Sarah Doody, CEO of Career Strategy Lab, sat down with Product Momentum co-hosts Sean Murray and Dan Sharp to offer advice to UX designers out there who are frustrated by the volatility in today’s job market. Treat your career like a product you’re designing, Sarah says, and focus on the essential skills you need in a turbulent job market. This is what you’ll learn:

Job Searchers.

Think of your career as a Product. Sarah offers 3 pro tips:

• Think about how you’re designing your career? Marketing your career? Selling your career? Cut out the noise. Maintain a balance between collecting information and acting on it.

• Vet the people who offer career advice. Ask for evidence that shows their advice actually works.

• Expand your search beyond big tech. These days, every company is a “tech company,” so look to industries like Finance, Healthcare, Education, and Travel for opportunities.
• Focus on the timeless skills that will remain useful for years to come – e.g., communication skills, business acumen, relationship-building vs. software-specific skills that will continue to change.

Hiring managers.

• Refine job descriptions to focus less on “kitchen sink” responsibilities and more on the day-to-day.
• Consider applicants who may have gaps, but whom you can train to fill that skill set.

Product managers.

• Include your UX Researcher in the conversation, starting on Day 1. There’s a growing recognition that UX research enhances the user experience and reduces rework.
• Engage with Users. Maintain a consistent pulse on user feedback through community engagement and research cadences to inform product development.

ITX’s Product + Design Conference returns to Rochester, June 25-26. Our first 3 keynote speakers have been announced! Learn more here!

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Sean Murray [00:00:09] Dan, we just wrapped with Sarah Doody. It was an amazing conversation. My favorite part of it, we talked about people over tools. Hey, you can be great at using something online, but if you can’t have a conversation with somebody about how to make something better, you’re gonna be lost. Dan, what do you think about this episode?

Dan Sharp [00:00:25] Oh, I had so much fun talking to Sarah. Things that really stuck out to me were her advice for designers who are looking to grow their careers, especially around making sure that you’re focusing on those fundamentals, the things that are 10, 15-year-type skills, communication, and also the advice you had for hiring managers. The thing that really popped out for me was making sure that your job descriptions are really If you’re relatable, yeah, talking about the. what’s going on in like the day to day of the job, great way to screen and find awesome candidates.

Sean Murray [00:00:59] Yeah, are you ready to train to the gaps that you find in your own candidates? This is an awesome episode. We can’t wait for you to hear it. So today on our podcast, we are excited to have Sarah Doody. Sarah is the CEO of Career Strategy Lab. It’s a groundbreaking UX incubator that’s helped thousands of people find new jobs. Really honorable thing, helping people find new jobs. So we are really excited to get into more about the job market and specifically learning more about the skill sets needed to succeed in the world of UX today. So welcome Sarah, thanks for being here.

Sarah Doody [00:01:43] Thanks for having me. I’m excited for this chat.

Sean Murray [00:01:46] We’re gonna have a great time. We’re gonna dive right into it. So the product design space is in a little bit of flux. You’ve mentioned, and you are on tons of podcasts, so if you are a Sarah Doody fan, the content is out there, right? You’ve mentioned that people need to treat their resumes and careers like a product. What advice can you give designers to follow that guidance?

Sarah Doody [00:02:10] Yes. So I’ve been talking about treating your career like a product, I don’t know, since 2018, 19, something like that. I think one of my first posts was on the InVision blog about this years ago. But when you think about it, you know, in the same way that we buy products or hire people to perform services for us, that is exactly what’s happening when companies are hiring UX designers, product designers, researchers. whomever. And so when you think of yourself and your career as a product, you can really leverage a lot of timeless strategies that we know work for big companies, small companies of different industries, et cetera. So when it comes to treating your career like product, especially for people that are in the middle of a job search. Some of the tips, and I’m gonna try and narrow it down to three, so interrupt me if I go too long, but one of them would be recognizing that a successful product needs to do three things. It needs to have great design, right? Because a product with great design and bad marketing probably isn’t gonna work out. So it needs a design, it needs some solid marketing, and it needs to have solid sales too. And if you think of a Venn diagram, At the center of it is you or what I call the product of you. And so if you’re stuck in your job search to kind of reduce that overwhelm of like, where do I begin and how do I even troubleshoot why I’m not getting hired? Think about it in those three circles, right? Is it the design of me as the product? Is it the marketing of me as a product? Or is it the sales of me as a product? So that’s one of the things. Should we pause there or should I keep going?

Sean Murray [00:03:59] No, keep going. One, two, eight.

Sarah Doody [00:04:01] All right, so that’s number one. Number two would be to try and cut out the noise. And by that, I mean you log in to Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, whatever, and it is just overflowing with career advice, some valid, some just click bait, et cetera. And it’s really hard to vet this information. I totally understand that. But one of the things you have to be mindful of is maintaining a balance of collecting information and actually acting on it, right? Because I myself, I’m so guilty of this. I save like a wild amount of LinkedIn and Instagram posts to inspire me in my business and my personal life. Rarely do I ever go back to all that stuff I saved and like review it and actually read it and act on it, right? But I feel like I’m doing something because I’m saving all this stuff. So maintain that balance of information gathering versus taking action. And then let’s see, the third one, yeah, the third one would be to vet who you listen to. And the number one tip I could give people, and I just gave this yesterday on a coaching call, but if someone says your resume needs to be one page, your portfolio must be a website, you should not quit a job before one year is up. before spending a year at that company. A lot of people just hear that advice and just do it. And they think it’s like a rule in the world. And I really challenge people to ask, well, ask that person why, right? Why should my resume be a one page? And if they can’t explain that, then it’s probably just their opinion. And they posted it on LinkedIn to try and get more followers. The other thing you could think of too is what proof. does that person have that that advice works, right? Like if someone tells you to make a one-page resume, but they haven’t helped anyone get hired or get interviews, how do you know that works? So those are my three for now.

Dan Sharp [00:06:16] Oh man, that’s awesome. There’s so much unpacked there. First off, I wish I’d met you when I was doing my job search, cause it would have gone much better. And I feel like there are some things there that were just like good product knowledge about like, Hey, like actually verify what you’re getting. So maybe this is kind of related to, you know, number two and, um, you know, noise, but yeah, a lot going on now about, you know, current economic situation, getting, uh, bit uncertain and I’m wondering, you know, if you have any advice for folks who are in the process of either looking for a new career or actively job searching, you had to navigate those waters.

Sarah Doody [00:06:52] You know, the elephant at the room, things are very turbulent right now, not just at big tech companies, but in general, right? Like government jobs, obviously that is, you know, an issue currently. I think one of the things that people need to be mindful of is looking for jobs outside of, quote, big tech companies. and I know a lot of people. have aspirations like to have Google on their resume or whatever company is kind of on your dream list. At the same time, there are so many companies that need UX people that are not in big tech. And if you expand your job search to these industries, you may also find there is better work-life balance potentially, better salaries, better benefits, potentially even better job security. And so industries that come to mind for me, and I have a whole podcast episode about this, so I’ll send it to you after and we can link to it, but finance is an industry that I consistently see people getting hired at, whether, I would also lump insurance into that too. So JP Morgan Chase, Liberty Mutual, Wells Fargo, lots of those, Fidelity, for example, I consistently see people getting hired at those companies. For many types of roles, UX writing and content strategy, research, of course, just product design, et cetera. Other industries that come to mind, health care. I mean, we’re seeing a lot in terms of, you could lump health insurance in there too, but also just personal health products, whether it’s like diabetes apps or products or heart stuff like cardio, or even just. the push that Apple has towards health. There are things like Peloton, et cetera. So that’s another industry. And then another one that really stands out to me right now is, well too, okay, travel. We’re starting to travel more. It’s picking up. And also I think, and this is just a hypothesis I have, but especially around not just like flights and hotels and things, but companies that are helping people travel. together and meet people. So like group travel and curated experiences and things. There’s a lot of business and consumer products out there that are doing this, especially when you think of like this loneliness epidemic that maybe you’ve been reading about. And I think travel is an interesting solution to that. Of course, you know, there’s financial barriers to do that, but as an industry, the other one I would say is education. and and I would lump things like software that universities and colleges use to deliver online education, but also things like masterclass, Khan Academy, et cetera. I think those are going to continue to grow. And side note for everyone, like every month, the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics issues a jobs report, and they’d say where growth has been happening. And so that could be good thing just to pay attention to in the headlines every month. and then go look at those industries and see, you know, is it finance? Is it whatever this month and kind of follow the money, so to speak.

Sean Murray [00:10:15] I want to acknowledge an elephant in the room. We have a world-class UX researcher on the podcast, and I started out with a question about how to productize something, and the career-trained engineer asked a question about economics. So I think we have to make sure that we’re maximizing the value of having a UX researcher here. What I wonder, what are you seeing, especially maybe just sticking with one of the big targets. of Career Strategy Lab, UX jobs. What are these industries, maybe we stick with finance and healthcare, what are these industries noticing now about the value of UX research or design that has increased these opportunities for people in that occupation?

Sarah Doody [00:11:02] That is a great question and I have not done specific research on this. I’m going to give my, my

Sean Murray [00:11:08] We only want to think in tears, it’s not a fact-based place, okay?

Sarah Doody [00:11:12] Yes, anecdotal and just hypotheses. So I think they’re realizing the importance of, it’s so cliche, but like nailing the customer experience to help increase engagement. Because when you think about it, it’s very expensive to acquire a customer. I mean, I know this from my own business. And if I can get a customer, I want to keep them. I don’t want to spend all kinds the money as know, fidelity, for example, to get someone to bring all their investments over to me and then have them bounce a year later, right? So recognizing that, I think, too, maybe there is a situation where they are realizing the companies and the people at the companies are realizing that the cost of not investing in user experience and research specifically leads to so much rework, right? And we’ve all experienced this in a company or currently, right? Where companies don’t invest in UX or they don’t invest in research and then they spend days, weeks, months, years in this just like hamster wheel of redoing, fixing, et cetera, because they built the wrong thing first because it was some person’s idea over in sales and marketing or something but they never tested it. and now they have to like backtrack. So those are two reasons why I would, I would guess they’re, they’re investing in UX, but I’m going to start asking my people who get hired and try and figure that out a little more.

Sean Murray [00:12:49] I like it. I like it. Yeah, that’s what we’d like to give here. Yes. You mentioned engagement, and I do think that there is this kind of revert back to people used to refer to the heart framework all the time, but it’s become a little bit of a dated model. But mentioning, you know, anything around adoption and engagement, it seems like how do we get people in the front door and how do we get them to stay? I think maybe these industries kind of thought in the past, you know, maybe we were the best option, or we were one of the big three. So we didn’t have to worry about these metrics as much. we see more and more market disruptors coming in and doing things, you know, in that industry and operating, you know, maybe a focus on crypto or a focus on what younger professionals are more interested in. And having more targeted audiences means that they’re pulling away from these larger groups. So I think that, you know, focusing, it’s something that’s going to change the way that you measure adoption and engagement is going to be big. Knowing that maybe people are coming back to these larger, moving into new industries. What are the new skill sets that designers… should be working on that are gonna help them succeed in this new market.

Sarah Doody [00:13:51] Um, it’s not becoming a Figma expert. Um, you know, I think there, there is this fixation on software I often see with people and I would say methodology, right? People early in their career trying to know everything about Figma and memorize, you know, every single process out there and let’s face it, there’s a new like spin on some decades-old process coming out every month, it seems. And so trying not to spend all of their time and energy on those things and thinking about what the timeless skills are that they are going to be able to use 10, 15 years from now. You know, early in my career, I was like trying to become an expert at Photoshop and Illustrator and all that when we made wireframes and things in that software. But I remember thinking to myself at one point, like, I don’t think I need to be able to use Photoshop and Illustrator to 100% of its capacity. I just need to use it enough to like get my ideas on paper and do my job. In hindsight, in my career, and of course, case study of one, but the timeless skills that have served me really well have been, writing has been huge, and that doesn’t mean you need to be publishing essays on Medium every week. But even just when you’re writing an email before you hit send, thinking like, what can I do to make this clearer? Could I add a bulleted list? Could I break up a big giant paragraph into smaller paragraphs? It’s like. It’s so nerdy, but that is what I think about every time before I hit send. Also things like, let’s say business, right? It doesn’t mean you need to go get an MBA, but it does mean that you need to be able to be comfortable in rooms, so to speak, where discussions are happening that maybe you know nothing about. And coming from an agency world at one point in my career, thrown into projects I knew nothing about, like I remember being at meetings at Blackrock and Dow Jones and stuff, and I was like, I have no idea what they’re talking about. But by asking the right questions and listening, I was able to get up to speed pretty quickly. I know those are a little bit vague, but I think the emphasis on it’s not software, it’s not methodology, it’s really about these timeless skills and I would also say building relationships with people at companies, whether that’s your peers or even clients in the agency world, and those relationships can also fast track your ability to get up to speed on the business, extract important information from those people or have them point you to the right people in the companies.

Dan Sharp [00:17:00] That’s awesome. I love that kind of brings back to a conversation we had on the pod a ways back by the importance of human skills and like having those foundations. Like those are the things that really drive success and frameworks are, you know, something to guide you on your design journey. But it’s it’s having the foundation and bottom of the pyramid there is really critical.

Sarah Doody [00:17:18] Exactly.

Dan Sharp [00:17:20] So when I kind of flip it around, Rex, we’re talking about, you know, companies that maybe are new to the importance of design. You know, what advice did you have for hiring managers in those companies who are looking to onboard designers and try and grow their business through, right, strong engagement in visual design?

Sarah Doody [00:17:36] I love this question because two or maybe three years ago, I did some hiring. So companies would hire me to optimize their job description and then post the description that the initial candidates and like feed them a short list essentially, right? Like I guess kind of a recruiter, but also like I didn’t even know what I would call myself. But anyway thinking to what we did because we were able to hire people in three weeks, like from the moment of having a call with the company, getting the job description, posting it, going through two or three hundred applicants, which probably fifty percent of them were never qualified to begin with. But thinking as to what we did in the job description, one of the sections we had was something along the lines of like a day in the life or like a typical week in this role or something like that. One of the things that I think job descriptions get wrong is it’s kind of just a kitchen sink of responsibilities. And half the time it is just cut and pasted from the last time they hired for that role or the job description that their colleague gave them from last month or something. And I understand why that happens. Job descriptions are not exciting to write necessarily, but if you really think about, okay, what is this person gonna be doing on a kind of weekly… monthly, quarterly, however far you want to zoom out basis, that starts to get you thinking into a little bit more specifics. And I would also add, think about if someone was previously in that role, spend some time reflecting on like, what made that person great and what was not great about that person or what did they lack, right? And think about if you need to integrate some of that into the job description also. because I think of people thought about it less as just like kitchen sinker responsibilities and more in terms of the literal, like day to day, et cetera. And through the lens of whoever has been in that role in the past, they can get a more specific job description. And then once that job description is locked in, one of the things that I really wish companies would do on the job descriptions and when they post on LinkedIn like, hey, my team is hiring, blah, blah, blah, at the top, like in a very obvious place, put kind of like knockout criteria. And for people that don’t know what that is, you know, when you’re recruiting for, say, user research interviews or something, you often have these knockout questions, which mean if I wanna only interview people in New York state, that’s gonna be one of my first questions. And if you’re in Ohio, you’re not coming to my research study because I don’t want to talk to people in Ohio. And so think about what the knockout criteria are for that job and that could be location, right? Like state, country, et cetera. It’s also things like remote, but get specific. Like, is it a hundred percent remote? Is it remote if you live in New York state but not if you live in California? Is it remote and you have to come to the office three times a week? So if you’re gonna put that stuff. hire up in the job description, that hopefully, it’s not going to, because people are just gonna click apply, apply, apply, but hopefully you’re gonna knock some people out and as the person hiring, you’re gonna reduce the number of questions and comments you get on LinkedIn posts like if I live in California, can I apply for the role, you know? And also if someone asks that and it’s on the job description that you can’t apply if you’re in California, It says to me like That person didn’t read the job description. They’re not very detail oriented. Maybe that is not a good first impression, you know? So those are some of the tips.

Dan Sharp [00:21:42] Oh man, that’s, but yeah. I mean, it really makes me think about every job description that I’ve ever write or added in writing.

Sarah Doody [00:21:50] Give me your next one and I’ll do a glance.

Dan Sharp [00:21:53] But so with that, would you recommend almost having like a narrative of like, here’s what you would be doing with kind of tangible examples in the job descripton?

Sarah Doody [00:22:03] Yeah, like if you can speak about it, ideally you could talk about like current projects that person might be working on. Like maybe also envision it like in your first 90 days, right? Some companies have like kind of a 90-day, I don’t even know what we’re supposed to call it anymore, but 90-day period where people, especially if it’s contract to hire, right? But I would think about it in that first 90 days. That’s a whole quarter. Like what are the hack. and result in outcomes that maybe you hope this person is able to achieve in the first 90 days. And if you wanna zoom out further, then go for it.

Sean Murray [00:22:44] I’m thinking a lot about people hitting apply, apply, apply, and if we know they’re going to do that. What do we need to be prepared for when evaluating, when evaluating resumes or just getting ready to hire and fill a role? One of the things that I’ve been, we’ve been privileged enough to be able to do some hiring recently. And one of the things that I need to evaluate is what am I ready to train to? Who can I, when I’m thinking about knockout criteria. Who can I hire knowing I’m suspecting that they’ve got a gap in their skill set? Can I actually fill that skill set? Maybe they could be great for the job, but I’m not ready to train. So is that on them? Is that on me? It puts a little bit of onus on the hiring manager to just be prepared to handle those gaps when you have somebody come in because you don’t want to miss out on good talent because you are not prepared to train them up.

Sarah Doody [00:23:37] Yeah, that’s a great point.

Sean Murray [00:23:38] Also, not just what’s on you, but also what other resources do you have, right? So what other, you know, could you say, Hey, when you come in, we want you to go get your, you know, your certified scrum product owner, right? Or what, what other certifications can help fill some of those gaps. So it doesn’t need to be all on you, but you do need to be ready to close gaps for, for talented resources.

Sarah Doody [00:23:58] I love that. And that could even be great to put in the job description, like in your first 90 days, you’ll be expected to get Scrum certification, do XYZ, etc. You know, and for people that maybe aren’t excited about that, that might be enough to make them not apply.

Sean Murray [00:24:18] We’re gonna get out of the realm of UX research for our last question. All right. This is, or out of the realm of UX hiring for our last question. I actually want to get into UX research. So remember, selfishly, Dan and I, product guys, right? We wanna know, from a product perspective, what is the best way for us to leverage our UX resource? What are the decisions that we can help, that we can expect them to help us make? What are the things that we expect them to uncover that we’re not gonna find? What should we ideally be expecting from a great relationship with our UX research partner?

Sarah Doody [00:24:54] from the research partner. Okay. I think from for the research, you want to have them involved in conversations, like day one, ideally. And maybe you do. But what I often see, and you probably see this as well, is that oftentimes, product ideas are formulated. And then the researcher is in almost like an afterthought or maybe even after the feature is launched and it’s more of like a validation versus bringing the researcher in to figure out is this even the right thing to build in the first place? That would be one of the things but I’m curious like how do you guys typically work and where does research fall into your work flow.

Sean Murray [00:25:45] Biggest thing for us right now is we want to make sure that we’re hitting the right target. And I think that that’s where you’re kind of getting at with saying like, what is the feature that’s the most important? Yes. I think a lost art in product is, we’ve been very focused, everybody wants to understand what are we doing from a tactical perspective, like from the work breakdown on, right? We want to start looking ahead, right? Are we, what are we, what is our roadmap? What are we building that’s going to make a difference either in market. that’s gonna help us generate new revenue, right? Reduce the cost of serve or protect new revenue. And then I think about protecting new revenue, I think about really applying and doubling down to our current user base, to our current like heavy user base. So, what I wanna know is what are the, am I hitting the right target? Am I, for our advocates, for the people that are out there promoting our product on their own, what are the things that they’re invested in and how can we double down on that? But also, what are their gaps? What is the feedback that they’re willing to give us that says here are the things that this doesn’t do for me, or here are the integrations that I need in order to use your tool more effectively.

Sarah Doody [00:26:54] One of the things I did a talk or a workshop at, I don’t know, UX London or something years ago, and it was really about how do you create a cadence of research so, to your point, you maintain this, like, regular consistent pulse on what’s happening with each segment that you want to understand, whether it’s, you know, super engaged users, people who are dabbling on a free trial and don’t convert. et cetera and you know every company might have a different cadence right like maybe it’s every month or every quarter or every june or something like that but really thinking about the the people that you want to be understanding and then how frequently do you want to be kind of getting a state into union on them so to speak but one of the other things that but I see companies do and software I use every day, like Active Campaign is this email software that’s like, I don’t know, MailChimp and HubSpot and all of them, a little more enterprisey, but they have like, I think it’s a Slack group and they have like a community idea board and stuff. And if I was the user researcher or product person on that team, I would just be living in there and lurking in there because that is where you are going to be learning so much. you’re not having to recruit people. Like when you think about it, how much time in research is spent like finding the right people and scheduling the interviews and making the survey and this and that. And having a user community of some type and just lurking there and being very active in it is such an amazing way to maintain a pulse on, the literal users. Stakeholders in the company is a totally different other beast, but. for users, it’s just such an easy, cheap way to stay in contact with them. So yeah, maybe that gives you guys some ideas.

Sean Murray [00:28:59] I like it. One of my takeaways from this was you mentioned being comfortable in business and you’re not comfortable in business if you’re not taking advantage of free stuff, right? So this was awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today. We’ve got a few other, we’ve got one last question that Dan’s going to hit you with, but I want to talk about, I just want to talk about some of my takeaways. I did mention already mentioned being comfortable in business. And I think that that is, you know, our, our colleague, Matt LeMay, I say colleague because he’s our friend. He doesn’t actually work for us. But Matt LeMay, the first chapter of his new book is the business is your business. And I think that like everybody remembering what you participate in and what you’re trying to help grow, you know, isn’t, it’s, it doesn’t need to be at the forefront of your mind, but it needs to be something that you’re, that you’re conscious of. And you need to be able to participate in those conversations. So being comfortable talking about business that you mentioned people over tools and timeless skills. I really, I really liked that. Like, yes, you can be great at Figma, but if you can’t hold a conversation with somebody, it’s going to be tough for you to succeed. And then a big thing for me right now that I constantly need to practice is cutting out the noise, right? Not just while you’re trying to record a podcast at home and you’re not sure if your six-year-old has got home from school, right? But really, but the actual noise of, you know, the flood of emails that we get, the amount of content that’s available to us, right? The amount of LinkedIn, you really triggered me when you talked about the amount of LinkedIn posts that you’ve saved, because like, I don’t know, how many of those do I have to go?

Dan Sharp [00:30:24] I close root browser tabs of articles and probably not going to

Sean Murray [00:30:28] Right, so just a really great episode. Thank you so much for being here. Dan, the most important question.

Dan Sharp [00:30:34] Most important question, what are you reading? What’s on your Kindle or on the bookshelf?

Sarah Doody [00:30:40] Oh my gosh, I am like, I’m on this health kick right now. I had some injuries last year and like a herniated disk and it really was terrible. And so I hopefully today the body keeps score is arriving and I can start reading that. I like reading physical books. I just being like being able to like flip back to that page that I put the corner down on and highlight and all that stuff. But yeah, I am on a bit of a health kick. So. And then I’m also reading, and I forget the title of it, but it’s kind of like a World War II spy mystery thing. So yeah, I’m trying to not be reading business books, but I do listen to a lot of business podcasts when I’m driving, but for reading, it’s more personal these days.

Sean Murray [00:31:31] I like it. Those are my favorite answers because sometimes when people answer like, I’ve got these three business books that I’m reading, I’m like, I’m reading a fantasy novel right now.

Sarah Doody [00:31:41] We need to escape. We need to unplug and like, you know, create the balance that everyone talks about wanting, right?

Sean Murray [00:31:48] Now I love the… Awesome, thank you so much for being here today.

Sarah Doody [00:31:52] Thanks for having me.

Paul Gebel [00:31:57] Well, that’s it for today. In line with our goals of transparency and listening, we really want to hear from you. Sean and I are committed to reading every piece of feedback that we get. So please leave a comment or a rating wherever you’re listening to this podcast. Not only does it help us continue to improve, but it also helps the show climb up the rankings so that we can help other listeners move, touch, and inspire the world just like you’re doing. Thanks everyone. We’ll see you next episode.