don’t have it on your resume, then you lose.

So how do you win? By redefining the rules of the game. Find a way to go around the gatekeepers. Make connections with people who work in the department you’re applying for. Try to get a contact for the hiring manager. Usually, the people who are doing the work care more about skills and passion than they do about line-items in the job description, so you might be able to wedge yourself in there. Good luck!

“Figure out what expectations they have”. Good tip!

This post was mentioned on Twitter by uxtweeter: Radio Johnny: Karen McGrane on Finding UX Work http://bit.ly/dzNRwY...

Great dialogue here! Thank you for the valuable insights.

One question…how do you land an agency job when coming from the client side? Agencies I have spoken with all want previous agency experience.

Thanks again,
Christine