This is the Nielsen Norman Group UX Podcast.
I'm Therese Fessenden.
Have you thought about your career lately?
Chances are you have,
especially since the rate of voluntary resignation or quitting,
is at a record high in the US,
up to three percent as of March 9.
While there are many drivers of this great resignation,
it's caused many UX professionals to reflect on
their own jobs and imagine new possibilities or new chapters.
In an industry like user experience where
our work can involve so many different activities like research,
design, development, management, strategy, consulting,
it can often feel a bit overwhelming to think about what to do next.
But what if I told you crafting a career you
love actually isn't so different from creating a product or a service?
Turns out, with enough ingenuity,
you might even be able to test out a job without quitting your current one.
Today, I'm sharing a conversation with Sarah Doody,
UX researcher, experienced designer,
and founder of the Career Strategy Lab,
which has earned her the nickname,
the UX Career Lady.
Sarah shares her thoughts on how people who are both in and out of
the job market can apply design principles to
their own careers to create a more fulfilling professional life.
Hey, Sarah, welcome to our show.
Thanks for joining us. How are you doing today?
I'm doing well. I'm excited to be here with you and chat all things UX.
Yes, me too. I'm super stoked.
What inspired you to get into this field?
Yeah, so the story goes way back to really high school
when I was trying to answer that proverbial question, what do you want to do?
I didn't know what I wanted to do,
but I knew I was really technical and really creative.
Long story short, I was going to study neuroscience.
I deferred for a year,
and as history goes,
I just started doing some graphic design, web design,
and realized this world of web and tech
was a great combination of that technical and creative stuff.
I didn't know anything about user experience,
but one day, one of my bosses gave me a copy of the book,
which is called Information Architecture for the Worldwide Web.
It's one of the O'Reilly books with the polar bear on it.
I read that and I thought to myself,
this is me, I'm going to make new business cards
and call myself an information architect.
So I did. I just really latched on to this field.
This was very early 2000s,
and I didn't go to school for this.
I just devoured all the content that was available back then,
which was back of a lot less than it is now.
There was this pivot point, really,
where I think a lot of people struggle with,
should I do research? Should I do design?
What should I get into?
I really made a pivot decision and thought,
I want to focus on that experience and research side of things,
so not visual design,
because I felt like if I tried to do it all,
it's like if you try and be everything,
you're not really going to be great at anything.
So that's the very short version.
It certainly seems like a lot of folks in
the UX field come from so many different disciplines
and happen to find their skill set is just really
compatible with a lot of
the different skill sets needed in this space.
Here, you're mentioning about
the information architecture title and
how that really called to you enough to put it on business cards.
So was there ever a moment where you thought,
let's change that to UX on the business card?
Yeah. I can't remember the progression
of self-administered titles,
but I know I had business cards that said information architect,
user experience designer, experience designer,
UX researcher, and experience designer.
That was the niche that I tried to create for myself.
But I think it's a really important topic here
because so many people struggle with
what they should call themselves on their LinkedIn,
on their resume, even like should I take this job,
whether it has Title X or Title Y.
At the end of the day, the blessing and the curse of
our field is that you can call yourself anything.
There's no one that can tell you otherwise.
So I just ran with that and it's worked so far.
That is one of the double-edged swords of our field,
is the flexibility in titles and also in responsibilities,
and the breadth of what our field touches is quite wide.
Well, I definitely agree,
and I think at least I remember agonizing at one point for multiple weeks,
what I should make my new business cards say for whatever reason,
I can't remember, and in hindsight,
it was such a waste of time because yes,
your title matters, but it's more important like,
who cares what you're called?
Can you actually deliver on things X, Y, and Z?
I think there's a lot of people listening who probably
stress out about job titles or titles they give themselves.
It's not worth your time.
Focus on learning the skills, practicing those,
get into that habit of learn, do, learn,
do and that's much more valuable long-term.
Yeah. On the topic of learn,
do, there's this popular idea
in the field that you need to have a degree in design,
but that wasn't your path necessarily, right?
Because I'm curious what you think about that.
Is there another way to start building up some of these skills?
I can certainly, with my biased angle,
give my two cents on different ways you can learn,
but I'm curious, what are some of the things that you've
seen as far as other paths and how other people got there?
Yeah. Like I said,
I don't have a degree in design at all.
I have a business slash marketing degree.
But I think if I was just graduating high school or something,
and I thought I want to do user experience,
and I had the time and resources to maybe put
into a formal education program,
I think it depends on your learning style.
I know for myself,
I would really benefit from the structure of
a program with accountability and a community, etc.
The beauty of that is,
depending on your time and budget,
there's options to do a four-year degree or a master's program even,
or there's all these intensives.
I think it really depends on what
you need and what would fit into your lifestyle.
You know what I mean? Let's say you're what I call a career switcher,
so you're currently working in some professional field,
teaching, journalists, psychologists, whatever,
and you're compelled to pursue user experience,
I think your time is probably limited because you have your day job.
I think for you,
the real path to get into UX,
first of all, is to ask yourself,
what might I be doing already in my job,
even though I don't have the title UX in my job?
Am I doing research?
Am I designing things?
I had this teacher that was responsible for designing new curriculum,
and that wasn't user experience,
but there was a ton of research that went into that,
and they turned that into this research project.
It's all about connecting those dots,
especially if you're a career switcher.
Then identifying areas where you need to supplement,
and for a career switcher,
maybe a more veers towards software and process,
versus someone just starting out who just
graduated at high school and doesn't have much professional experience.
They probably need a deep dive in more topics and
skills than a teacher, a psychologist, other career switcher.
Yeah, definitely.
It seems like the type of learning that you want to supplement,
like you're saying, really should be something that you are introspective about,
like where do I need to build a bit more expertise,
or where do I feel like I'm currently lacking,
and then using that as your jump-off point to figure out,
okay, do I want to go full degree,
or am I at a point now where a full degree won't be that much more of
a return on investment compared to something that is a bit shorter or more intensive?
Right. Let's keep running with that career switcher example.
If you're working full-time right now or you've
decided to take a leap so you can get into user experience,
pursuing a master's program,
that's a very high time in financial commitments.
I think for those people,
and maybe you've seen this as well,
but if you have five,
10 years experience doing something that is tangentially related to research,
people, communication, behavior,
you can probably supplement,
or maybe a better way to phrase it is you can probably self-educate on
the things that you need to get your foot in the door
and play up your existing experience.
I think one trend I see is a lot of people really sell
themselves short in their presentation of themselves,
in that first impression that comes through in your resume,
in your LinkedIn, in your portfolio,
cover letters, all those things.
I've seen time and time again when people can
articulate their prior experience skills, etc.
They're able to be seen as
a more mature and experienced candidate,
even though they've never had UX in their job title.
Yeah. Totally agree.
I think that goes for people both switching into the field,
and also people who've been in the field for a while,
maybe trying to shift their current role within the space or within the industry,
and underselling some of the important experiences that they did get.
Maybe not in the traditional sense,
but maybe in a slightly different context,
but utilize the same sets of either ways of thinking or solving problems.
Yeah. I think for those people that have worked in user experience for a while,
they have this unique challenge.
It's almost envious to people getting into
the field because they have so much experience.
You have this challenge of you have so much experience you could talk about,
but also you might be at this fork in the road in
your career where you've been doing X for 10 years, however long,
and you realized, I've been a generalist for 10 years.
I really want to specialize this next chapter in
my career because I've really fallen in love with research,
or I've really fallen in love with healthcare or something.
This combination of getting to a fork in the road and thinking,
is there a specific part of user experience I want to focus on or an industry?
I think those are challenges that are unique to those switchers.
But to your point,
they very, very often downplay that experience.
Just to get really specific,
I see a lot of resumes,
LinkedIn's, et cetera, that feel very just checklist in nature,
if that makes sense. It's like, here is a sitemap,
here are some wireframes, da, da, da, da, da.
If you've been working in UX for 10 years,
that doesn't help me get a grasp of
your deeper knowledge and application of those things in
specific industries or business settings.
If you have been working in UX
for a while and you're struggling with your job search,
I think the first thing to think about is,
what is that first impression all these career materials are creating?
Does it just seem like I'm having
bullet lists on my resume of skills and software?
Does my portfolio just look like a PowerPoint of deliverables?
Or have I taken the time to go deeper and explain not just what I did,
but why I did it, how I did it, what happened?
That's the context that is missing so much.
I know that example was for climbers,
but honestly, it's applicable to everyone.
Yeah, totally, and thinking about what you bring to the table and why
you personally are interested in
these particular activities or in these particular types of work.
I guess on the topic of folks who are in the market for new UX work,
it seems like that's a natural place to take a break,
stopping and reassessing what your goals might be.
What your expectations might be for a new role.
But sometimes you're not really thinking about
those priorities or expectations until you're in the market for a new job.
For people who aren't job hunting,
is there a way to really examine
your current work situation and see how you can improve?
I guess what's tricky is improve,
and just the idea of success in a role is subjective in a way,
because it's not always going to necessarily be something like promotion.
Improvement can be many different types of career advancement.
How do you know what improving your role is?
How you do that type of introspection?
Right. This goes to the idea of whether you're doing UX research or not,
it's a very valuable skill to learn
because to answer this question,
you have to be doing user research on yourself,
and being very mindful and aware of your skills,
the environment you're in,
the people you're around,
how that's affecting your performance your day-to-day.
I run this thing called Career Strategy Lab,
which is all about helping people package up
their skills and experience in the form of a resume, portfolio, etc.
But when they come into this program,
the first thing that they do is do a career audit,
and I invented this,
and it's really the idea of doing research on yourself,
and there's various activities such as reflecting on the last two,
five years of your career,
and almost do a horizontal timeline of highs and lows,
and just that activity alone will help you see,
wow, I really felt like I was shining really bright in the role here,
and at this other role,
because the team was a mess or the boss was a total narcissist,
I never want to repeat that again.
Doing these reflective exercises like that can be really helpful.
I think as you do that,
it helps cultivate being more mindful in your every day.
I think other things you can do if you're not looking for a job right now,
first of all, congratulations,
you have some breathing room.
But I think one mistake people make is they
don't really think about these things until
push comes to shove and it's time to get a new job for whatever reason.
It can be really valuable to also think into the future,
not just what do you want to be doing in your next job,
but what might five years from now look like?
Yes, that could change because for so many reasons.
But the point I'm trying to make is it's so important to think one job ahead,
so don't just think about the next job you want,
think about the one after that.
Because if you want to be some type of UX leader,
manager, or VP of design or something, that's great.
But there are probably skill gaps that you need to fill between now and then.
So maybe you can learn those in your current role,
but maybe it's going to illuminate the idea
that even though you might be happy in your current job,
it's not setting you up for that job you want five years from now.
So then that leaves you with the question of,
can I somehow figure out how to get this experience in my current role?
Or if not, is it maybe time to think about other opportunities?
Yeah, the idea of doing what you can with what you've got.
And I think I remember the last time we chatted,
we got on the topic of experimentation in your current role,
some of the things you can do,
whether it's your current area of responsibility, or maybe not.
Maybe you have to create a new way forward.
Maybe it's a new project that you take up
or someone that you help out in your organization.
But I think the term that you told me, which has always stuck in my head,
was an MVP, almost, of the dream job.
So can you share a little bit more about how one can craft
a minimum viable product but of your job,
like of a career that you would dream of?
Yeah, so I think this is such a great question
because so many people probably feel trapped or stuck in a role
that maybe they don't think is giving them enough space
to spread their UX wings.
And so let's say you're working at a company right now,
and maybe you want to get into research,
but you don't do research right now.
Great, well, this would be a great opportunity to think about
what could my research job look like,
whether or not it's at that company or another company.
But if you're fortunate enough to be working in a company right now,
I think you could probably spot a lot of areas
that might need some research.
And then I think there's no harm in proposing some research
around whatever areas these are, right?
And even if someone says no,
that's not to say you couldn't research that on your own, right?
Like, maybe get permission before you talk to customers or something.
But there's so many ways that you could be doing research
kind of in a very rogue way, for lack of a better word,
to develop those skills and see if you actually like it.
Like, maybe you do it for a while and you think,
oh, I actually don't like research.
But I think we get so caught up on,
and it's kind of this rampant expert culture,
not just in UX, but in so many fields.
I think it puts pressure on a lot of people
to try and learn everything very quickly
and be perfect at everything, right?
Like, you have to know all of Figma
and all of this research software, right?
And I think that's very overwhelming
because I receive a lot of messages from people
who are clearly stressed out trying to learn all the things.
And I can imagine that would be very exhausting, right?
And so instead of focusing on learning every single software
and memorizing every single UX terminology
and some book of UX terms that someone made, probably,
and memorizing all of these things that will likely
change in a while, I think it's really
important to focus on the more timeless skills.
So for research, it wouldn't be like how
to know every feature of, I don't know,
Dovetail or something, but being a strong communicator,
being confident in interviews, looking at data,
and being able to quickly just analyze things
at a high level without spending two weeks making
some elaborate Google Sheet.
So that's what I mean when I say,
think about your minimum viable product.
And that also spills over to minimum viable,
like in your job search, minimum viable portfolio,
minimum viable resume, minimum viable LinkedIn,
because people spend months, honestly, sometimes years,
saying they're going to finish their portfolio.
And I know this because I've been doing this for five years.
And I have hundreds of emails that say this, I'm sure.
But it goes back to the product development.
Like, if you keep waiting to get it perfect,
you won't know if version 1.5 would have worked.
But you just spent until version 5,
and you wasted all that time and money.
So that's what I mean when I say MVP.
Yeah, oh my gosh.
And it makes me laugh, because I know earlier in my UX career,
I did the same thing, where I just kind of sat on my hands
thinking, well, I don't have the perfect UX project
to put in here.
But missing, unfortunately, the opportunity
to communicate the skills that I obtained through other maybe
related or adjacent types of projects,
where maybe I used some of the skills,
but maybe not all of them.
And I mean, I guess that's the point of the portfolio,
is to show different kinds of projects,
different times that you'd practiced a certain skill,
even if it's not all in one neat case study.
So I appreciate that, because I probably
would have liked that advice maybe seven years ago.
But it's important to get that word out to those
who are in that position now.
And to your point of the perfect UX portfolio, which
could be its own documentary or something,
but so many people have this belief
that every project in your portfolio
must go through the, quote, perfect UX process.
And I say this with confidence, because I
talk to people every week who say,
can I put this project in my portfolio if it didn't launch,
or if we didn't do research, or if we didn't do usability
testing, or if we jumped right to high-fidelity designs?
And I always turn it into a conversation.
And I say, well, why did you skip research?
And as we can probably imagine, it's
because, well, the stakeholder said this,
or this founder said they knew everything.
And so I don't know who is spreading this myth.
I have hunches that every project must go
through the perfect UX process.
But that's a great example of where sometimes
a project in your portfolio might just be the research step.
It might just be some elaborate usability testing you did.
And I think if I had to guess where this is coming from,
it's the idea that people are going
through all these boot camps and education programs
and learning every step of the process
and ticking all those boxes, and then
as a part of their requirements for, quote, graduation,
they have to show a project that goes through every step.
And so then they think they have to put that in their portfolio.
But in the real world, yeah, I've
definitely worked on projects where we didn't do research
or we skipped to high-fidelity because the product was already
in market.
And we had existing designs.
So for cost and time effectiveness,
it made sense just to jump to those high-fidelity designs.
So it's something I wish people new to the field
really could understand.
I feel like all the boot camps and education programs
need someone, maybe me, to come in and teach.
You learned UX.
Now here's UX in the real world.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, oh, totally.
And life is messy.
UX is messy.
As much as I would love to say that every single project can
and should go through every single step,
ideally, sure, if you're able to and if you're
in a position to do so.
But sometimes you have to just do the best
with what you're handed.
And that's really what matters.
And maybe what you learn, having made mistakes,
that can also be just as useful in a portfolio.
So totally.
And another thing, if I were to, not
that I plan to redesign UX boot camps today,
but now that I'm talking about it,
I think in addition to UX in the real world,
maybe I'll write an article about that,
we need baseline business knowledge for UX people.
Because as a founder myself now, I
consider Career Strategy Lab a product, because it is.
And have I usability tested different pages within that?
No.
I mean, and why didn't I do that?
Well, because time, money, I was a one-woman show
for a very long time.
And I went with my gut.
And I monitored analytics to tell me things,
but I definitely didn't usability test
every single part of it.
So I think that's an example of where there's
UX that you do in academic sense, and then there's,
it's like book smart versus street smart, right?
There's a balance.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I do think that maybe that's
a signal too of the maturity of, when I say maturity, what
I mean is like your time and experience within the field,
you start to identify, OK, what are the battles I really
need to fight?
And where should I prioritize my time
so that I can get the maximum benefit, as opposed
to maybe sweating over something that, yes, sure,
if we had time and money, it would be great.
But otherwise, maybe there's something else
that really deserves our attention a lot more.
And I do think, to your point, it
is a street smart versus book smart.
Certainly, it's good to have book smarts as well.
But ultimately, what comes down to it
is, can you implement it in a way that makes sense?
Yeah, I recently saw this graphic,
and it's all blurring together, whether it was Pinterest,
Instagram, LinkedIn, wherever.
But it had these two columns.
And on the left was method A of learning,
and on the right was method B of learning.
And on the left, it had a bunch of rectangles
stacked on each other.
And it just said, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn,
learn.
And on the right, same rectangles,
but it said, learn, do, learn, do, learn, do, learn, do.
And I think it's so valuable to get
into that rhythm of learning and implementing, learning
and implementing, because during that implementation comes
the understanding of some of those nuances that
come up in terms of time, budget.
Even like, I can't think of a specific example,
but the health care or pharma industry comes to mind
where, or legal or government, there's
so much red tape in a lot of these industries.
And you might want to do something that you can't,
because you're not allowed to show that data,
or you need to get triple permission from the user
to do something.
And it might break conventional UX rules,
which I'm using quotations.
But in the context of that industry or project,
it might be necessary.
And I guess this is starting to spark some questions I have,
too, about folks who maybe are encountering some challenges.
Like, what would you say are some of the big challenges
that you're encountering, people who
are trying to shape their career in certain ways?
What are some of the challenges that
prevent people from really being happy with their role?
What would you say is, I guess, the difference
between a deal breaker versus something
to overcome in a current role?
I think one of the biggest mistakes I see people make
is not consider the type of company, size of company,
and, quote, culture that they're going into.
And here's an example.
So many UX people are really obsessed
with getting hired at a fang company or household name type
company, right?
And there's this perceived allure and badge of honor,
I guess, that some people believe exists.
And I think that can go a couple of ways, right?
Because some companies, you could go,
and there's very unbalanced expectations of how much
you're going to work.
It also could be a situation of those companies,
because they're so large and they have such big budgets,
there is a possibility that they're quite siloed.
And by that, I mean, if you're early in your career
and wanting to dabble your feet in a lot of UX stuff,
you might not touch research because that research
team is like 100 people over in some other part of the company,
right?
So I think it's really important before you apply to a company
even or definitely accept a job to think like,
what do I need from this in terms of a manager, a team?
What is the maturity of this organization?
On the flip side, if you went to a small company, a startup,
because there's all the allure around those,
what people don't realize until they're in is, oops,
now I'm a UX team of one, and I'm new to my field,
and there is no mentor there to guide me.
And so I think the things that people
obsess about, title and salary, are the wrong things
to focus on, right?
And it's more those intangibles that, not intangibles,
but more things that you're going to encounter
and things that will impact your day-to-day experience, right?
Yeah, and it's funny, too, just thinking
about what we talked about at the very beginning, which
is that titles often don't matter.
It's like, whose line is it anyway?
All the titles are made up.
Rules don't matter.
It's true.
I mean, I guess, yeah, rules matter a little.
Well, guidelines matter a little bit.
But mostly, it's, what do you want to do with your time?
And who cares what the title is, looking at the job description?
And in the interview process, are you
interviewing the company, too, and asking questions
about what the role entails?
Like, making sure it's helping to fill
some of the things other than title, other than salary,
that would make that job fulfilling in some way.
Yeah, and I think in our field, I remember starting my career
and kind of going down this path of thinking,
OK, I'm going to be a graphic designer,
and then I'll be an art director,
and then I'll be a creative director,
because that was like this vague progression
in the graphic design world.
And yes, maybe you could create parallels for the UX industry,
but as we know, a UX lead or UX chief design
officer at a startup might be a mid-level designer at Amazon
or something, you know?
So to me, it's really meaningless.
And I think maybe in the past, people thought,
OK, recruiters and hiring managers
are going to look at my LinkedIn or resume
and scan my job titles, and if they don't see a progression,
it's going to make them think I'm not that great or something.
But think of the real estate on your resume, right?
The title is like half a line long.
What's under there?
A bunch of bullet points.
And so if you write strong bullet points that
communicate what you literally did and the impact of that,
that's far going to outshine any random job title
that some person in HR made up when they had
to write your job description.
Right, yeah.
And that's an important point, too.
As much as we would love to have the person who
will be your supervisor to come up with the title,
it isn't always.
So making sure that you're reflecting
on what ultimately it entails, and if you're
using that as a career stepping stone,
that you're able to ultimately write those bullet points down.
And I guess that's really the takeaway, right?
Is thinking about what are those key experiences
that you want to have in order to get where you need to go.
And I would say there's kind of two examples in my career
where I was at dysfunctional startups where I guess
my superpower is somewhat that I'm a generalist,
and I'm a generalist in enough stuff
that I can kind of be dangerous.
In that, I can see the interplay between product and marketing,
right?
And so in a couple of these startups,
they definitely couldn't figure out what to do with me.
And I was kind of just like, one time
I was put in a corner with the tech team
and told just go work with them.
And we worked on this natural language processor thing.
I don't even know how I did it, but I
was helping design this thing.
And then in this other startup, I kind of spearheaded
a ton of marketing because the marketing people
weren't marketing.
And I say that because it was a little rogue,
but I was so confident in my strengths and areas
of expertise.
And in hindsight, if I hadn't have kind of followed
my true strengths and not stayed inside the box
that people put me in, both of those companies
would not have gone on to do certain things
because there was no instigator, which was me.
Does that make sense?
So I think sometimes you have to play.
It is a balance.
I'm not saying just go rogue and step on everyone's toes.
But I think there is value in the awareness
that I had of my skills and experience
and the holes in the company.
And if you can be looking out for those holes
and how you might fill them and then diplomatically present
a solution to the right people, that can work to your favor.
And it can open up doors to do more of, like in my case,
do more marketing because my ideas turned out
to be pretty good.
So hopefully that's helpful for some people.
I don't know.
I do think that's helpful.
And it goes back to the point, too,
of really not underselling yourself,
not underselling your strengths, and being
able to find those opportunities to really deliver in ways
that maybe other people wouldn't have anticipated
that you deliver.
And I think as long as you're looking for those,
then A, you're making your organization a better place,
which is important if you want to stay in your current role.
But even if you're looking into a new role,
then you're able to show your value
in a way that is more tangible.
No, it's like these rogue things that I was doing,
they were creating content and experience
that I could put in my resume, in my portfolio, et cetera.
So if you're feeling like you have skill gaps, back
to what we were talking about before,
maybe there are ways that you can
do things in your current role to help
provide evidence of that.
I always say your portfolio and your resume,
you have to kind of think of the whole thing like a lawyer,
and that you are there to present evidence to the jury,
which is the people hiring you and interviewing you.
And so if you need more evidence of certain skills,
then go make or find that evidence, right?
Yeah, go forth and just do it, in a way.
Even if it's not your company that you're at.
I love the term rogue, by the way,
because even if it's not within the span of your responsibility
at your company that you currently work in,
or maybe you don't even work in an organization right now
and you're trying to get your foot into this industry,
just finding opportunities to go and practice those skills,
I think that's what ultimately matters.
And I want to build on that because there's
this trend in the industry of daily UI challenges
and which calendar picker is better, A or B,
and this silly LinkedIn poll, and not to make fun of those,
but my problem with these kind of like solve this problem
I brought you on a silver platter thing
is that it's not the real world, right?
So a better example would be you had
to book an appointment for your dog, the veterinarian,
and their website was so horrible
and the booking thing didn't work.
Wow, look at that.
That's a real problem with a real business and real users.
You could probably go fix that, you know?
So I always tell people like do an experiment for a week
and be a problem spotter.
And that means take photos, write things down,
take screenshots of bad experiences you encounter,
and then look at the end of seven days, probably three days,
you will have so many things you could fix that are real
and not like here's a new checkout page I designed
that only focused on the interface
and didn't focus on everything else.
So maybe some people need to go off
and be problem spotters too.
Absolutely.
If you wanted to give some like parting wisdom
for some folks who are thinking of, you know,
what they should seek out, right?
So I know we talked about
what might make people a bit unhappy, right?
What are some things that, you know,
ultimately make people really satisfied
with the careers they get, you know?
If you do manage to stay in touch with some of those folks
who you help along the way.
Yeah, I think, you know,
after helping so many people get hired,
I think the ones that like have the testimonials that say,
like, yes, I doubled my salary,
but I'm so happy because now I'm doing work
that really aligns with my interests, my values,
or that I know is setting me up for that, you know,
kind of top of the mountain career goal
I have to be a whatever.
And so I think that, you know, that takes time, right?
You're not going to get your first UX job.
Well, most likely you won't know
that you definitely want to work on consumer health products
or something, it takes time.
But I think there's this phase of kind of experimentation
and sampling all the various ways that you can work in UX.
And then there's this phase of following the path
to the things that are going to truly make you fulfilled,
right?
Because, you know, we think a better title
or a better salary is going to solve all our problems
and we're going to be so happy, but probably won't.
But what will make you happy is when you, you know,
get to work on that thing that had such an impact
for those people that you care so much about, right?
Or that allowed you to, you know,
experiment with, I don't know, virtual reality
because you're so into that or something.
So those are just the things to keep in mind
as you, you know, progress along your career journey.
Yeah, yeah, just keeping in mind, you know,
what are some of the bigger goals beyond salary,
beyond title, but if it means helping other people,
if it means doing a skill that intellectually is exciting,
maybe challenges you,
definitely seems like those are the things
that might lead to, you know, lasting career decisions
as opposed to one you might regret or something like that.
Yeah, because, you know, like, yes,
I do this career strategy lab thing now
and I really treat it like a business and a product
because it is and it's so easy to get bogged down
in like the numbers and conversion rates
and is this page performing well and blah, blah, blah.
And it's very exciting to me
when I see a conversion rate go up or something like that.
But it's, I underestimated the impact
that, you know, this whole thing would have
in helping people,
someone nearly tripled their salary last week
or two weeks ago.
And to get testimonials like that, like every single week,
that has been very fulfilling.
And I think back to what I said, you know,
early in your career,
you're so focused on like the tangibles, right?
And early in my business, I was focused on the tangibles.
And now that the tangibles, conversion rates, et cetera,
are working, now I can actually like step back
and really appreciate the impact.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, absolutely.
Anyway, there's a time for everything.
Yeah, absolutely.
Just getting like, sure, you will have some tangible things
and, you know, it's nice to have them,
but it's really the intangible stuff
that makes that lasting impact in your own life
as well as in the lives of others.
Definitely.
Yeah.
Well, Sarah, this has been great.
Thank you for being here.
If others want to learn more about your career lab,
is it career strategy lab?
Career strategy lab, yes.
If you want to learn more,
yeah, you can go to careerstrategylab.com.
I'm also fairly active on social media,
mainly Twitter, which is Sarah Duty.
YouTube is Sarah Duty and Instagram is Sarah Duty UX.
I lock my personal Instagram down,
but you can follow my UX one at Sarah Duty UX.
Yeah, and then of course, sarahduty.com.
Awesome.
That was Sarah Duty.
You can find links to her website
and other social media in the show notes,
along with some of our own research on UX careers,
covering things like career progression,
hiring, and crafting portfolios.
And while we're on the topic of careers, we're hiring.
We're recruiting both entry-level
and experienced UX specialists.
So if you'd like to work with us,
the deadline to apply is Monday, April 4th.
You'll find more information on that at our website,
www.nngroup.com.
That's N-N-G-R-O-U-P.com.
Finally, my humble request, if you like this show,
the best way that you can support us
is to leave a rating and hit subscribe.
This show is hosted and produced by me, Therese Fessenden.
All sound editing and post-production is by Jonas Zelder.
Music is by Tiny Music and Dresden the Flamingo.
That's it for today's show.
Thanks for listening.
Until next time, remember, keep it simple.