 Hi Eve, whenever you are, wherever you are, thank you for joining. So I wanna make this session as interactive as possible. So drop an emoji or comment where you're listening and tuning in from. So welcome to the zero. So UX designer, Chris, switcher asked me anything. Wow, that was a mouthful with me and Emily. So let's start with some introductions first. I will go first and then I'll bring Emily on. So I'm Chris. I'm the founder of UX playbook, but before that I'm a CS dropout, turn business graduate, turn product designer and eventually quit my head of design job in 2020. So now I spend most of my time helping designers navigate a fuzzy UX career with UX playbook. But that's enough about me. I'm sure you guys, if you've been here before, know what I'm about. Let's bring on Emily. Hey, how are you doing? I'm great, thanks. How about you? I am well. So Emily is a senior product designer, design mentor, speaker, creator, and she's a career switcher like myself. And tell the audience about yourself, Emily. Yeah, so my background is actually in biochemistry. I thought I wanted to be a doctor. I did all of the tests, the MCAT, volunteered abroad, worked in a microbiology lab only to realize that it probably wasn't the best fit for me. So I discovered UX design through career counseling. I graduated from bootcamp in April of 2021 and I've been working full-time in the industry since then. Wow, that's pretty cool. And we'll get into it because I think we have a section all around career switching tips. So let's get into that. But are you ready to get started on our discussion today? I'm absolutely ready. So I'm gonna cue the intro video and I hope it works for the folks out there. I made this for you guys, especially today. So let's see what it's about. The everyday people. Sound right, boy. Okay, so tentatively calling this sort of live we do the design of everyday people and throw back to the book if you noticed it. So how today works is we're gonna have two segments. First, we're gonna dive into the topics I just, that I will tell you about. And then we're gonna open the floor up to some questions from the audience. So get your questions in whenever, if something pops up in your head, feel free to drop it in the comments. So getting into today's topic, right? Pivoting to UX is like climbing Mount Everest. Some people are like, oh, what do I do? Like, where do I start? What skills do I need? How do I create a standout portfolio? How do I get practical experience? So there's so many unknowns and there's a few topics that we wanna get into today here with Emily and the first one I think is an interesting one for people who are not only applying for roles, but also reviewing things that applicants send them. So the first topic is most cringe portfolio mistakes or most cringe UX portfolio mistakes. Emily, do you have some cringey things that you're like, oh, why? So I've got a couple actually, and this is super relevant because we're actually hiring right now. So I'm on the front lines, sorting through all the applicants and it's most aren't cringe really. That's like a very strong word, but there's a few where I'm like, oh, okay. I think the first would be like any broken links. And it was like shocking to me how many people like the portfolio doesn't link or I can't find your LinkedIn or anything like that. And it's just in general like a poor user experience. And it's like, come on, you're applying for a product designer role. Like you would think it goes hand in hand, but I think it's very easy to overlook this kind of simple mistake, right? So maybe it's an old link or it just doesn't work. Just test it before you send the application. Another one that makes me cringe, and I'm guilty, I used to do this too, is Emily Mazerick, product designer, passionate about crafting the ultimate experiences, bridging the gap like, please stop. Like we know, we know your product designer, like we understand like, give me something interesting about you that's a little less vague and a little more real, you know, like what's your background and something interesting about you, something memorable, a lot of people do it. And I think it's just because we see other people doing it. And it even extends into the about section. You know, you see these paragraphs of long people writing about their passionate and how they found their place. And I love that you found that story for you, but like it's all about finding something scannable and quick and if maybe kind of negative, but at the end of the day, like is somebody actually gonna read that, right? You know, if you're looking at the Advertiring Managerial Recruitery, a couple of minutes on the portfolio maximum, right? So those are a couple of the first ones that come to mind. I mean, there's more, but those are the biggest cringe ones for me. Yeah, I feel like folks who are coming into the industry have these generic descriptions of what they do because they've read it somewhere or they've seen other people do it. And there's almost like folks are trying to fit in by saying, I'm a passionate problem solver, right? Something like that or on the same lines and they might think it sounds like they fit the bill of this designer role they're trying to play, but really hiring managers or senior designers who look at these portfolios are like, well, that's exactly the same as every other person who's done it. So exactly, so yeah, that real authentic description on yourself is like so important. And if you can do it concisely, bonus points, but yeah, it's quite hard though. So I guess my question would be like, what are some things that we can kind of poke people and say like, how do you figure out like that one sentence for yourself? Like, do you have a process for this or some thoughts around this? So in terms of the one sentence, like I think it should be something interesting, memorable or something that differentiates you from everybody else. So I've seen people with a background, you know, 10 years in ed tech, like that would make you a very appealing candidate if you're applying for an ed tech role, you know, working in education or something along those lines, that's a lot more impressive than passionate designer. And it's not just a space filler then, right? I'm not saying my portfolio is the best, but I have like a little animation with a couple of keywords that like, I think kind of define my story. And it's a little bit more interesting than just that the one or two sentence blurb. So you can get creative with it. There's not a right way to do it. And I think just to your point, that's part of the problem. You know, we see these portfolios with all of these examples of how to do it. And it's just other people copying other people. It doesn't necessarily mean that that's the right way. Yeah, absolutely. Like I like to have two prompts for folks who to think about this, which is like one, how are you different? Like the one you mentioned, like actually tell me like stuff about you that's quite, you know, unique or interesting that folks might kind of like pick up on. And then the other is like, can you talk about like your superpower or what you believe to be your superpower? And it's not invisibility because that would be really cool. But something that you are like actually passionate about or like you're like, I'm super OCD in this one way and that is what makes me me or that's what makes me unique. Like that's way more interesting, right? Yes, exactly. The other with broken links that kind of triggered what I thought which is like call to actions. So there's a bunch of ways we could put this. Let's just say three ways, right? So the broken links is one, not having any CTAs is some I see quite a lot or not having like purposeful CTAs or just too many CTAs. Just like links to everything. Just like I have Dribble, I have IG, I have all this like, whoa, what do you want to do? It's just like, wow. And it's funny because some of the links as well are like fairly like personal. So like a link to IG is like personal account. And sometimes I've seen this being on like private. So it's like, why would you link a private IG account to your like portfolio site, right? So yeah, there's a bunch of things there. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I see that often. And I used to kind of fall into that too. Again, like transitioning, I'm a new designer. Like the more links the better. It makes, adds to my expertise. I look like a professional. What's not when it's like to my vacation pictures of me like in my bathing suit on Instagram, right? Like so like, what do you want your audience to see? Like who are you designing this for? If you don't have a UX Instagram, that's fine. Most people don't. You don't need to link that, you know? Other things like that too. Like I had my dribble posted and like I'm really guilty of this. I had like four really crappy rudimentary UI design challenges posted there. Like not my best quality of work by any stretch but I felt compelled to have a dribble because I want it to be like the designers. So yeah, it's a quality over quantity approach for sure when it goes to your last point there. Yeah, another thing that... Wait, do you, okay. Maybe this is just me, okay. Like personally, if someone sends me like a dribble or Bihans link and they're like, that's my portfolio. I'm cringing already. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Wait, hold on, hold on. Is that the same for you? Or do you, are you nicer? Yeah, like are you like, oh, it's fine. I'll look through it anyway. Like how do you feel about that? I mean, if you dribbles your portfolio, I don't see how you can create like a compelling narrative around the work that you've done because it's literally just screenshots. Same with Bihans. I know you can like beef it up a little bit more but I think like in North America, it's the standard to have like a website or a notion or a PDF that you would send out. It does seem a little bit lazy maybe but I think that like outside of North America that might be more standardized. So I try to be a bit more open-minded about it especially with the Bihans because I know a lot of work can go into still creating that case study but definitely have a strong preference to a website where I can click, search for keywords, scroll very easily and find the content I need. It's going to be high resolution. It looks just more professional, right? Yeah, I agree. Yeah, my problem with like those two other platforms like Dribble and Bihans is they're like social network for designers, right? So it's about just like, hey, here's this cool image I did, you know and it doesn't really to your point, optimize for like explaining what it is. And some people do it on Bihans but yet again, it's just a image upload. So like the performance is bad and you're just like, oh, what are you trying to do? And you know, it's not really optimized for me to, for you creating it to write a bunch and to tell me that story, right? So yeah, that's why I find it cringe. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Please don't, please don't, yeah. Another one from me and love to hear your thought about this is if they show like the design thinking process image like empathize to test and they just like, they're like, here's my process and then they go ahead below and dissect it. Like, okay, here's what I did in the empathize phase. Here's what I did in the prototype phase. Do you have any problems with that or was that just me? So I like this resonates deeply with me because when I was in my boot camp they like really preached this at us, you know? It's like, if you don't have this in your portfolio some hiring managers will immediately discredit you. And I'm like, I would like to meet those hiring managers like who was saying this and like who is like having that as the criteria because it's not how the design process works. Like yes, in school we learn everything from A to B but like in the real world like never have enough time in the world to do every single step of the progress or the process. So it kind of makes you come off a bit more junior compared to like a senior design portfolio. You just focus on, you know the really interesting parts of the story of things that were unexpected didn't go according to plan or where you had to pivot. That's the real storytelling, right? If you're following this like a scribed script it's almost like a recipe, right? Where you're going step by step and you have this flow diagram. It's just not realistic at the end of the day and it kind of shows your inexperience from my perspective. Yeah, I definitely agree with you because the design process is not linear although it's taught linear as like, I guess the design thinking is like a popularizing like, oh use this in businesses. This is how easy it is, right? It's like that tool to communicate how easy it is but when you're actually on the ground and doing the work you might be somewhere in the middle of the process like in the ideation phase without, right? And then you're jumping like to and from and it's like bloops everywhere. So it doesn't really make sense. And to the point of a cooking recipe, if I did this then the natural outcome is that but that is not really realistic and it's not really real life. If only it was that easy, right? If you just make a persona and you can just hop on to the next stage you're like, oh it's good, oh well it's good done. Yeah, just bring in some magic dust. Yeah, it's pretty new actually. Yeah. There's another thing that I have found myself doing as well and now I'm like, okay, no, no, no, no, no. Which is when someone educates me about why wireframes are necessary. Like they basically say wireframes are the blueprint of this and we do it so we can have understanding and we can test this before like go into high fidelity. I'm like, yeah, like that's fine but like how did it match the situation that you faced? Right, like why did it, or how did it help without telling me like basically the Wikipedia definition of a wireframe? Like don't just throw that out, right? And sometimes that happens, I think designers might be like, oh, but I want to show them, I understand this process, right? But then you're like preaching to the choir because the hiring manager is like, yeah, yeah, all right wireframes, cool. I got it, yeah. Yeah, I've definitely done that too. I'm like, okay, no, I need to talk about the value of sketching or something like that. And I think this goes back to your point that you mentioned earlier, which is know your audience, right? Like what do they care about? Like they don't care about you describing sketching for instance, they care about how sketching unblocked you how sketching unblocked the team. What were some interesting things that came out of sketching, like why sketching first with this specific problem, et cetera, et cetera, right? Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. And like two things that come to mind with that is it kind of unnecessarily lengthens your case studies. And that's another thing you see in like these more junior portfolios, you just scroll and you're scrolling and you're scrolling and it's like, it kind of all starts to blur together and nothing really interesting is standing out about it, right? And then you just kind of skimming over the top not really getting the value from the case study. So that's another area where that can be kind of a negative. And then to speak to the rest of the point, which now I'm losing my train of thought, we're talking about, oh, you're adding all of this information to the case study about just all of this extra stuff. It's just kind of making you again, look a bit more junior, right? Like, and you can kind of be talking then about stuff that's not actually that relevant to the case study. So like for sketching your example there, like if there was something really interesting that came with this that was unexpected, yeah, throw that in. If there wasn't, you don't need to include it, like that's fine, you know, like give me the high level and make the person want to ask, reach out for that interview to get the rest of the detail, right? So again, is this all that quality over the quantity going back to that point? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the other thing to that is like, yeah, there's so many portfolios are like, they over explain themselves on this case study, right? So like big blocks of texts, like information fairly poorly presented because it's just like, here's this novel and you just like slap it there. And with too much information, like if you think of the reader, they almost get intimidated. They're like, whoa, like where do I start? You know, and you know, there is such thing as providing too much documentation. So it's just like really delicate balance between like thoughtful reduction, like what needs to be included and when, but yeah, definitely feel that pain of like, I'm scrolling forever, like what's going on? It's hard because you have all this work you put in, especially when you're transitioning and you're learning all the steps and you want to showcase that, you know, but it doesn't come off in the way that you think it is, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's a lot of portfolio cringes. I hope folks out there have some questions around that or like maybe dive into like deeper on, you know, why is it cringy or how to solve that if we didn't touch upon how to solve it? I would like to move to our next topic, which is career switching tips for UX designers or aspiring UX designers. What would you like to start with here, Emily? Sorry, I was just reading that one question because somebody is like, I've been eternally sunshine by the spotless mind. So I was totally distracting to me there, but do you mind please repeating that? I'm so sorry. Oh, no, no worries. I wanted to move to career switching, but is there a question that popped up that you really wanted to address? Oh, no, no, it's okay. That it just was just in the chat. I just caught my eye. So no, we can move to career switching, no problem. Okay, cool. I will try and display some of the questions on the screen so we can both see them and address them as they come in. So yeah, career switching to UX tips. What are some of your thoughts here being career switch yourself? Yeah, so when it comes to career switching, I think there's this idea that like you're gonna do the boot camp, you're gonna get the degree, you're gonna make the portfolio and you're gonna be applying for jobs and then you're gonna get the job and like, again, it's just linear, right? And like, of course it'll be wonderful if it worked that way, but given how competitive the market can be, it's not always realistic. So we need to look at it more as a process. I see a lot of people like wanting to like quit their job and dive headfirst into UX and double down and like maybe not the best idea. I would think of it more of like iterative slow process. You're gonna need support. There's gonna be bad days. There's gonna be good days and it's probably gonna take a little bit longer than you anticipate. I was very fortunate for me but it only took a couple of months. That's not the norm. So please don't get that idea for me that it's as easy and it's gonna brighten that palm of your hand very quickly, like a lot of these boot camps kind of paint this idea that, you know, you can do the course and they have this 80% graduation rate and like, when were those statistics, you know, actually updated recently, right? And maybe, but is it within the next year? You know, so think about what the process is gonna be for you to actually get to this and it's possible. I don't wanna discourage anybody but it's probably gonna take a little bit longer than you think. So you have to be patient and just work step by step, right? Every little step that you take towards this goal probably doesn't feel like a lot during the time but if you look back over the course of the year it'd be astounding how much progress you can make. Yeah, and I guess one question here was is there are boot camp programs that you've seen out and the ones that you've been a part of. Did they guarantee a job? Some do, which is like crazy to think about and a lot of people don't understand that these like guarantees have a lot of strings attached. So they're only gonna guarantee you a job if you're applying for 10 jobs a day and if you're coming to the session once a week and you're attending an event once a week and you're putting like all of these expectations that sure, like if you're following all of those things you probably would eventually get the job and that's kind of how they tie it together. And then if you don't get the job I've heard stories of people that go back and ask for the refund and suddenly there's some other reason why they're not eligible, right? So I would really be very cautious about these programs offering these guarantees. It's a big red flag in my opinion. Yeah, I agree, yeah. And I recently tried to read the like fine print on some of these programs and it's like, I don't understand it. Like it, you know, it's written in such a language that you're like, wait, so when can I get the refund? And like what type of guarantees are actually there? So for folks who are looking at these programs especially the ones with guarantees because they're typically way more expensive because they have that guarantee. So look at the fine print and really dive into like what it is and even contact them previous to you starting and really grill them on like what it is you actually understand like, you know this contract you have between you and the organization that's teaching you, right? Because a guarantee is so unrealistic unless they hire you. Like that's the only guarantee. If they are the employer they can actually make that guarantee. But if they're not, yeah, huge red flag and caution, caution, caution. Yeah, I completely agree, great point with that. Yeah, and so I wanna dive into more about like your sort of journey of after, you know UX education and after bootcamp and what was that process like? What did you try and that you're like, oh, this works and what do you try that was like, maybe not. Yeah, so I spent the first month following graduation just working on my portfolio, refining it getting feedback from people going to events until it was consistently positive, the feedback. That worked really well because then I knew that if I was applying for a job it wasn't gonna be my portfolio that was holding me back it was gonna be my lack of experience which I couldn't control anyways. So just really wanting to put my best foot forward it's worth the investment in time if you can make it. Next thing that I did that maybe didn't work as well I mean it ended up working out but I kind of did the spray and pray method I think people are familiar with that like oh it says UX designer in the title I'm gonna apply it says product designer or it says junior design like whatever I was like apply, apply, apply. It's way better looking back to be more intentional about your approach probably gonna find a way better fit and you're gonna come off as a much more compelling candidate. So that's something that might have worked a couple of years ago. I don't think that that's the best way to move things forward now. And the last thing that was kind of surprising to me that worked was actually posting on LinkedIn. This was actually never something that I anticipated for myself was never planning to be posting on LinkedIn regularly. It was advice given to me by a career advisor at my boot camp and first I was actually pissed off because I paid a lot of money for this program and I'm like oh this is the advice you have for me to post on LinkedIn like thank you so much really appreciate it. But you know I had nothing to lose is like whatever if they're suggesting this I'm gonna give it a try. I posted a little bit just kind of once a month just to kind of dip my toe in the water and I made a post that got a lot of attention just literally me complaining about a crappy job application I had where they had me do all this aptitude tests and they were giving me feedback that was horrible and they needed a design challenge and I just said I wasn't gonna move forward with it because there was just too many red flags really resonated with a lot of people like 4,000 people liked it or something stupid. And then it was like oh people are wanting to chat with me they're like offering me referrals to work at their company and it's like oh I can see how the networking and like reaching out to people and building relationships is probably a lot more effective than just like logging on to the job portal seeing what's new that day and like hitting applies. So yeah a couple of lessons that I've learned looking back. Yeah I had a really different experience like I think well apart from the spray and pray I did that too. It was funny because when I got into the industry I was a digital marketing person and I knew I liked design and I did freelance for a bit and I designed the company's website using keynote like because Photoshop was like super laggy. So I was like okay I'll just use the presentation tool this works right and then I found sketch but previous to that I was like okay well this job sucks. Granted I am doing design. Can I find a job that gives me a chance to design? So I just kind of like randomly applied and when I got the job or even interviewing for the job they were kind of asking me these questions that I'm like I don't know but I'll guess I'll learn it and it was like super random. So I got really, really lucky that like oh they were hiring for a product design role I had some experience designing things and then just kind of mostly learn on the job. So I didn't really do the prep work needed and I was like this was back in 2015 when I got first hired as a UXer and I was like oh that's not the reality we are in today right? Like there's just so much more expectation and like all of these like badges that you need before you even get into the industry and that's why it's like hence this advice of like tailoring your approach and targeting people you can actually think you have a shot at or something in your background that might resonate with folks at the company right? Maybe you use a tool every day maybe it's your specific major that you touched in this specific industry. Like anything, any little thread you can pull on is typically a good thing on your side like a green flag for the company but that's so different from my experience of getting into the industry. So yeah, I just want to call that out like I got super lucky and really it was just I fell into the industry right back then. That's kind of play a part in it though too right? I think a lot of people don't realize that you could still be doing everything right and it still might not happen right away so like don't forget that and like yes we're very fortunate but like I do attribute luck to landing my role quite quickly and it sounds like you do the same so easy to forget that and kind of play that down but it does play a part for sure. Yeah, there's a lot of things you mentioned like what helps you to sort of get the role in like a couple of months after we count and one was like networking, you did this in person? Not really, it was all online like I did my schooling online because I live in Calgary, Canada which is like not really a tech hub, it's growing but like I did my program out of Toronto. So I was doing events online. There's some in person events but I kind of went to school like in the middle of COVID so that was not really, you know this huge big prosperous scene here so yeah, most of my networking was online it was pretty uncomfortable for me at first to be honest with you not something that I had a lot of experience doing so now I try to go to more in person events I find that that's generally a lot easier there'll be something to snack on there might be a drink to have there might be an event or a speaker or something you can talk about afterwards so that's my preference can be really pushed me out of my comfort zone to be doing the networking online to start. Yeah, yeah, I'm not a huge networker like anytime I go to like the in person events I'm like okay, it's like who should I approach? What do I, what common thing? Like so you design, right? Yeah. What brings you here? Yeah, I'm not very good at that. I'm not very good at it. I prefer like being on the organizer side of it because then you're like, oh, this is an event and you know, you can freely talk about the event versus so if you don't like networking try and volunteer and help out the organizers because then you can approach anybody and that be like a free ticket for you to approach people, right? Not being like a weird networker or awkward llama or whatever. That's a real insider tip here. Yeah, I wish I would have known that. Yeah, it's so much easier because like maybe you'll be like placed at the door and you're like, hey, what's going on? And you know, it's just so much easier to greet people versus like you're just floating around endlessly in limbo. That's very interesting. The other thing was LinkedIn. So, you know, you had a post that like resonated with a lot of people and then did that kind of like spur you on to like just create more stuff on LinkedIn? Well, you just like, oh, it seems like people like this and seems like it helped. And is that when you started kind of creating content? Yeah, so it started clicking for me. I was like, oh, this is how this can work. Like this is pretty powerful. And I was definitely sleeping on this. I was very fortunate that I was kind of already in the final stages of securing my first position when I actually got this LinkedIn post that kind of went off but I met a lot of really interesting people in industries that I didn't think I had any business applying. And you know, my background's in biochemistry and there was this bio cosmetic company that was reaching out to me and they wanted someone with four years of experience but given my background, they thought I would be super relevant. So I was like, oh, okay, like I should keep this up. Like it's obviously kind of adding to my credibility as a designer and my expertise. So I wanted to keep doing that. You know, I had a lot of imposter syndrome going into the industry. You know, I took a three month course and now I've been job searching for three months. Like let's not pretend like I'm an expert by any stretch. But it was helping to build my confidence, right? People were resonating with the things I was sharing. It kind of built me up to keep going and it's really good for practicing your writing skills, right? So for me, to keep going kind of feels natural and the best thing about it is people reach out to me regularly and say, I love your content and like what you're posting is really helping me. Like there's no better feeling than that. So it kind of feels like why wouldn't I keep going with it? But yeah, for anyone that's kind of nervous about posting on LinkedIn, I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to post the perfect content or things like that. And don't, you know, look at us more like an experiment. That's how I like to approach it. Hey, I tried this, did it work? Did it not? Okay, it didn't, why? Like let's try something else instead. It can really help to take the pressure off and that's how I try to see it moving forward. Yeah, I think that makes so much sense. Okay, so we are at the time where we should jump into some questions because I see a lot coming in. So let's dive in. So folks, please drop your questions below but I'm gonna bring up one on screen. I've never done this before, but it looks like it works. Okay, can you, so let me just summarize this so folks don't have to read it. Can you explain more about what transferable skills from hospitality to UX? Like are there any that we can kind of help this person brainstorm and bring out she's coming from, sorry, he's coming from hospitality and he also tries to touch to UX. Any ideas? Tons of ideas, because I actually worked in hospitality for a decade and like looking back, people are always very impressed with my lab experience and my degree, but arguably way more applicable is my soft skills that I've learned from hospitality. You're dealing with difficult customers solving their problems and there's always problems to solve. Like, oh, we made a reservation for six but now there's eight of us, can you fit us in? Oh, we need to move by the table or oh, we gotta leave in half an hour to get to the show. Oh, I have a dietary restriction, right? Like you essentially have to think on your toes and solve all of these people's problems in a pleasant manner, like with efficiency. Those are not skills that you can, you're gonna pick up in a 12 week boot camp, you know? Your communication skills, talking with these people, can you de-escalate a challenging situation? Even with your teammates, you know, working with the kitchen, making sure that you get all the information that they need to deliver the order correctly. Like I could go on and on, you're collaborating with your colleagues, maybe you're sharing a large party and you have to work together. So many things, you know, I even did a little bit of management there. So you're showing leadership skills, you're organizing, you're putting together a schedule, you know, you have to understand the flow of the restaurant and when to send people home or pull people back onto the floor. Like, to be honest with you, you could literally do a Google search, like waitress or waiter versus UX design. There's gonna be a ton of different things that pop up and see the ones that resonate with you. Can you think of an example that's relevant? And that's how it all starts. And then you can start to formulate those bullet points under waiter to sound more UX. And that's how you start to build that credibility and showcase your past as a valuable asset rather than this unrelated field that you're, you know, closing the door on. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, those people skills are so incredibly important in all fields, right? Like those are so transferable. Yeah, we used to call them in our customer service role, angry birds, right? People who were just like really like, oh, solve my problem. Oh, I won't buy your product anymore. And we're like, oh, angry birds. That was our code name, like you deal with the angry bird, but anyway. That's very sweet and awesome kind of way. I like it. Yeah, okay, let's go to this question here. What is your definition of self-awareness in design careers and how important is it in a practical way? Self-awareness in your design career? Is it important? How important thoughts on just self-awareness in your career? I mean, it never hurts to be self-aware. I think that kind of ties back to the soft skills as well. Like how do you communicate with someone? Be aware of the situation, you know? Who is the user? What kind of information are they interested to hear, you know, instead of saying they may be sharing the technical jargon that I would say to another UX designer if it's a external stakeholder, I'm probably gonna reduce it to something very simple so that even the layman can understand why I did this. I made the button bigger so you could see it better, you know? Or like we wanted to change this color so you could draw emphasis to it and you'd see it right away, you know? Thinking about your audience and really the storytelling kind of goes hand in hand with being self-aware, right? Like all of the soft skills, never gonna be a negative to be self-aware, critically important in my opinion. Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think one thing about self-awareness is like people who are self-aware tend to reflect a lot. I think that's really important for like growth in any career, right? Like whether it's UX or hospitality or whatever, I think if you can reflect and introspect, then you can kind of map out like what you want in your career or what you wanna learn more, what activities gave you energy, right? So you're just gonna be more purposeful in the steps you make towards your goal and the things you do at work and maybe even constraints of things or things that made you get angry or whatever. So yeah, self-awareness doesn't hurt. If anything, it's like a superpower of yours if you are very self-aware. Sometimes self-aware, like, I guess you don't wanna have too much self-awareness that you can't do anything. There could be a balance of you falling into like, I'm not good enough kind of like, oh, why me? But yeah, I guess it's a net positive in my opinion like self-awareness, right? I agree. Yeah, okay, cool. I think we have answered this one but I'm just gonna flash it on screen really quickly. Can you talk about the importance of soft skill and how to articulate them in an interview and intertwine them within your story of your skills? So maybe we can take this from another point of view where we can say like, during an interview specifically, right? I think you sort of touched on this Emily, but can you think of an example of a story you told during an interview, like at the beginning of your career? I don't know, yeah, I don't know if you can pull one from the top of your head. You've got me on the screen, I'm sorry. No, no, it's okay. So actually it's funny that you say this because I did a lot of prep work for interviews and part of that was thinking of these stories that I could share that would be relevant for any of those behavioral interview type questions that people ask and you really only need like four or five stories that will apply to the vast majority of those types of questions. So, and it's storytelling, right? That's how you articulate these skills. It's showing in the story, beginning, middle and end, right? People use the star method. It's the same thing, it's just storytelling. So one of the stories I would tell, and now I'm a little rusty here because it's been a while since I had to share the story but was from working in the restaurant. You know, I was managing, I come in on a busy Friday night and the water's brown. You know, you need clean water to operate a restaurant. We have reservations coming in tonight, Friday night, we'd wanna shut the restaurant down. You know, how do we overcome this situation? So I was able to work closely with my manager. We called the plumber immediately and he was able to come in on an emergency right away. We were able to get the water up and running in the next hour. So we didn't have to actually cancel any of our reservations because I started around four o'clock. So it was just a couple of people we had to turn away, able to quickly turn around the entire night and save essentially everyone's experience that evening. You know how crappy you've been waiting for date night all until Friday and we cancel your reservation on you last minute. And also the revenue of the restaurant, right? To shut down on a busy Friday night would have been horrible for business. So just quick thinking on our toes and staying calm in a tough situation allowed us to overcome that obstacle. And it's not UX related, but it goes to my soft skills. And when you're transitioning, if you have, you know, stories like this that you can share, doesn't have to be necessarily UX related. Once you can start to build those stories later, that's when you can bring them out. Yeah, quite right. So remember that question about the eternal sunshine. So I wanna bring it up. It's really interesting, right? And let me just take it off screen and I'll just read it. So let's do some role play here. Okay, I'm ready. Okay. So Emily, you've been internal, wait, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind by instead of raising your romantic partner, you've raised everything you know about UX. So you find yourself on the die hard bus. I like this that you're merging two like films together. Thank you for ever writing this. But you only have three months to find a UX job or everybody on the bus eats it. You know, I'm quoting here. How would you advise yourself to get into a job with only three months with everybody's life on the line on the bus? Three months, you have no experience or no knowledge about UX. What would you do? Really not setting me up to succeed here. Three months is not a lot of time even for somebody that would be like an expert quick learner. If I only got three months, like that really changes things. I guess I'm going to be self taught because I need to go at a rapid pace here, right? But more realistically speaking, if I had a very short timeframe to break into UX, like I'm the kind of person that likes to be held accountable and have that structure. So for me, taking a bootcamp was a very good option for that. It's also expensive. So it really motivated me to do my best. I didn't want to waste and squander my money, right? I think I would still probably take that path again. It's a really great place to jump off from and build your career. It doesn't teach you everything. Obviously you can't learn everything in such a short span, but that would really be helpful. And starting to build relationships as soon as possible, reaching out to people, getting to know them, building rapport, all of those things start with networking, right? Like when I was first starting with networking, I had this totally wrong. I was just like, okay, I'm going to talk to someone. I'm going to butter them up a little bit and they're going to like me so much. They're going to offer me a job. And it's very embarrassing to admit this now because that is just so obviously not how this is supposed to work. It's about building relationships, right? So, and it takes time to do that. So if I only got three months, you know, day one, starting early, reaching out to people, seeing how I can help, hopefully I have some confidence in my skills at that point where I'm able to be, you know, articulating how I might be valuable to their team. But then three months, I don't know, Chris, do you have anything to add to that? I feel like that's really, really aggressive. Yeah, that's really aggressive. I think learning, yeah, in three months to get into any industry is, yeah, quite aggressive. I would say consume as much information about the industry as possible. So whether it is like books, you like videos, you like podcasts, just basically be like, okay, well, where's the best information? And then how quickly can I consume? Like you can listen to it while you're on the bus. You can watch it as, you know, replace Netflix or watch educational videos and just consume as much. And then because UX for me is more of a vocational and a profession, a profession is like things you have to study for, and then you kind of like pass the bar and then, okay, now you're official, but a vocation is like, it has to be on the job, right? So the easiest way to do this is once you've consumed enough or you feel like you wanna dive in because this basically gives you confidence, you can then say, okay, well, who can I help and how can I help them? Okay, so the easiest example is like build a website for your friend, right? That's probably the lowest barrier to entry of anything with these no code tools you have out there, then that could get your feet wet. And then you go progressively more complex like how do I build an app or how do I build a web app, right? So I think diving into projects as early as possible. So you're also not just learning passively when you're consuming, you're also learning actively. So you say, okay, well, how do I solve this specific problem? And I'll just learn enough to solve that problem and then I'll move on to the next problem. And that way, I think it was solidified knowledge quicker and then you can give actual concrete examples in your interview and say, oh yeah, so like, I came across this problem, this is how I tackled it. And the self-taughtness of our industry is fairly evident, right? Like, we don't have a proper path to this. A lot of people come from different backgrounds and everything, so this is really, really interesting. And I think pulling in your, whatever your experience in your background and applying it to that specific process of like learning and building products is probably the best way. And I would argue is probably the quickest way because you're getting like real hands-on experience. Yeah, that would always be my kind of go-to advice is like, hey, just who cares if you don't know anything? Just like, try and build this website. And then now you have to learn how to build the website, right? I think they should pick you if their life depends on it for the three months. I think that's a pretty good answer. Okay, well, I'm honored, but I do not want to save people like a missed one. I'm trying to just get myself out of the situation, yeah. Yeah, I'm just like, no, I'll just, you know, enter a coin and restart the game, okay. Do you have a take on this? I guess this is more of a quick question where it's like, what do you think of portfolios with no customized domains? This person feels embarrassed not having a custom domain because you have to pay like what, 20 to 50 bucks every month. Thoughts on that? I have a custom domain and it was like 2.99 for the first year. So maybe you got to look somewhere else. That seems like extremely overpriced for my experience unless that goes like with a website builder, maybe that goes hand in hand. It is expensive and it is kind of a bar to admission that's kind of unfair for people that don't have the privilege to just have the money endlessly to fund this endeavor, right? So if this, you are in the camp where you can't afford like these luxuries, like a custom website builder or even a domain, like that's okay. It's like not really a big piece of the puzzle. What's arguably much more important is how you present your work and how you tell your story. I'm gonna forgive a non-custom domain name any day. It's not in that list of criteria when I'm hiring somebody. So please don't get hung up on those small details. Again, it's us putting pressure on ourselves about needing to showcase this perfect vision to the world. And it's not the reality and you don't have to fall into that trap. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, GoDaddy has really cheap domains. So if you feel like you need that, but yeah, it wasn't on our list of cringes. So... No, not even close yet. Yeah, not even, yeah, exactly. This is more of a statement here. Let's start working in agencies and software houses. A crucial for career switching. Do you agree with this? Crucial is really a strong word. So I would say no. I never worked in an agency. I switched careers. I know other people that have done the same. Maybe do they hire people more easily? I don't know because I never worked in an agency. So probably the wrong person to ask, I guess. Yeah, I've worked in both. And I love how product companies you can go a bit deeper on, because you're in this industry. So you're always thinking about different types of user within that industry or people that use your tool. But with agency work, I would definitely encourage folks to work in both. But with agency work is interesting because you get lots of different types of problems, right? For different types of people. And you have the context switch. The only downside is you can't work that long because these projects are typically very, very short. The longest is probably six to 12 months, right? So you're just delivering the first bit with not really kind of getting access to that data. So both are okay for career switches. And then you're basically, but you should work at both to see like which one kind of suits your personality and the pace of how you wanna work or how deep you wanna go on a specific thing. But there's no like, you have to work at agencies when you start. I think both companies will definitely hire entry-level people, right? So yeah, crucial is definitely an overstatement there. Any questions that you see that are interesting, Emily? You know, we have some time there. Sure, let me... Oh, but well, the first one right here that just came in, how do you feel about including personal or projects with fake fictional briefs or companies in your portfolio? I got a job with three fictional products in my portfolio because it comes down to the storytelling, right? And if you're a junior, like that's okay. We can't expect juniors to have worked on three real-world projects, you know, like, if you can, awesome. But I don't think that that's the standard or at least it shouldn't be moving forward. So definitely don't be ashamed if you have these, you know, academic projects in your portfolio, including briefs or companies about them. I don't know if you need to go to that level to explain the company and what that looks like. That's even something I see in real projects that I would probably stray away from. You know, you open the case study, you've got a big picture and then you scroll down and it's the name of the company and then it's about the company and then it's the goal of the company. And I'm like waiting to get to the part where you're talking about what you actually did. Like this is your portfolio, right? So I would gear more towards the side of actually sharing information of how you contributed to this case study and how the work you did had impact rather than really highlighting what the company is and the work that they do. It's just not really that important unless it's a very specific industry you're trying to get into and you wanna have your portfolio all kind of wrapped around that. Yeah, so we have another question from a fellow creator, Hang. So he says, Emily, the advice of networking on LinkedIn for new designers is fairly prevalent now. Lots of new designers are trying it, but without success that you found earlier. What separates you? What separates from what you did to what early stage career designers are doing now? Like is there something that you felt, you did different or unique in terms of like sharing your story on LinkedIn or networking on LinkedIn, anything there? So I think one of the, well, two of the biggest things was timing. I started like two, almost three years ago posting on LinkedIn. There's a lot less people trying to do that then. That makes it easier for me, right? So, and then the other thing is consistency. I've been keeping up with it as time goes on. I hope, I think I'm getting better as time goes on. It gets easier and I'm used to it. And those are kind of like the two main things that I would really focus on. So anybody can be consistent and work to improve. But the other thing is I really try to be authentic and just share things that I think will be helpful or interesting. And that could be anything as small as like a little portfolio tip or as big as like sharing a personal story. I hope that people can get to know me a little bit and connect with what I'm sharing. I think that that helps to build more genuine and authentic relationships. And sure, maybe that's a stretch if I'm like posting online and saying that that's, you know, me creating authentic relationships. But if it's building that bridge to where people want us maybe comment on something and then we're having a conversation and then before, you know, we're DMing and then maybe we're chatting outside of things. That's kind of how it starts and snowballs from there. And that's kind of how I like to see it. I really started it more as like a numbers game and I was very ruthlessly sending connection requests wanting to meet people and build that network. And that helps to kind of establish that presence online but that doesn't really actually help with networking. That helps for building a social presence, right? I wasn't really building deep connections with any of those people I initially connected with. So again, like it kind of depends what's your goal here. You're wanting to get a large following on LinkedIn then yes, send a lot of connection requests or you're actually wanting to meet people and build relationships. You know, get in the comments chat, learn something, share something interesting and try to get to know somebody. Those would be the kind of two different avenues that I would look at it from. We do have a lot of questions for you, Emily. So I want to try and do some quick fire if that's okay. So we can get for as many as possible so we can, you know, try to adjust everything. Okay, I'm ready. Okay, cool. Can you speak on the cover letter debate? How important is a cover letter in your opinion? It is not that important but it might be valuable if you're a career switcher and you want to articulate why your past is relevant. It's an opportunity for you to kind of showcase even more why you might be the great candidate. Amazing. I'm a Brazilian designer and I want to work at foreign companies. Do you have any tips for working at foreign companies? No, I've never worked at foreign companies. I'm sorry, I don't want to give advice if I don't know anything about it. Yeah, absolutely fine. This is quick fire. So let me try to find something. What do you recommend in terms of pivoting from UX? Sorry, into UX from engineering. This person has worked as a front-end developer for three or four years. So experience with web and UI. So what are some tips for an engineer working in UX or pivoting to UX? Engineers are super analytical, technical. Those are all really great attributes. Highlight anything that you think has any crossover between UX. Those are the things you really want to bring to the forefront in your resume, your portfolio and when you're interviewing. Amazing, okay. How can I gain experience as a junior yet again from programming to product design? Apparently this person has, there's limited sort of opportunities she sees now. So any tips on like building experience as a junior, especially from an engineering background? Be consistent, stay with it. Don't expect it to be a quick thing and be patient and just put in those little steps. As you're moving forward, it's going to help get you in that right direction. And if you can find a support network, there's already another engineer in the call here that looks like they have a similar story. If you can have somebody where you're working together, sharing your frustrations and moving forward, that can be a huge help when making this transition. Do you have any go-to sort of portfolio sites or good portfolio sites to take inspiration from? Do you have a list in your head? Do you know some out there, any ideas? So one better, I actually have a list of all of my favorite portfolios. I think I have like over 50 like visually presented. So if you want, I can share the link for that. But if you can find it on my portfolio, it was dandydesign.ca. There's a button that says Free UX Resources. You can click there, it's linked there. Amazing, even better. Okay, so let's, I think we have time for a couple more. Guys, keep your comments coming. All right, this one's interesting. What do you think of jobs offers listed as UI slash UX as if one could swap the other? What's your take on this? This is another cringe because I think people don't know like what is UX UI? What is UI UX product design UX? Like it's all kind of synonymous in my brain because I don't think employers have a clear understanding of what it actually means. So whenever I see a role list is that it's far more important to just look at the job description. What are they actually asking for? And then when you get to the interview, ask those questions just to make sure you have the same understanding as the hiring manager. There's a lot of companies where the hiring manager doesn't write the job description or is not in charge of like finally publishing it. So whatever the hiring manager says to, you know, the people ops or HR, then they do the writing and they publish. So a lot of things are outside of that control just depends on what the process is. So yeah, exactly, ask those questions, right? There's, this was a little bit hard to answer because it's about, I guess, a good layout for a CV but maybe we could take this in terms of like things to include or like things not to include instead of like the perfect layout because I don't know how we're supposed to give this visual here, but yeah. Things to include would definitely be great alignment, great white space and great visual hierarchy. Those are the three main design things you can include that I can look at right away and understand if you're a good designer or not. I would really emphasize that. Other things to include would be, you know, your contact information, make it very easy. I talked about links, make sure that they work, you know, your experience, try to keep that at the top if you have anything relevant as that's gonna showcase that you're a bit more senior in your career, education if you have it. And I do include my skills section just to show skills I have experience with but I think that's less important than the quality of the content in your experience section. Okay, let's go for the last question. What are your thoughts on the oversaturated market for UXs and product designers? Do we need, do we and future UXs have job opportunities? Basically, yeah, are there gonna be enough jobs for everybody flooding the market? I mean, this is what a lot of people are worried about especially ones who are just coming in. What are your thoughts on this? So will there be enough jobs for everybody flooding the market? No, I mean, like, and that's because of the quality of people flooding the market is not really up to the standard that you might think that it is. We're hiring for a designer at my job right now. We had like hundreds of applicants. It was shocking to see the quality, the poor quality of the majority of these applicants. So I used to kind of fall into the noise of like, oh my gosh, the buzz, there's so many people applying there's so few roles. And it's like, it's really not that hard to stand out at least from my limited experience hiring right now seeing the people you put in the extra work it really does shine compared to the people that are just throwing in the application just to see what could happen, right? So don't get too discouraged. If you put in the work, I genuinely think it can happen for you just have to be dedicated and make sure that you're doing the smart choices and the right things. Okay. I think that was amazing. Thank you for that quick fire. I've never done that before, but you were like so on point. That was fun. Oh, great, great. So you had to do that really well. So thank you. I guess to end this, I would ask, Emily, where can people find you? What are you working on? Just tell us how we can connect with you. Yeah. So you can obviously find me on LinkedIn. I alluded to that. So my handle is Emily-Mazerick. You can also find me on my website, dandydesign.ca. I'm offering mentorship there. I have UX resources and any kind of past speaking against an engagement. So you can find posted there in terms of what I'm working on next. I'm actually writing a book on UX portfolios, do's and don'ts. So very relevant to this topic. This will go light the fire under my ass to keep writing and keeping me accountable, which is good. I need that. So no deadline yet, but in the works. So stay tuned for that. Amazing, very exciting. So guys, go follow Emily and we can't wait for her book to come out and go support it when it does come out. So come back on as well. And we can talk about the book and just dive into some of these little things that you shared. Yeah. Yeah, that'll be amazing. Well, thank you so much Chris, really appreciate it. Yeah, I had a lot of fun and yeah, put you on spot a few times and you knocked it out the park. So that was amazing. That question, that eternal spotless question almost got me there. Yeah. Whoever, I'm guessing it's like one of the creators that just dropped that question in, full of creativity. So, but anyway, thank you so much for coming. I know it's really early. So let me just end this with some housekeeping. All right, thanks Emily. Thanks. All right guys. So before you go, I just want to talk about the next live. It's with Tamara, a brand strategist is happening on April the third. So be sure to check that out and some fancy graphics later. If you want to get notified, then there's this link that you can, I believe scan or something. I'll leave a link down below and wait, I just want to really quickly try this awesome adoration. Yes. So scan that if you can. And if you feel like, you want to jump on a LinkedIn live, then hit me up. I'm always down to talk to you. So just get me in the DMs. And we do this twice a month. So please check that out. And what else do I have to say? I think that's it. So for me at UX Playbook and Emily will bring her back on again to say bye. We will see you later. Thank you again, Emily. Yeah, thanks for having me. This was a lot of fun. Bye. Bye, everyone. Of everyday people. It sound right, boy.