 What's up guys? In this video I'm hopefully going to share some advice with you about how to get a job in a big tech company. So I work for Cisco. I've been a UI UX designer for 15 years. I've worked for some of the world's biggest companies. And then hopefully by now I've learned some tips and tricks about what these companies are looking for and maybe how you can get your job. So I've been with Cisco for five years now and before that I was actually travelling. So I've got a caravan and I love to travel around with my wife and we were in France and then we found that we were going to have a baby. So she was like oh you need the job so I have to travel back a thousand miles and then get a job as quickly as possible. And I've wrote down the things that I did and these are the things that I think you can apply for maybe getting a junior role because when you apply for a role it's all the same basically. Apart from obviously the level I was going at was a senior role compared to a junior role but employers are looking for the same things because I've hired designers before and this is exactly what I look at. So first thing on your list is your portfolio. So as a designer this is the most important thing. This is what's going to be in your interview. Maybe an interview is like an hour's long so at least 75% of that is going to be looking at your portfolio. So my personal portfolio is on Behance. That's a free website and it's actually owned by Adobe. The reason I have it on Behance is I don't think you actually need your own personal website. I've had lots of designers and I used to have a PDF of my portfolio and I actually don't think it needs to be that flashy because I think the quality of the work and so basically a portfolio is made up of case studies so normally say have around three to five and in your interview you'll probably just go through one to be honest for most of it and in a case study you effectively write up this is where you showcase your skills really as a UI UX designer. You write up everything you did in the project and it's not just about the final screens. This is something I've definitely learned over the years. I used to just have portfolios where it was just the flash images but it's actually the whole working process so in my Behance portfolio I spent some time and I went through and I created case studies and this is where you're going to show the skills that the hiring manager is looking for. So basically UX there's a process to what we do and it's not just about figment designs but it's about we have to show some research in there. So in my portfolios I take photographs whenever I'm working and the research could be a card so it could be some information architecture. There's loads of basically different UI UX tools that we do like persona creation, there's information architecture, there's a sketching and wireframing. So you kind of want to show the biggest array basically possible of different skills in your portfolio and take it through a project and then write this up. So this is what you're going to be talking about in your interview. So once I have my portfolio set which was on Behance wasn't anything flashy I then went around looking to find the job and then the place I go really is just LinkedIn. So if you haven't already got on LinkedIn then you definitely need to get it. This is a social networking site probably most of you are already on there if not just add me I accept everyone that adds me and I'll be your first connection but within LinkedIn there's basically a job section and you can search for UI UX design jobs and then I think it's going to be the biggest platform in the world for jobs going forward but you can you can filter by starter, junior, entry level and then find a job here. So I found an application for Cisco and I then went on the website and normally big companies have an internal website which you sign up for and then you will upload basically your resume. So a lot of these companies don't actually let you send them a resume you have to upload it on their website. So that's what I had to do with Cisco and then you will put links to your Behance portfolio on there and then hopefully it's really a numbers game so I've had a lot of failure in my life so don't worry about it it's like if you apply for 10 rolls maybe only one will get back to you and also I've had contracts cancelled on me the day before I've meant to start before so I guess the most important thing to remember is it's really just business at the end of the day and a lot of these companies don't like hire internally as well so legally sometimes companies have to put out jobs whereas they know the person who's already going to get that job so that's why a lot of you might not hear back from jobs so don't worry about it it really is a numbers game. So go on LinkedIn find the job you want apply for it through the corporate website and then hopefully you'll get a call back from a recruiter or someone in HR who works for the company so I got a call back from Cisco they scheduled an interview and this is where it's your chance to shine really with your portfolio so for my interview in Cisco I went down to London and I sat down in a room and there was about six people maybe interviewing me there it was probably one of the largest interviews I've been on it's quite intimidating sometimes so I've been on interviews before like when I was working in Barclays it was just me and two other designers I've been in some terrible ones before really I'm not going to name the company but sometimes companies give you tests to do and either UIUX test ones from a big company and effectively it was a trick question I think and the correct answer was not to design something but to ask more questions and anyway my work got torn apart by maybe 10 people in the room I think they had the whole design team I'm just sweating just thinking about it but don't worry I've definitely had my fair share of failed interviews as well it's something to get better at over time but with Cisco I basically went through my portfolio on screen for about 45 minutes I talked through the case studies and then they just asked questions really it's always all about your work and um I'm not a fan of the tests sometimes so I know a lot of coders have tests because what they do is very technical I don't really think you can test designers that well I tend to find them a portfolio is a real reflection of a designer's work and you get everything from that so once I had my interview then you'll get called back and you get the job and then you're going to start in a month's time then you'll get your contract through so really have a read through of some of these big companies contracts are a lot of pages long and make sure you're happy with it and then when you start then it's like oh what's the environment like and the environment of the big tech companies is really really good so I actually work from home when I first started with Cisco I worked one day a week in the office and um but I was living in up north and it took me over five hours to get to the office once a week so normally when you first start a job you'll want to connect with your team and you'll you'll go in maybe one day a week two days a week how things are working now um but but then once you become familiar with the team and they understand you and trust you then you can move uh I found moving permanently remotely was fine and now you know you go in a couple of times a year to for team days for team bonding days and then there's like a reason why you would go in and I find that's really good I like video chats are okay but you know seeing everyone once a year or once every couple of months is I think it's nice to make the effort and go down and meet your team so yeah challenges you're gonna you're gonna find you're gonna find a lot of people don't reply to you when you air apply for jobs again remember it's just business a lot of these companies it's not personal they're hiring internally so it's really a numbers game keep improving your portfolio so I'm not I'm within your portfolio you want case studies and if you want help building a case study I've got an online course I teamed up with course careers and I really think it's the best UX course online I put months of work into it and essentially the whole point of the course is we build you a portfolio of three to five case studies and we show every single skill in the design process in there so we tick off what recruiters are looking for so that's the challenges and then my advice to you is seek out like how I got my first job actually was for internships so don't just a don't just look for junior roles but also really think about internships so my first internship was in British Vogue and I went there for two weeks and it was minimal pay they literally pay for your travel and your lunch and I stayed in hostels in London and I did basically what I had to do to get my foot in the door and from there I then worked in a lot of other magazines within the same company so really think about internships like I got my first actual professional job at Wired through a connection I made in my internships and I actually went to Wired to do an internship and it turned out it was actually a real job that they had there for me so I was very lucky the way I got in but I got in because I networked in real life and there and did internships