 two, one, and we are live. Whenever you are, wherever you are, thank you for joining me for today's special event. Let me know where you guys are tuning in from. Always interested to know where the people is on the interwebs. Let's see. Yes, we are live on LinkedIn. Perfect. Let me check the tech. Great. And usually I do these events with me and another designer. But today, you guys are just going to get me. And like always, at the end of the session, I'll be opening this up towards the end with AAMA. So as I speak about Job Search, let me know if you have any questions and just drop that into the comments. Feel free to fire the questions of me whenever. And I will just go back and read it and hopefully bring up that question throughout this life. So today, I'm going to share something, something, something very special that I've been working on for so long. Let me just bring it in here. It's the job sprint. And here is my promise for the folks tuning in today. I'm going to show you how to get a UX job, OK? How to get your next UX job. And I want to be clear that the strategies I share today work for a designer. Might be thinking about repositioning. Maybe they're burnt out. And they want to reposition from a UI designer to a product designer or a mid-level designer to a senior designer. Really repositioning themselves to secure a better role. So that's who it could work for. The second designer it could work for is a designer looking for change. Once a new role to tap into their full potential, maybe their current situation sucks or their job sucks. And it's time to move on to something they truly enjoy. A job that they value, one that values what they bring to the table and is willing to reward them for it. So a change-seeking designer. And then the third strategy or the third type of designer that can benefit from this strategy is a designer that's recently laid off. Maybe you're feeling stuck and you're not making enough progress on getting a new job. Maybe you've applied to 100 jobs. You spend a lot of time waiting for responses from recruiters. And most of the time you get ghosted and don't know why. These strategies also work for you. So it doesn't matter if you're a junior, a mid-level, a senior, these should help you move forward in your job searching journey. And these frameworks are relevant. And I know that these strategies work because I've been both a designer and a hiring manager. A designer, as a designer, I know how painful it is for to be constantly looking for new opportunity, especially at 27 years old and just getting into UX design, which was me, to getting my dream role as head of design at age 31. So just four years later from not having any experience to managing a full team of designers, right? That's from me as a designer. But on the flip side, as a hiring manager, from being a team of one to building a team of 40 plus designers, working with leadership teams to build systems of hiring talent that's coming into the office and to filter out the ones that we found to be the perfect match. So I've been both the candidate here and also the decision maker pulling the trigger, saying, yes, we want that designer. So with that said, Job Sprint gets you a UX role that's fulfilling, flexible, and financially rewarding. And first things first, before I talk about Job Search and Job Sprint, most of you guys are probably here because I ran this huge giveaway last week. And let me just make that a little bit bigger so you guys can see. And with the help of 15 amazing creators, here they are, we reached over 500,000 people. We got over 2,800 reactions. We had 1,000 entries into this competition and nearly 700 people registered for this event. And a lot of them are still coming in. And that's just on one week of preparing for this, leading up to this event, one week on LinkedIn. So let me know how you got here. Did you find out this event through a giveaway? Which creator was it? Let me know in the chats below. And I think I've had some chats come in. Hello from Dubai. Okay, great. We've had some folks from Dublin Island, Rebecca. Another one from London. Oh, Lucy from Oslo right now. That's great. Someone from Berlin come in. Someone based here in Vietnam. We have Bangladesh as well. Hello from India. Okay, so everybody is from all different places. But my guess would be, you've come in through one of our creators sharing this and getting a prize for their audience. Okay, great. So with that said, you guys have probably wondered, did I win Chris? Did I win a job sprint? And I just wanna tell you that I can't tell you yet. Okay, I promise I will tell you, but I cannot tell you yet. You'll have to stay and find out. What I can tell you is at the end of this presentation, even if you don't win, you'll have a roadmap to get your next UX job if you so choose. Does that sound fair? So let me know in the chat if that sounds fair. And we can then move on. But I think we should start by asking ourselves, how do we get here? Like when did I start thinking about job search and job sprint and actually what went into this whole process before I tell you about the product a bit more? In August 15th, 2022, I was working on something called the portfolio playbook. It's a 11,000 word guide to build an industry standard portfolio, even if you knew nothing about UX portfolio. So from scratch, the resources, templates, best practices, and it was a huge success. In fact, it's still one of my number one set of products. And then three months later on October the third, I launched a interviews masterclass, a 17 video masterclass. In just one hour, you'll learn the entire hiring process and how a hiring manager judges interviews with tips and angles from being better at going through this process. Then four months after that, on January the 30th, we tried something different, a gamified application process, focusing on the most high impact and low effort items. In a week, the goal for the designer to go through this challenge is to apply to 10 jobs instead of wasting hours on perfecting things and never really getting anywhere through procrastination. Four months after that, we went even further and launched ADP list mentor masterclass, one of their first cohorts called product ties your job search. We combined the previous learnings from the things we built and ran classes with 30 plus designers live, teaching them core concepts of how to approach your job search, like building a product. But I didn't stop there because people told us they loved our classes. So six months after this, on November the sixth, I launched job sprint beta. I worked with six designers for six weeks. We met twice a week for four hours and did a bunch of assignments together to help them completely transform their job search. So that leads us to today. Six months after that, which is today. And for the last six months, I've literally been working on this every single day, taking everything I learned from the previous five products, like a hundred plus pieces of feedback, suggestions, improvements, and bored it down into one digital course. 165 lessons, 20 resources frameworks and templates, 14 workshops, 16 hours plus of training around this topic of how do I get myself the next UX job? One that you frankly want and frankly deserve, okay? That was the whole challenge for me. How do I sort of transfer what I did into someone else based on all the learnings, right? And today I'm going to attempt the impossible and squish everything over the past, let's just say two years of development into however long we have left. Let's just say 30, 40 minutes, right? So even if you never end up interested in the course or buying the course, you'll still walk away with a roadmap to get yourself hired, okay? Sound fair? Drop a line? Okay, let's get started. Right, so here it is. Here's the roadmap. First, you wanna build your personal brand. One that you wanna commute, one that you can communicate consistently, one that enhances your story and superpower. That's why there's that Apple logo. First, it's your brand. Then you wanna build a system around your job search, creating a lens in which you know exactly what you are looking for and can identify it super quickly. After that, you wanna hyper tailor your messaging after you found your target to really show the hiring company that you are what they need. Nailing your design challenge. There's only actually four things you need to know when approaching any design challenge being thrown at you. And I'll tell you how in a sec. Moving up from that, tear down the hiring process so you know exactly what happens at each stage and what is expected of you. And finally, and finally mastering interviews. Get reps in interviews and whiteboarding to gain a rhythm for practicing and nailing it on the big day. And as I said, that's how simple it could be. That is your roadmap. But let me make it even more simpler step by step, starting, of course, from the bottom from your brand, okay? So I wanna go through this quite quick. So pay attention. If you know how to sell yourself and you know what you're looking for and you know how to tell the company, I have what you need and you can show tangible proof and understand how they're going to interact with you and get the appropriate practice before the big day, you get hired. Okay? It's that simple. I wanna say that again for the folks who maybe have just joined us. If you know how to sell yourself and you know what you're looking for and you know how to tell the company, I have what you need and you can show tangible proof and you understand how they're going to interact with you and you get the appropriate practice before the big day, you get hired, right? Is that simple enough? Let me change this format real quickly just so we can zoom in to what I'm about to show you. Okay. And if you learn these skills, the ones that I just mentioned, you'll be pretty unstoppable finding a new home. This is considering you have the hard skills already in place to do the actual job, right? No way, everybody's just gonna hire you based on you nailing these. You actually have to do the job, right? But let's just say you know you can do the job, right? And then this everything else is that strategy going into your job search that a lot of designers out there are missing and this is what I'm gonna teach you today, okay? But maybe you're saying to yourself, ah, Chris, you're oversimplifying this whole thing. I've been doing it for six months to 12 months and I don't get what you're saying. That's a fair argument. So let's dive into each of the core frameworks of my course and that you guys can kind of take away and really help you with your job search, okay? So let's start here. The first thing you wanna do is think about your personal brand, right? Personal branding is a process of intentionally shaping and managing the way others perceive you and your professional identity. So here we are laying the foundations for everything to be built on top of because everything starts with you. That's why we focus on personal brand and that's why I find it the logical first step for all of us in this room. But the problem is that most designers treat their personal brand like it's something generic. They say things like, I build innovative solutions grounded in empathy, right? People heard that? Yeah, using the same cliche buzzwords. I mean, you look like a million other designers. You just don't stand out and potentially miss out on opportunities, right? Just because you're using the same lingo as everyone else. The other problem is that it could negatively damage your first impression. Given that hundreds of designers are applying for the same role, can you really afford negative judgments against you? Don't answer that because I think it's a no. And if you don't actually fix this, you could erode trust. Would someone trust you if you had a pixelated photo on social media? It would erode your credibility. Are you a credible designer or even senior if your portfolio is not responsive or you make typical spelling mistakes? And getting zero callbacks and rejections. I mean, we've all been there, but really erodes your self-esteem, self-belief and impacts your confidence over a long period of time. If you keep getting the door slammed in your face, you're just not going to wanna go through that same process, right? PTSD. And so this is the problem with most folks who think about building their personal brand. However, it's not your fault. It's because our instincts is to blend in. We wanna fit in, but we end up sounding like everybody else. So how do we solve this problem? So here's one of the frameworks I teach in the course adapted from the IcaGuy framework. If you're familiar with this, I'll walk you through this, no worries. And it helps you answer the critical question of why should I hire you? Because many of us don't know how to talk about ourselves, don't want to sound arrogant and be overconfident because that's cringy. And then finally is because we don't really know, right? Like someone asks us that, why should I hire you? You have literally nothing to say, right? You've been put on the spot. So here's my method for refining your positioning to give them a good excuse to hire you, okay? It's called the unfair advantage map, okay? Let's start in the bottom left-hand corner. What are my talents and skills and what am I good at? So these are things that you've spent time actively improving on, okay? This could be design skills, this could be playing the piano, things like that, right? So you wanna brainstorm as many ideas in there as possible. Then we move to the bottom right, the passion and interests. What are your passions and interests? What do you love doing? Things you do without any financial reward. It could be things like reading or taking a walk, right? Things that you do just for their enjoyment. Then we wanna move up here after brainstorming that is what skills does the designer need? What does a designer get paid for? For example, here you could use the roles and responsibilities in a job description or something else that you know from being in the industry, okay? Then the final step is the most fun part. You actually want to take all the ideas from each one of the circles and figure out if there is an overlap, right? It could be a creative overlap, it could be a logical overlap, but really write a short sentence describing that overlap encapsulating three ideas that seemingly link together in a creative or logical way. Okay, so that might sound a bit complicated. So let me give you an example here. Here's my example, okay? So I did a bunch of brainstorming and if we focus on the pink post-its, right? So what am I good at that first bottom left-hand corner? What am I good at? I wrote, I work fast. What do I love doing? That's the passion and interest side. What do I love doing? I wrote, new ideas excite me, okay? That's great. And then what does a designer get paid for? Here I wrote shipping products or shipping MVPs, okay? So therefore just one of my unfair advantages could be I help startups ship MVPs to market fast. That's it, right? Is that simple? And you can do this a lot, a lot of time. Look at all those ideas on the fig jam board. I could give a number of combinations based on what I think stands out that all encapsulates what I believe in, okay? And the great thing about this is it forces you to also write in a concise short sentence. You can use it on your LinkedIn headline. You can use it as a one-liner to introduce yourself. You can use it as a one-liner on your cover letter and so many other places, okay? So this is personal branding and I actually want to show you Olivia and why she enjoyed the personal brand portion of Jobs Brand so much. So let's hear from Olivia. My personal brand, I felt like I got a lot out of that. I feel like that's really beneficial and that's a really good kind of foundation for everything to come. Hi everyone, I'm Olivia, but I'm a career transistor. So I'm a little bit nervous now about jumping back into the job search in the US market, having that ability to kind of make a clearer decision because what I'm guilty of before is just like going down the job post rabbit hole. So I'm looking forward to coming back into this with a clear kind of mindset and strategy for how to kind of tackle it. So I really enjoyed it. I think this was very good practice and I think having that point of view from both ends as well was really, really helpful. I really enjoyed it. I like the opportunities to get to practice. The more you practice, the more confident you are. So very helpful, especially with my upcoming interview. Olivia, how do you feel about your new LinkedIn? I definitely like it a lot more. Definitely I can see now how it has a little bit more stand out from the other kind of just generic ones out there. Okay, so next we wanna look at systematizing your job search, right? How do you know what to look for? And if you're looking for a job now in UX, how many UX jobs have you applied for in the last six months? Just give me a ballpark number. I always find this fascinating because I'm absolutely amazed at how many jobs folks apply for these days in such a short space in time. So how many jobs have you applied for in the last six months? Let's just say, let me know in the chats. Someone said 64, 200, 353. Wow, over a hundred. Okay, that's quite a lot guys. You got 500. Okay, all right. Okay, I'll stop reading out those numbers because it does seem absolutely insane. Excuse me. So everyone's applied for a lot of jobs. If we add all this up, it'll be more than a thousand jobs just by the folks in the room, okay? So that's a problem. And for context, the folks that joined me in the JobSprint beta program, excuse me, the six designers average around 200 applications each. So very similar to some of you here. But imagine spending all that time and getting nothing. I mean, most of you don't have to imagine that, right? You've done this and you're like, well, why isn't it working? Just recovered from an illness guy, so bear with me. So my question is, so how do you find something that truly resonates with you? So when you're like, instead of applying to a hundred or a thousand jobs, okay? That's really the question that I wanna answer. And for me, what I like to do is help folks build their own decision framework. Here, I teach you how to do it in five steps and I call it your job matching algorithm. So make sure you land somewhere you want, but also have the right expectations going in. Why would you spend effort applying to a place that you don't want to go? And I'm pretty confident when I say, someone said they apply for 500 jobs, I'm sure at least 20% of those jobs you don't even want. So what's the point, right? Why couldn't you save that time and move it to places you want to go? So to make this incredibly easy and a lot quicker to spot jobs that you actually wanna go for without you doing that typical spray and pray approach that a lot of folks like out here are, right? They're just saying, okay, I'm just gonna play the numbers game and I'm here to tell you that that's not the right way to do it, okay? So what is this job matching algorithm, Chris, you're keeping us on the edge of our seats. What is it? Here it is. It's really, really simple. You're non-negotiables, you're nice to haves and you're red flags. You're non-negotiables meaning things that are mandatory for you to join the company, whether it's remote, mission-driven company or the company is well-funded, you're nice to haves. So these things are important, not vital, however, add significant value. It could be a existing design team, a generous paytime off, a startup environment and then finally, I think the most important thing that you should call out is red flags, things that you should avoid if there's too many. For example, this could be an all-male leadership team, no design culture, not hybrid-friendly environment. The list could go on. But the key thing here is having your own scale and way to prioritize so you can use this as a framing for your research. Use this to quickly scan through job descriptions, company websites and even communication between you and the company and decide, is this a go or is this a no? Because that's really, really important. Because remember, we don't just want any job, just a job that can pay us, that's fine, whatever. We actually want one that's gonna be career-defining and getting that right job could propel your career so much more than one that you hate and you just phone it in every single day. So here I want to hear from Sunil about finding the right job using the job-matching algorithm. We shared. Best thing happened was I have lost the fear of missing out anxiety, which is there. Like if I don't apply a hundred jobs today, okay. Like that is gone. What has happened is after this algorithm, I came across three jobs, which exactly want what I have to offer. I liked it, like there was no limitation in terms of being it completely digital, even like certain challenges, like whiteboard challenge was quite new for me, so it was quite good. So I am from India and I recently finished my master. It was really helpful, improve those things which I needed. Yes, and it was quite interesting to see different ways how people present, just take the challenge and do it. What I understood with the exercise which we did was we all have unique skills from our previous experience. That's what we need to find and that's what we need to showcase. Then I probably feel like getting the perfect job for the job that we want is easier. That's up to Chris, you have put a great thing. Like it's really coming out now and I can see that it's useful and I am ready to kill all the assumptions which I have. Like I would like to do all the mistakes now, the assumptions which I can do and I can't. And one of my favorite things that Sunil said is I found three jobs that want what I have. And this is the power of that algorithm. When you know what you want, you can quite quickly hone in on those exact things that you can say, wow, you guys are amazing and you'll genuinely feel like that. Cause a lot of times interviewers ask, so why do you wanna work here? And you're like, cause I need the money but you don't really have a great answer. But if it's something that you really want, I believe that answer comes out naturally and people can feel that authenticity, okay? So let's talk about the third step or module three here. It's your application kit as I call it. So there's three components to every application kit. Real simple resume, cover letter, portfolio. And this is the thing that the designers focus most on. They don't focus on anything else but they think that this is gonna get them to where they are. And I'm telling you, I'm crushing that myth today. It's not true. Having an amazing portfolio without focusing on anything else that I talk about will not get you as far as you could go, okay? Not to say it's not important, just is not the full package, okay? So your resume, the main goal is to highlight your relevant experience and the impact your work has on the business. That's your resume, right? That's one part of the application kit. The second part is your cover letter which explores your potential fit and enthusiasm for the role. And the third and the main thing that people focus on is your portfolio is to really showcase proof of execution, the quality of your work and of course who you are, which a lot of people do too much of or not enough of, okay? And I wanna talk about six guiding principles for this application kit, whether it's your resume, cover letter or portfolio. Here it is and we'll start at the bottom of the pyramid like always. The first thing is tell me who you are and not just what you do. Let me repeat that. Tell me who you are, not just what you do. When you're applying for a job, it's important to remember that the employer is interested in who you are as a person, not just what you do. Everybody does design, they're all applying for the same role. This is how you stand out. So take time to build honest, genuine and unique messages. Show me through your application kit, three things we just mentioned that you are a complex individual with a lot more to offer. What's the value beyond the obvious explanation? That's really what you gotta think about, right? So moving up, effective communication. You are not a museum. I repeat, you are not a museum. Don't just showcase your work, be purposeful. Take me somewhere and don't make me work as a hiring manager. Find a balance, a purpose and the best way to communicate your message. The third one in the middle of the pyramid, be visual. Effective communication is not only bound by words. So choose the best communication methods according to your goals. If the information is complex, lengthy or hard to explain, use a diagram. Exactly what I'm doing. I'm showing you a diagram, right? Be visual. Then moving up, concise. Be clear and concise. Most designers are organizers and communicators at their core. So express exactly what you wish to express and do not repeat anything that does not need to be repeated. I do this a lot, as you see, but it needs to be repeated, right? One common mistakes designers do is to overly explain when a few words can have a better effect. One line I love is simplicity is thoughtful reduction. So be clear and concise. Then we move up, be intentional. Every title, image, or sentence should have a clear specific purpose. If it does not, it's just taking space and you're better off just removing it. And when I say taking space, I mean literal screen space, but also cognitive space, right? You don't wanna bore the hiring company with your application, all right? Then the final one, which is very, very hard to master, be ruthless, kill your babies. Don't get attached to anything you create. If something is not helping or serving a purpose, get rid of it. As you can begin to improve your application kit, you need to constantly ask, is this message the one I wanna communicate is the internship from five years ago worth putting on my resume? Is this wireframe necessary for my case study? Does it add value? I'm not saying doubt yourself. I just want you to be your best critic, move fast, make sound decisions, and prioritize. You can't show them everything. So whatever you show them, better hit the mark, right? And you do this by, of course, applying and launching and learning, right? And you can use the XYZ formula here to tailor your application to the hiring company. So how does it work? Well, for example, you can say something like, I like X because of Y and I can make it better by Z. And there's some examples here as well. I'm not gonna read them out, but have a formula for this. This simple formula can really have endless variations where you could use it to catch the eye of a hiring manager based on something on your application, okay? And we'll move on to the fourth module, which is nailing the design challenge, right? So a design challenge, if you don't know, is candidates are asked to solve a design problem, explaining their decisions behind a solution. It's essentially a test. Sometimes it's paid and sometimes it's not, right? There are only four things you need to consider with every single design challenge they throw at you, okay? And it's up to you if you wanna say yes to do this quote unquote, free work. It's not a big deal for me. I think if you're looking for somewhere and you really wanna work there, you'll be happy to do this, right? And show them what you're made of. But anyway, that's a, I digress philosophical question there. But yes, let me tell you about the four things that is all you really need to ask yourself, okay? If you come across any design challenge, you have to consider the rules of the game. Like any test or exam, you need to make sure you understand what's being asked of you. If something is unclear, please clarify it immediately, okay? Because you don't have that much time to complete this exercise usually. Usually it's a few days or a week. So knowing the rules of the game. The second one is considered what you know and your assumptions. What is your existing knowledge about the company? The problem or the solution, right? They ask you to do. Do you have existing experience in designing something like this similar before? Is it an e-commerce app? Is it a dog walking out? Like what is it? And do you have experience there? Can you think of resources to help you? Something like Mobin can break down flows of existing apps. So leverage things that are already there and your box of resources or box of tools. So what do you know is something to be considered? Then, of course, you have to consider what you don't know, right? And there's going to be a lot. You have to ask yourself, is there anything from blocking you before you begin? There's probably an infinite amount of questions to start. But the best questions to start is, who, what, when, where, why, and how. And that will get you, you know, the ball rolling and prompt better questions. Then finally, consider your approach. You want to be strategic in how you spend your time. Let's just say, for example, it's one week to complete this. You have another job. You can't spend all the time on it. So you have to be really strategic for your time. You can't do every part of the process. So which one can you skip? And which one are you going to include? Think about also how you present the work, right? It's almost as important as presenting the work itself, right? Don't just send a Figma file without explanation or annotation. That's a big red flag for most hiring managers. And if you don't know what a design challenge typically looks like, I've also included within this course actual design presentations from the Job Sprint beta. You'll get the good examples and the bad examples with also feedback and our critique as hiring managers on what we found to be good and what we found to be bad. Here, I want to show you what Shez said about going through this design challenge in, I think I gave them 48 hours. The whole course is great. Each session kind of building on the loss. Like I found all like the templates and the guides really great kind of supplement to the course. I thought that the sessions on like building personal brand were really unique and valuable, like not the typical, you know, just through like a LinkedIn post or something or like articles that you tend to see on job hunting. So I found that super valuable. My name is Shehera Zad, but feel free to call me Shez. And I really wanted to transition into product design. I took the BrainStation UX design bootcamp and then I've been looking for a job ever since. So it's been a long road. I really liked role plays and mock challenges. Really helpful. Like I think it was really great to know kind of what to improve and focus on next. It was one of the toughest activities for sure, but it was also so nice to like, after just like looking for a job for over a year, like being able to actually design, just like, oh yeah, I actually love doing this part of it. Great. Okay. So let's move on to the next. And module five is tearing down the hiring process. So every company has a different hiring process, right? And it's designed to find out if you're a fit by putting you through their filtering system. Okay. The common problems that we face with this hiring process, and I believe many of you have gone through the same, is that typically what happens is we submit our CVs and portfolios, maybe send out a hundred applications and then we wait. And when we get a response, we're super excited. And maybe we visit the company's website just to double check before jumping in. Then we turn up to the interviews, quite nervous, hoping that you give good answers. Then I get a question asked that I'm unprepared for, right? Like, I'm just like, oh, okay. Or they surprise me with some sort of exercise. I end up leaving the interview and I say to myself, damn, I should have said this. Or why didn't I mention that? Then I second guess myself. I'm a bit stressed. And then I wait for a response and I end up not getting the job. Who here has been in the same situation? I know I have many, many times. And this is why understanding that hiring process or giving it a full tear down is so important, right? You need to understand how they're going to interact with you so you can perform better. And here it is. Of course, it's not the same, like I said, in every single company, but it's healthy to understand it end to end. So let's just walk through this quickly. The first is your application stage. Can you show evidence of your expertise and experience? Then maybe you have a phone screen. Can you explain why you applied and can you do that enthusiastically? Then you might have a portfolio presentation. Can you articulate your solution and design decisions? Then the design challenge. Can you produce work with little direction? Then you might have interviews. They're really trying to figure out who you are. Do they like you? Are your goals and values aligned with the companies? Then you might have a whiteboard challenge. Can you handle uncertainty given a prompt thrown at you? Then you might have an apcrity. Can you have a productive product conversation? And then finally, the office stage. Can you show your willing to work on a win-win situation? And at each stage, in the course, I'll tell you what exactly they're looking for and how to determine if the candidate is a good fit. What questions do they ask themselves as hiring managers and hiring companies? So you can go through the entire process with confidence and make sure you're prepared instead of walking away from the interviewing and be like, oh, wait, what just happened? How did I do? This way, it'll give you way more confidence to really perform at your best. Then we have module six, mastering interviews. This last module for me is the most interesting one. Even though I'll give you a list of questions that are super common in UX design interviews, behavioral, technical, culture fit, and I'll even give you pointers on what constitutes as a good whiteboard challenge and how to approach it. But there's really nothing like the real thing. And that's why this module is really focused on role-playing and practicing. This is a key thing that you should be doing if you're going through your job search. And instead of telling you all these best practices and stuff, it's actually much more effective to show you because I can give you all the best practices and tell you to follow them. But there's always that question of, how do I actually apply this in a real interview? So you'll get to see behind the scenes discussions of hiring managers, what we liked, what we didn't like, and based on the designer's performance, would we actually hire them? So this feedback is feedback that you'll never get to hear during your interviews, right? Once you leave the room, that's it. And even if you ask for feedback, they have not debriefed and you're not getting everybody's perspective. So you will be a fly on the wall during these conversations. And by understanding a hiring manager's perspective, you'll get insight into how to effectively navigate each interview and whiteboard challenge and what makes a good one or what makes a bad one so you don't make the same mistakes as the folks during these interviews. So lastly, I want to show you John and John's gonna tell us what he thought just about this whole course because he was very skeptical when I spoke to him first. So let's hear from John. Of course, job sprint. There's definitely been some helpful stuff that I've gotten out of it. I feel like maybe I didn't realize how challenging it was going to be or how challenging some of the workshop assignments were going to be. It's good that they're challenging because I need to be able to demonstrate that I can do this job. But I'm learning some good stuff. I talked to Chris beforehand and one of the reservations I had was once I got out of my bootcamp, I had access to career services. I've attended other workshops, other places, you know, on resumes, cover letters, whatever, you know, the different job things. And I said, I'm worried that, like, whatever your content is, is that some of it would be redundant from things that I've already done. That hasn't really been the case. The workshops, even if they're on the same theme as other workshops have done, they're much more in-depth. The assignments, the exercises, the things that get you to the result to kind of help demonstrate what your abilities are, they have been more effective, I think, than other workshops I've taken. I got my background in interactive arts about 20 years ago. I've always loved to draw. I started programming on an old Apple 2e when I was, like, 12 and, like, it was obsolete technology then. But, like, I've always kind of had finger and tech. I feel like there was a very little fat or superfluous information within the exercises or presentation. Like, it was all just, like, lean, very important information, not a lot of fluff or anything. And I felt like the portfolio review session or week was especially helpful. I might get produce thrown at me for this, but I know earlier you said you could have been harder on us if you're growing us more. And I'm, like, I'm kind of all for that. Like, I don't really want it, but I need a job when this is done. So I really need to know where, like, my shortcomings are at, so. I don't want to find another non-UX job. I want to find that UX role that I'm looking for. I still feel like design in general is the closest thing I've had to a calling. And that was John. And these six steps in the pyramid or these six modules are really designed to get you hired in UX design on your own term. Not anybody else's, your own. Okay? I want to quickly change the format here as we're not going to be reading the slides. And I want to give you just a quick recap of what we spoke about, just so there's this roadmap that exists in your head and you remember it, remember it's after the presentation, okay? So you want to start laying down the foundation of your personal brand, communicate your unique positioning with what I showed you, and answer the dreaded question of why should I hire you? I'll be teaching you how to sell yourself, okay? Then you want to systematize your job search, not just apply to every single job you find on Indeed or Monster or LinkedIn, but really picking your own winners to give you the best shot you'll get. And using this job matching algorithm, you'll be defining what you're looking for. Then it's all about tailoring your application, appeal to the company through your cover letter, resume, and portfolio. And you're really telling them, I have exactly what you need, let's have a conversation. Then it's nailing the design challenge. Remember the four things we spoke about? The only four things that you need to focus on, so whatever they throw at you, you know exactly how to approach this and all in the efforts to show tangible proof that you can actually do the job. Then you'll be tearing down the hiring process, walking into any part of the hiring process with confidence because you know exactly what's coming and you will know how they will interact with you. And finally, you'll be mastering interviews, giving you safe guardrails to practice and hone crucial interview skills to make a great first impression before your actual day, right? So all that preparation. And I know that in a 30-minute presentation, it's impossible for me to give you all the information that I want to give you. So I've just shared some of the highlights of the course and I go so much more in-depth in each individual part to make sure you fully understand these concepts in the module. But here I'm sharing a quick roadmap so you can take away and start applying it into your job search. And every single module has example templates, workshops to help you learn actively and move you closer to your desired role. Let me show you this. This is a super zoomed out view of your Fig Jamboard, the one that comes with the course and really highlights each step, what you do and the activities to walk you through. So you never really feel like you're alone in this situation. Let's go back to here. And yeah, this stuff took me a decade working in the design industry to learn. And the feedback, the learnings, the improvements of five iterations of this product, let's just say. So from August, 2022 to April, 2024, so almost two years of development and thinking around this problem. And for me, almost everything is a design problem. So that's how we are going to approach finding you your next job. And I'm very confident to say that this is my best product I've ever worked on. And it's definitely been the one I've spent the most time thinking about, okay? So you might be asking, how much is this job sprint course if you are interested based on what I've been talking about? This is what I wanted to price job sprint at 499. Given two years of development, six months of working on this, it's a small price tag for your dream role. Even if it takes you from a designer earning three K a month to 10 K a month, it's worth it, right? You've just had a huge bump in salary and a potentially different career trajectory. But I'm actually going to make it cheaper and it's going to be 297. I'm gonna keep the price as the same as the early release price forever. This is it. The reason I actually wanted to turn jobs from beta from live classes to doing a digital course is because I actually wanted it to be available to way more people. And even though that 499 potentially won't be a life-changing amount of money for me, but it could be for a lot of people out there. Not everybody can afford a 499 price tag or even a 297 price tag. And that's why I worked with the creators in our community to do giveaways. Give away, someone needs this. On LinkedIn, it's so prevalent. People are trying to find their next home. So I know that it's a problem that we're facing as an industry. And to make sure as many people can enter if they truly cannot afford it and still have a chance to win the job sprint. That way they can change how they approach their job search because so many of us are struggling with this now. And we really deserve to get our dream role, right? Because at the end of the day, we all deserve to be happy where working, where a design culture thrives, where people are nice, and we really do our best work, okay? That's what I believe anyway. So on that note of making it available to a lot of people, we've had over 1,000 folks say, yes, I want this Chris, this sounds really cool. Here are the 17 winners from my community, but also everybody's the creator's own community, okay? So without further ado, let me have a little pause here. Did you win? Did you win? Okay, I won't make you wait any longer. Here are the winners and the creators next to them. So let me show that full screen so you guys can see if you won on the call. So the 17 winners will get full access to the job sprint, 165 lessons, 14 workshops, 20 resources frameworks, 16 plus hours of training, and monthly Q&As with me as a group, as a job sprint group. So here they are. So if you are one of the lucky winners tuning in now and I've shown your face here, please let me know. Go crazy in the chat. Can I find a winner in the chat? There's someone celebrating. Okay, so it doesn't matter if they're not here, absolutely fine. And well, I just wanna say congrats guys. I will reach out after this, tag you in a post, and get your emails and get you set up right away, okay? Let me change this back. Party, I should have got some party things to make some noise. So congratulations guys. I will get you set up right away whoever won. I will definitely share that image again. And yeah, I just wanna thank you everybody for participating to help me spread my most ambitious projects I've worked on to date. And of course coming out to this event and supporting this launch, it means just so much to me. And before we move into our Q&A, I want to ask you a question or the audience a question, okay, has turning up to interviews not knowing what to expect been something you've looked forward to? Has stumbling to effectively communicate your value been something you've enjoyed? Has applying for a hundred plus jobs week in when week out been fun? Of course not. And that's why I built Job Sprint. What if you can successfully pick companies that you thrive in? What if you can learn these skills and use them forever? What if you can get the role that you've always wanted more rewarding personally, professionally and financially? Would Job Sprint be worth the investment? I mean, what would you rather have? Three inch bucks or your dream role? That's my question for you. So I'm gonna show the Job Sprint QR code here. How do you get Job Sprint? Well, really, really simple. If you are on this journey to find somewhere where you truly belong. You can scan the QR code on the right or you can visit uxplaybook.org slash Job Sprint. I'll leave that there for a minute. Uxplaybook.org slash Job Sprint. Or scan the QR code, okay? Or you can just type Uxplaybook Job Sprint in Google. You should be able to find it or go to my profile. But how do you get access? Like what happens when you do this, right? I'll leave the QR code just there. It's really simple. What happens when you get Job Sprint, you'll get an onboarding PDF with a link which accesses Notion. You duplicate that Notion page workspace and the fig jam board and you join the Slack community because we're gonna be along with you every step of the way and you get to work. That's really it. And before opening up to this Q&A, final call to action from me, which is, I mean, this job searching stuff is not as time consuming as you think. I know you've been through it and it's been the 500th job that you applied for, right? You actually just need to know what you do. So spending your time strategically on things that actually matter. That's the hardest part. Knowing how to do that stuff, okay? And this is where I can help as I've been thinking about it for so, so long. And remember, I'm a designer just like you who started their career at 27, right? No experience, no design degree and still managed to get his dream role in four years. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm saying it's gonna require a lot of work but you might as well start now so you can map what it is you want in your career versus just bumbling around, finding the next role that you might quit or might get laid off it, right? And as I said, I promised to do a quick AMA with all your questions. So I know I'm going over but I'll stick around for an extra 15 minutes and I see a lot of people typing questions. So let me just stop sharing my screen here and bring on some of those questions that you guys have. So I'm just gonna go all the way back up and leave that QR code there for you guys for whoever's interested in this and let's kind of dive into some of that Q&A goodness that you know we like. Okay, give me a second here. Yes, leaving that QR code there. Go ahead and scan it. Okay, question, question, let me see. Okay, a lot of you guys actually summarizing these notes which I love, thank you so much. Like, here's one person did a good job of summarizing. Okay, let me see if I can find some questions. You guys are going crazy in the chat. Thank you so much. Okay, there's a, wow, there's just so many questions to go through. Let me find something interesting. I think someone asked me, Chris, are you gonna share the slides afterwards? I'm happy to share these slides if you want it. Just let me know again in the comments if that's something you want from my side. Happy to share these slides, okay? Or you can just watch this video. It's gonna be recorded on YouTube and LinkedIn. So you can actually have me talk through the slides which is usually a lot better. Oh, anyone getting a lot of buffering? No, okay, sorry guys. Let me go through this. Our cover letter is still relevant today. I think so. And they don't have to be this official cover letter. I think that sounds quite scary or intimidating. So cover letter could literally be a note attached to your application or an email sent along with. Really what you wanna say in your cover letter is you wanna be this enthusiastic person and really match what you think you can bring to the table outside of your resume, right? You don't, because the resume folks will still have to go through it. And a lot of the things like saying, okay, here's what I did. But it's not tailoring the message enough in my opinion. And the cover letter will give you more of a free form creative writing expression where you could actually use the XYZ formula tailored to the actual company, right? Where you say, okay, I like X. Let's just say I like it that your mission led tech company in the pet space, right? I like that because I am a huge pet advocate. And I think I can bring to the table this, right? Empathy for pets. I don't know. Something more specific, of course, but I'm just brainstorming here. So I think it still matters. And the one thing that every single hiring manager and recruiter will notice is the amount of effort you put in to your application. So if you can't write a few lines, you're not gonna get the job unless you're super qualified and you're not asking for much, okay? So be wary of effort you put in. That is also really, really important, especially if it's a company that you really wanna work for, you're gonna spend time like, you know, catering your message, right? Cause you really wanna get picked, right? It's like getting picked for your favorite sports team. Everybody's gonna do that anyway. Yeah, they might look at the note. I think right now, if you attach a formal cover letter, I think they'll still read it, granted it's short enough, but yes. Someone says, I personalize your resume for over an hour and a half. Wow, that's pretty cool. That is pretty cool. That's effort, guys. Yeah, someone said, am I sharing this? Yes, I can share it, just let me know, but there's, of course, a recording, all right? Okay, let's do this. I had a third stage interview, and after three months, my effort is still pending, no progress, rejection, feedback, nothing. Yeah, so you've just been put on the limbo list. They've probably found someone or your profile's just not good enough for them to move you to the next round. That's quite normal, right? Have you reached out to the recruiter? Have you reached out to the hiring manager? Are there different forms or ways that you can kind of reach out and figure out who these person are and what's happening with your application, but never wait and move forward? Yes, this is a great question. Okay, is there a difference between design challenge and whiteboard challenge? Yes, the difference is one is take home, take home challenge, and then one is live there. Typically, a design challenge, they'll give you a little bit more information, but they want you to take it home or do it at home and then come back with something. Usually, it could be a prototype, it could be mocks, it could be a presentation. And so that's the design challenge. Can you go away and design something in a short space of time, 48 hours, 72 hours a week, whatever it is, right? Then you're supposed to prepare for it and present. For me, that's a lot easier. Why is because you get the internet at home, right? You can ask a friend for a help or you can do secondary research. A whiteboard challenge, on the other hand, it's done live with the interviewers, okay? So there's no hiding. It's everything that you're carrying here without the need for the internet and you're just supposed to execute. So really, for me personally as a hiring manager, this is where the rubber hits the road. It's, you see how they really problem solve and how they interact with other designers in the room, how they pitch problems, how they sketch, how they just really tackle this design solution, right? Do they get nervous, flustered? We've even had people go like yell at us and be angry and be like, oh, you guys don't know anything. And I'm like, what? Like, do you want a job or not? Like, so your demeanor in that is really, really important. And whiteboard challenge, there's nothing like it because you kind of see what that designer is made of. Of course, it might be geared more towards extroverts or ones that can present well, but I've seen introverts nail this, right? Even if they're a bit more silent, but they're really thinking deeply about the problem, asking great questions. So they are not the same in my opinion or in my terminology here. Still a bit sick guys. Okay, do you have a list of jobs landed at what companies hired that completed the course? Well, I probably can share testimonies if that's what you mean. Yet again, someone asked, that's fine. Yeah, if you want testimonies, scan the site and check it out. Something about too many AI features, not much human touch. Okay, just a lot of people writing notes, which is absolutely amazing. Helping folks sum this up. So yeah, if you wanna hear success stories, please check out the testimonies on the site. There's, I think, I believe there's five videos, but also a bunch of other folks. A testimony that I can think of real quick is someone from BCU Birmingham City University who used part of Job Sprint to get her job at Agoda. So Agoda is a travel company. If you know Agoda, I think they're owned by Expedia, but a huge travel company in Southeast Asia. So she actually got a job and she even made a YouTube video about using portfolio playbook as a part of Job Sprint to get a job. Okay, let me see if there's, if there's, yeah, this one's interesting. Great questions, man, I keep on bringing you up. So do you benefit about launching products within Notion is I can update them regularly, right? So will I be iterating on it now at the moment, not, but I always add resources and I do these monthly Q&As with the group. So if there's anything that folks want, need help with, then it's so easy to update. And then what I do is I send an email out and then that update gets pushed to you so you can actually just duplicate that again. And I've done this with all of my products where we have updates that I'm like, hey guys, free lifetime update. So the answer, the quick answer is yes, right? They will be updates. Yes. What tool am I using for this presentation? I am using pitch, pitch.com, they are a very good tool. Okay, this is an interesting question. It took you four years to find your first design role. No, it didn't. I think you got confused. So from my first design role at 27, that was my first design role. Then my dream role of head of design was at 31. So it took me four years to get there, right? For my design role, it probably took me around a year to kind of just look around, explore what design was, what, where my skills were, get more projects on my belt. That's probably how long it took me. But yeah, so no, not four years to get my first role. That's crazy. But you know, I do love design. How do we access these recordings? Well, it's on my profile, LinkedIn, or you can find me on YouTube and it will be recorded. Okay, there's so much here, guys. All right, I think I got something. Right, so that's all the time we have today. And I'm so glad that so many of you are here and supporting me launch Job Sprint. If you are interested, please scan that QR code, just have a look at the website and decide for yourself if it's worth it. Okay, and yeah, two years in development, six plus months working on it, editing all the videos, the thumbnails, the fig jam board, just, there's just a lot of work and it's a complete labor of love. So I hope you guys enjoy it if you see it from the inside. And if not, absolutely fine. There's always free resources on the website that you can grab. So I also appreciate, you know, you come into the website too. So thank you very much. That's me and thank you for listening. I will see you on the next live, which is Wednesday and we're gonna talk about spilling some design tea. So I will drop another link in LinkedIn. So you guys don't have to rush to scan this but it's been a pleasure guys and thank you again for supporting me and my stuff. And I'll see you on the other side.