I graduated last December and have interned before at 2 big tech companies. Unfortunately, none of them led to a full time, because hiring freeze and/or hiring freeze. I feel the current market is a nightmare to new grad designer. All the jobs require 3-5 yoe and the gatekeepers never believe you have the ability and potential to do a good job without years of experience, tho actually the work is not really difficult. I feel I have put a lot of time and energy on polishing my portfolio and resume, and all the mentors I talked with before said my work is good. But I still find very hard to survive in this market. I donāt know what I should do. Does anyone has any ideas? Or does anyone have any resources to help me? Thank you. #ui/ux #interviews #productdesign
The market is very tough right now for entry level roles. UX had been a hot area in the late 2010s/early 2020s, with a ton of āanyone can be a designer!ā bootcamps and courses flooding the market with talent. Now that thereās been a contraction, with many more folks in the field than openings, itās a āhirerās market.ā Companies have the luxury of hiring overqualified talent, just because theyāre out there. It sucks that this is the time that youāre entering, but know that these things are cyclical and will get better. Many of the folks who entered UX on a whim will move onto other things, and hiring will at least get somewhat better. If you can, try to find contract or freelance work to keep building your portfolio. If not, make your own projects. See if thereās an area where you can specialize to give yourself an edge in certain roles. The best thing you can do to stay competitive is to stay in the game.
For all roles across tech, there are very few junior or new grad roles available. There was an IC3 junior engineering role that was filled within 3 days on my team. The open new grad position for Instagram has thousands of applicants. To make it in this market, you have to be very talented to stand out, as the bar has increased, and most applicants arenāt qualified.
I kind of assumed the Instagram new grad role would be flooded. I just finished a screening past work interview with them, waiting to hear back to move onto the final super day. What are your tips on cracking the interviews?
Congrats! Thereās no silver bullet to cracking it, but showing consumer mobile experiences and being intentional with your design decisions helps. IG prioritizes craft and high quality work thatās well thought out.
when I tried getting in around 2015, I did graphic design and web jobs for a few years until things opened up. I went to tons of networking events and got to know people. it took years to break in. it's always been bad for juniors.
In terms of truly entry-level, no. I haven't seen any listings recently that are looking for someone who actually just graduated. Those are typically the "New Grad" positions. What I have seen is roles for people with 1+ YOE after graduation, and sometimes internship experience counts. Keep applying for those, and seek out referrals if anyone in your network works there. In the interim try to find founders who are looking for cheap design work, they'll usually be impressed by seeing big tech on your resume. Try to seek out first-time founders with industry experience. They may have limited funds to pay you, but that also means they won't hire experienced people they've worked with because they can't pay them. If it works out, you have great experience building out the design of a successful app. If it doesn't, you can always ask the founder to connect you with hiring managers at previous companies they've worked at.
The hard reality is that there are almost no entry level design jobs in this market. And if there were, I wouldnāt be surprised if mid-level designers are applying to them. Keep your chin up (harder said than done, I know). You may want to consider a fallback job or career path until this market improves.