What is Wrong with Hiring

You Asked, We Answered - Listener Grab Bag #4

In this AMA, Amy and Laura (or maybe her doppelgänger) answer some listener-submitted questions.
- Hiring managers want UX rock stars, so how do you get hired if you've had the misfortune of working in places where you weren’t supported or were underutilized, and didn't get to have much impact or work on cool stuff?
- How do you describe work impact on your resume if it's not tracked or measured, a project got canceled, or you got laid off and don't know what happened?
- What should specialist designers do in a job market that favors generalists and visual design skills? Is a generalist path still viable?
- A role for Senior UXR at Amazon wants 6+ years leading research projects with demonstrated impact. Would academic research count toward this?
- I was recently interviewing for a job and the salary I discussed with the recruiter was $105K-$110K CAD. I got the job and now they’re offering me $82K-$90K CAD. Is there a way to re-negotiate this offer?
- What’s your take on engaging with LinkedIn content that's critical about the inhumanities of the job search?
Bonus: find out how Laura really feels about Figma.
Please support our work by leaving a rating and review, telling your friends, or throwing us a few gold doubloons!
Transcript

[Replay] Hiring Horror Stories (2023)

In this three-part series replay from Halloween 2023, we share some fantastically horrific stories of tech hiring gone wrong, sent in by listeners. So grab your Halloween candy, holy water, and a flashlight while you listen into some spine tingling tales of candidates getting ghosted, tricked, and treated ghoulishly by ghastly hiring managers. Plus some freaky anecdotes from hiring managers who must also regularly deal with unacceptable levels of hiring clusterfuckery, and other nightmares of major organizational incompetence, frustratingly fickle decision-makers, hot tub interviews, and more. 
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Episode transcript
Got a hiring topic request? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn and we can cover it in a future episode.
Please support our work by leaving a rating and review, telling your friends, or throwing us a few gold doubloons!

Making Sense of UX Research Job Leveling with Lawton Pybus & Thomas Stokes

A lack of standardized definitions for UX research roles and levels across companies presents a challenge for job searches, hiring, promotions, and career planning. 
Amy chats with Lawton Pybus and Thomas Stokes of Drill Bit Labs about their research on the state of UXR job leveling, qualifications, responsibilities, and compensation for IC and manager roles. 
Join us for a fun discussion of what they learned and actionable recommendations for how you use their new data-driven leveling framework to design a more effective and efficient job search, hiring process, team leveling infrastructure, and UXR career plan. Plus some an update on the UXR job market.
Come for the insights, stay for the research nerdery.
Please support our work by leaving a rating and review, telling your friends, or throwing us a few gold doubloons!
Links
Transcript
The research: What we can learn from UX Research job descriptions (three part series)
Drill Bit Labs Newsletter

Yes, Hiring is Broken with Recruiter Kimone Napier

Why is the tech job market still so bad? Why are the mass layoffs still happening? Why is hiring so broken, and whose fault is it? Job seekers, hiring managers, and recruiters alike will want to tune in to my conversation with recruiter and founder of Hire Breakthrough, Kimone Napier, for some commiseration and perspective during this defeating and demoralizing time. 
We also talk what exactly an ATS is and why you don’t need to worry about it, what companies are legally allowed to verify about your past employment, and building a resilient career in uncertain times.
Please support our work with a rating and review and telling your friends. Or, you can throw us a few gold doubloons!
Got a request for a topic or guest? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.
Links
Episode Transcript
How to navigate the ever-changing job market
Hire Breakthrough
Weekly Job Leads 
Kimone's LinkedIn
Building a resilient career in uncertain times

From Charmander to Charizard: Level Up Your UX Research Job Search with Nikki Anderson

Amy chats with writer, podcaster, speaker, Pokémon enthusiast, research champion, and founder of User Research Academy, Nikki Anderson. Nikki provides sage advice for taking your job interviews, resume, and portfolio up a few notches, and shares the most common mistakes she's made as a candidate and what she's seen as a hiring manager.
She also imparts a supportive message to job seekers, and realistic perspective on the current and future state of UX during a very challenging time for everyone in the community. The chaos and uncertainty of mass layoffs and AI have led many to ask, is UX dead? Nikki believes that UX will persist and encourages us to use this moment as an opportunity for a conversation about reimagining and rebuilding in a better way. 
Links
Episode transcript
Join Nikki's User Research Academy
Subscribe to Nikki's Substack
A UXR Resume Journey (Nikki's comprehensive guide)
Nikki's guide to case studies
Please support our work with a rating and review and telling your friends. Or, you can throw us a few gold doubloons!
Got a request for a topic or guest speaker? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.

Interviewing When You're an "Only" With Roberta Dombrowski

Amy chats with coach Roberta Dombrowski about the experience of interviewing for tech jobs as “an only”. If you’ve ever been an “only” (woman, person of color, neurodivergent, queer, etc.) or first of your kind on a team, this one’s for you. Hiring managers, recruiters, and anyone else who cares about other people, can also learn a thing or two about creating an inclusive hiring process to set “onlys” up for success.
Roberta is the founder of Learn Mindfully where she helps onlys reestablish their relationship to work, themselves, and the people they work with, through an integration of head, heart, and body. 
With more than a decade of experience designing employee and customer experiences and working with leaders at companies like Adobe, Instacart, Shopify, ServiceNow, and LinkedIn, she is dedicated to leveling the playing field at work and believes that leaders at all levels can spark change.
Links
Episode transcript
Navigating Job Search Bias
70+ questions to make sure your next role meets your needs
More resources from Roberta
Please support our work with a rating and review or a throw us a few gold doubloons!
Got a request for a topic or guest speaker? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.

Mitch Clements on Scaling Design Teams & Hiring Senior Talent

Senior Product Design Manager and respected UX community contributor Mitch Clements shares how he created an attentive, fair, and effective hiring process to scale his 26-person (and counting!) design team at Encino. UX hiring managers and job seekers will appreciate Mitch's reflections on:
Lessons learned on screening and interviewing candidates in a crowded market, from entry level to advanced practitioners
The necessity of implementing a career architecture framework and standardized assessment rubrics to streamline the process and set expectations
The importance of empathy, communication, transparency in creating a high quality hiring experience
What Mitch looks for when hiring senior designers/IC’s and design managers
Why portfolios should NOT be a requirement for applications!
How posting on LinkedIn can help hiring managers attract design candidates
Optimistic predictions for a resurgence of UX hiring… sometime down the road
Links
Episode transcript
Mitch's website and coaching services
Mitch's LinkedIn
Please support our work with a rating and review or a throw us a few gold doubloons!
Got a request for a topic or guest speaker? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.

Finding a Job Search Happy Path with Sally Carson

Leadership coach, design executive, and founder of Happy Path Sally Carson. Sally shares her hiring insights and job search advice based on 20+ years in tech, including her time as a hiring manager and leader of design teams at LinkedIn and Cisco. We talk about:
Using a "jobs to be done" framework to craft your resume, portfolio, and other materials according to the needs and goals of your audience
Insights into how recruiters use LinkedIn search and filters to find qualified candidates (Sally's team worked on variety of features for finding talent)
Tips for optimizing your LinkedIn profile that go beyond the basics (like adding skills tags to your jobs so you come up in search)
One Weird (Smart) Trick for figuring out how to talk about the business impact of your work
How managing up *might* help you avoid a layoff
Why design and tech professionals need to learn AI now
Something about bras for dogs?
Links
Episode transcript
Sally's website
Keep your job in 2024 by managing up
Adding business results to LinkedIn profile
Importance of adding skills to LinkedIn profile
The AI Dilemma - from the Center for Humane Technology (vimeo)
Free LinkedIn Learning AI course
Please support our work with a rating and review or a throw us a few gold dubloons!
Got a request for a topic or guest speaker? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.

Job Market Insights from Dave Miller, a Truly Human-Centered Recruiter

Amy chats with Dave Miller, an 18-year talent management veteran and founder of Design Citizen, a human-centered recruiting and career advisory firm for product and creative professionals in tech. 
Tune in for lots of gems as Dave shares his insights on past, present, and future tech industry and job market trends (good news: things are looking a bit better!), with a healthy mix of reality check and optimism about the impact of AI on tech professionals. 
Dave actually walks the talk in his work with candidates, emphasizing fair pay and respectful hiring processes. If you're looking for (or hiring for!) positions in product, design, research, marketing, and related roles, get with Dave stat! 
Links
Episode transcript
Please support our work with a rating and review or a throw us a few shillings! This shit costs money after all.
Got a request for a topic or guest speaker? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn.

How to Manage in the Messy UX Job Market with Jeremy Miller

In this special episode swap, Amy joins Jeremy Miller, host of Beyond UX Design, for an in-depth conversation about the state of the UX job market.
We touch on some familiar topics around the mass tech layoffs, but the primary focus of our discussion looks at how job seekers can manage their response to layoffs and navigate the job search during a chaotic time.
Plus a fun April Fool's Day Joke... 
Links
Check out Jeremy's Podcast, Beyond UX Design
Grab his book, Beyond UX Design: Master Your Craft Beyond Pixels and Prototypes, for 10% off
Watch the recording of our live Q&A on the state of the UX job market
Episode transcript
Support our work:
Please rate our show, spread the word, or hit us up with a lil contribution! This shit costs money after all.
Got a hiring topic request? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn and we can cover it in a future episode.

You Asked, We Answered - Listener Grab Bag #3

Today we answer some great questions from our fabulous listeners! Hope it helps!
Is it worth applying to jobs on LinkedIn and Indeed?
We're supposed to network to find a job, but what do you do when no one you know has an open role? 
When hundreds or thousands of people apply to a job in just a few days, should you even bother?
Why does it seem like companies are hiring more UX contractors these days? What does it mean for the future of the field?
What are some UX research-adjacent careers that pay the same?
With more companies wanting hybrid designer-researchers, what does this mean for the evolution of our skill sets?
Why are companies passing up on qualified, extending the process in search for the “perfect candidate" (who may not actually exist)?
Why do I keep seeing the exact same jobs getting reposted every few months for nearly 2 years now?
This episode is sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. Learn more about their Executive Program in Design Leadership here.
Episode transcript
Support our work by leaving a rating and review, or throw us a few bucks for coffee and beer!
Got a hiring topic request? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn and we can cover it in a future episode.

Playing the Game: Mitigating Bias in Hiring with David Dylan Thomas

What can job seekers, hiring managers, and companies do to mitigate bias in hiring? In this conversation with writer, speaker, consultant, and all around awesome guy David Dylan Thomas, we discuss the individual and collective actions we can take to alleviate the burden on candidates who just want to get a damn job.
Buckle your seatbelts for an adventurous exploration of cognitive biases in hiring, how to address common concerns like resume gaps and layoffs, the ugly origins of employer-employee power dynamics and exploitation, risk taking and self-censorship, the dangers of AI (because of course), and the role of *gasp* tech worker unions in creating a more equitable hiring processes. 
Plus a sneak peek into Dave's zombie-social commentary film project, White Meat!
Episode transcript
Links
David Dylan Thomas
This episode is sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. Learn more about their Executive Program in Design Leadership here.
Support our work by leaving a rating and review, or throw us a few bucks for coffee and beer!
Got a hiring topic request? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn and we can cover it in a future episode.

Reading the Room with Joe Cardillo

Amy chats with coach, trainer, speaker, and founder of The Early Manager, Joe Cardillo (they/them), about how we can use research and emotional intelligence to "read the room" when interviewing—i.e., figuring out the context of the organization, team, and manager to ascertain fit and effectively position ourselves to land the role.
We cover:
Asking specific questions to get specific answers
 
Questions as a form of positioning
 
The importance of researching an organization's business model, funders, product roadmap, reporting structure, public earnings reports, and other items
 
Explicit and implicit values, and corporate performativity
 
Self censorship and and professional risk-taking
Episode transcript
Links
The Early Manager
Connect with Joe on LinkedIn and Mastodon
Albert's List Job Search Community
Black Remote She
Finding Your Ideal Tech Role, Elisa Valdez de Ramirez
Support our work by leaving a rating and review, or throwing us a few bucks!
Got a hiring topic request? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn and we can cover it in a future episode.

What the heck is going on with the UX job market?

Feeling slightly depressed, Amy talks about the state of the UX and tech job market in the US, which is complete shit show right now. She tries her darnedest to make sense of what's going on and what we might expect in the near-term, based on existing data sources and job seeker sentiment.  
Original post
Episode transcript
Support our work:
Spread the word about our show, leave a rating and review, or hit us up with a lil donation!.
Got a hiring topic request? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn and we can cover it in a future episode.

Professional Branding (Ew!)

Laura and Amy discuss the really unpleasant topic of "professional branding" (ew!), and try to make a bit more palatable and relevant.As awful as it sounds, putting a bit of effort into how you show up in the world and tell your story can be beneficial for a job search, career development, networking, and professional opportunities.And don't worry, it doesn't mean you need to become a Thoughtfluencer TM with a massive following!
Links
Episode transcript
[Panel Event Recording] Job Search Strategy, Taking Risks, & Telling Your Story, Research Ops Community
Personal Branding Ruins People's Lives
Dre Beltrami - No BS Branding (podcast)
Personal branding for people who hate personal branding
Why 'Build Your Personal Brand' Is The Worst Career Advice Ever  
Brand or be branded — Beautiful Trouble 
How to Design a Bio, Part 1 - nikki espartinez
How to Design a Bio, Part 2 - nikki espartinez
Building & growing a (digital) reputation - nikki espartinez
 
Got a hiring topic request? Reach out to Amy on LinkedIn and we can cover it in a future episode.
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