 Hey my name is Jonathan and today I'm going to tell you how to get a job in product or UX design even if you don't have a portfolio. You know a lot of people struggle with the idea that they have no experience and yet they're being asked when they come into for a job interview to show what they've done in the past. Well in this video I'm going to show you how to get around that. Now if you have any questions that I don't answer in this video do let me know in the comments. I really want to know and we answer everything. So you're looking for your first design job and companies are looking for your portfolio but you don't have a portfolio because you've basically never really done anything yet. Maybe you've studied, maybe you're looking for that experience that they're asking for you to have. It's kind of like one of these chicken or egg problems right? Chicken and egg problems. The chicken and egg problem here is that these companies are asking you for something that you don't have yet. So really one of the first and best ways to get a job in a place if you don't have a portfolio or if you don't have the experience and especially you know in a lot of these companies there's even a lot of competition for internships is to try to volunteer at events that these companies are hosting and these events are happening all the time especially if they're big companies and if they're not big companies you know and if they're not if you're looking for like other places to volunteer at go to meetup.com go to Facebook go to Eventbrite type in you know design event in your city and you're going to find a lot of different types of events that you can volunteer at and when you get the chance to volunteer just absolutely over deliver as much as you possibly can. Now this is something that a lot of really smart people do when they want to start getting to know the people working at the company because often that's the best way to get into a company without a portfolio because you have access to the people working at this company and you're able to ask them like hey what would I need to get in here what would I need to get an internship here what would I need to get a junior position and they're going to be able to tell you but also if you're extremely useful if you're over the top useful when volunteering at one of these events if you're the most useful person at the event now that's really not difficult to do because often people who volunteer really don't put a lot of effort in and if you're the person who puts the most effort in you will stand out a lot of the people who got hired at AJ and smart who work here today are people who turned up at our events are volunteered at events and just really outdid themselves and it's not that they were the people who had the best portfolios or any portfolios but they were the people that we were willing to give a chance because they were the people we knew if they would work here they would be super proactive super eager super humble. The second thing you can do is call the canvas strategy. Now the canvas strategy is one of the most powerful strategies for sort of getting what you want out of life and it can really be used well for getting a job or for at least getting to know some great people within companies that can recommend you. Number one it's about you figuring out understanding where you are in sort of like the job food chain and if you're at the start then you're very very low which is totally fine. The second thing is like targeting a few people that you would like to get in touch with people and companies that you want to work at and figuring out what it is that would be valuable for them. There's two great ways to use the canvas strategy to get in touch and to get the attention of the people above you. One is really to connect them with other people who they might want to talk to so you do the research and you figure out that you know it would be great if A spoke to B because A and B could help each other's careers. The second thing is actually to try to find inefficiencies in the way that they work today. One great example of that is Amar who works at AJ and Smart right now who's also often on our YouTube channel. He was in college when he got the job at AJ and Smart so there was no portfolio or nothing like that or at least I didn't see one but the reason he got our attention is because he started doing the show notes for the podcast without asking us for like six months until we were like holy s*** like who is this guy and he got my attention and when the team was looking for someone to an intern to start and the intern competition is crazy here I was like you should check out this guy called Amar he did a really great job on these show notes and that's a really really great way to make these people look good make their lives easier. You want to start with the canvas strategy you want to start with delivering as much value as possible do not start with saying hey can we meet up for a coffee that is a disaster. Number three is using the least crowded channel to get in touch with people working at the companies that you're interested in so that you can ask them questions about how to get a job in these companies. Now what do I mean by the least crowded channel well let's say that you want to work at Airbnb or something like that now if you would email the person working in the recruiting department or you know the head of design in one of the departments if the chances of you getting a reply is very low and the chance or the chances of you getting a useful reply are pretty low let's say you managed to track down one of these people on Twitter or on Instagram for example that might not be a channel that a lot of people are contacting them on for jobs and actually this doesn't work anymore at AJ and Smart because I made an article about this before but Instagram used to be AJ and Smart's least crowded channel so nobody was contacting us there so the people who really did contact us really stood out so what you need to do is figure out the least crowded channel of the kind of companies that you want to work at and you want to try to find the individuals in these companies who maybe get the least amount of information put at them so for example at AJ and Smart it wouldn't be a good idea to contact me because I'm the person who gets the most email and the most people asking me can they work here but it would be a good idea to contact you know maybe a junior designer working in another department who would be super happy to chat with you and super happy to give you the tips on how to work here and the tricks it's really crazy that people don't do this because you need to know the tips and tricks you need to know how these companies recruit if you don't know how AJ and Smart recruits it's going to be so hard to get a job here it's going to be so hard to stand out but if you were able to get in touch with junior designers working here who you will have a chance to talk to then you're already going to get the insider knowledge on how to get a job at AJ and Smart for example use the least crowded channel so what's the channel that almost no one else is using to contact this company but also find out which people in the company would also have the like least amount of inbound traffic so they can actually answer your questions and actually deal with you now finally the portfolio problem so it is sometimes good to have something to show and especially you know if you come empty handed it might work if you use the other strategies and you just show that you're super valuable you know you're super humble you're super eager these things can work but it does sometimes help to have some sort of a portfolio even if none of it is real work because what it shows is that you're also interested in the kind of work that you're doing and you're teaching yourself and you're learning yourself in your spare time so the type of portfolio that I would bring with me and present would be basically you know me doing redesigns of current products I know a lot of designers would disagree with that but I actually think it's a great way to show your design skills now here's the here's the interesting thing you need to understand I'm not talking about just visual redesigns like oh here's Twitter redesigned with a cool conversational interface no that's not what I'm talking about I'm talking about taking looking at the product that you you want to you know change or fix or update and really creating a little case study on what you changed why you changed it and what the challenges were what the product challenges were around why you changed it because there's nothing worse there's nothing worse than seeing a portfolio which is just about oh well I added boxes and shadows to this thing because I thought it looked ugly if you're trying to work at a company and you're talking about well I changed this because I thought it looked ugly no one's going to take you seriously you have to think about what was the challenge why did you redesign it and what was difficult about redesigning it what about your design doesn't work that's super interesting for us to hear that you're also a person who is kind of you know self-aware about the things that you don't know and actually I'd add that as the last thing many times designers who are new straight out of college are not they don't realize that one of the best features of a person like when I meet a new person when I meet a new designer or someone who's still in college the thing I want to see is that they're curious that they're humble and that they are aware that they don't know anything yet that's actually pretty important if I meet someone that they're being arrogant and they're saying oh yeah yeah I know how to do that yeah yeah I know how to do that that's already a sign for me that this is a person who doesn't want to learn I want to know that the person I'm talking to who's about to come into my company as a junior is going to be willing to admit that they don't know everything and willing to learn and really really excited about learning so for me it's definitely not a good thing if someone comes in for a job interview and sort of acts as if they're arrogant and acts as if they know everything nobody likes this absolutely nobody likes this it's about also being super super aware about what you don't know and straight out saying hey look um I think one thing that I'm quite strong at is visual design you know I I can recreate an android app pretty quickly I'm pretty fast and figma but I'll be honest with you I'm not really up to date and one thing I really want to get better at is product strategy because I know that's super important and I think that that's like an extremely important thing you know what I do actually have another thing I want to say if you're applying for a job at a company and let's say even if you do have a portfolio um but remember you're kind of at the bottom of the you're at the bottom of the chain if you're coming in as a junior if you're coming in as an uh an intern one thing that irritates me the most as somebody who hires people are people who don't do the research on the company that they're coming to interview at the amount like I literally have people coming to AJ & Smart and they're like oh my god I want to work at AJ & Smart oh my god yeah blah blah here's what I do and I'm like oh interesting so did you see um this thing on our youtube channel and they're like oh you have a youtube channel and then I'm like okay so you did no research into the company you don't know anything about AJ & Smart you don't know why you want to work here you just sent us like 20 you sent 20 emails to the agencies all over Berlin and that's what's happening no company likes this you have to do your research you have to try to understand what the challenges at that company you're about to join are there's a million people uh you know signing up to be get interviewed you need to stand out by being someone who really really really does their research like as much as possible you know if I was going to go work in a specific team at google I would spend days doing as much research as I can because it actually shows respect and there's nothing that shows a lack of respect like not doing the research and asking questions that may be out the fact that you didn't really check up on the company you know you know if you go to for an interviewed Airbnb and you um you know ask a question which is something that they posted in their blog last week on their design blog that's not going to be something that this hiring manager really likes the sound of right it can can sound like you're just interviewing at 20 other places and you really don't care so that's a lot of different things um you don't and and to maybe to to finish it up to say you know it's not super important to have a perfect portfolio the idea is really to try to get a job whether it's an internship or whether it's a junior role that's how you start building your portfolio but even that first step from zero you know from college or from self-learning getting into the company you do need to have a couple of tactics you do need to be humble you do need to be eager you do need to be excited about working at these companies you do need to do your research you have to find the least crowded channel to chat to people working at the company and figure out what it is how do you get in there put a little bit of effort into it and it is easy to stand out because most people do not put in the effort so I hope this is a little bit motivational for you you know if you're a student if you're just starting out or if you're jumping careers from maybe graphic design to UX design do be humble be honest about what you don't know and try to stand out I hope you like this video if you did this is a different style of video this is just me sitting here with a camera I hope you liked it if you did give it a like ask questions in the comments below about you know how to get a job in in design if you're interested in more videos like this we've got over 150 videos on all the different types of things you can possibly imagine relating to UX design and product design we've also got a podcast that comes out every Monday morning it's called the product breakfast club if you're interested in the product design world definitely listen to that a lot of career advice as well and every single day on Instagram we're posting stories from inside the AJ and smart design studio thanks so much for your time and have a great day hey my name is Jonathan and today in this hey my name is Jonathan hey my name is Jonathan and in this hey my name is Jonathan and today in this hey my name is Jonathan find new okay there's two great ways to