So you "broke into UX". Now what?

UX is hot

Nowadays, the industry is hot. You see courses, boot camps and content popping up everywhere. You see ads, articles. "Break into UX in 2 months" or "First steps in UX" or even more, dangerous promises like "Get into UX increase your salary by X%". The gold rush is on.

I'm a career changer myself who jumped from Business into the UX wagon years ago. I'm not going to discuss boot camps or courses (though I have to say that some, despite the bad rap the whole lot are getting, are actually good), just mention that the important thing is to be realistic about your expectations and take them as they are. Most courses are just introductory, they can give you a solid base (yes, the base) and help you land a Junior position or an Internship but then you have to take it from there.

If you want to move your career forward and grow, you have to put in the rest of the work and keep on learning and absorbing like a sponge. But you need some direction.

Great, you "broke into UX". Now what?

After folks land a job in UX or start getting gigs, everything seems to fall into place. But if you don't have the right direction, this can easily lead to getting stuck. How do you go from Junior to Mid to Senior? What's the plan? What skills do you need? What do you need to accomplish?

I've coached +100 students in the last couple of years and I've seen a pattern: to move their career forward, most folks think they have to keep on polishing their newly acquired skills to an insane level. They spend hours polishing their Figma or Sketch skills. They push pixels here and there. They redesign stuff for the sake of redesign. If they are the researcher type, they plunge into psychology books. But there's a lack of tridimensionality in this approach.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying mastering hard skills is not useful. It definitely is. But to succeed and to move forward, you need complementary soft skills. And you need to adopt a certain mindset.

I experienced this myself. In the beginning, I was so excited. I watched so many videos and spent so many hours mastering hard skills. I felt I could tackle anything and I would say yes to everything, but this quickly led to being seen only as an executioner. And being ignored in decisions, being extra questioned on my work and feeling that my voice didn't count. And I needed to change that ASAP. So I started thinking of what kind of skills could help me get the "voice" and the mindset that I was lacking. And I found it in 3 particular pillars.

The 3 pillars I used to move my career in UX forward.

Learning Facilitation

Become the guide your team needs, help them make decisions, involve stakeholders, get their creative juices going and unstuck projects. A facilitator is the architect of collaboration and communication within a team. With the boom of remote working and teams spanning across multiple locations, this is probably the most important skill to learn in the following years. Learn how to craft and facilitate workshops for your team and you will start becoming a game-changing asset for them.

Championing Research

Learn how to understand your users better and how to bring their voice inside the organization. Be an advocate for research throughout the company. Master different research techniques, understand the different types of information and how to get what you need to work on your product. If you base your decisions or ideas on real, strong user feedback, you are off to a good start.

Thinking in Business Terms

This was kind of natural to me since I have a background in business but it's surprising how many people forget that they are designing with business objectives in mind. It's crucial you understand business metrics and how you can impact them. Learn about product metrics, business models, monetization, KPIs and funnels. Remember you create value in the intersection of users and business.

Wrap up

If you want to move forward, hard skills are not enough. Getting the basics right are key, of course, but you need to add tridimensionality to your profile if you want to move from Junior to Mid (and even forward). These skills gave me great results but this is not a sure recipe. Find what your profile is lacking to become great and ready for the next step!

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