Where to Find Your Next UX Designer Job (Or Maybe Any Tech Job) Opportunity?

You’ve been in your current company for a few years, for whatever reason, you decide to jump back to the job market. It takes some time to refresh all the knowledge about job searching websites and interviews. This post helps you get up to speed.

You just checked your resume to make sure every “i” dotted and “t” crossed. You polished your portfolio once again. You’re good to go to apply for your next job as a UX Designer. But, where to begin? How can you maximize your exposure to recruiters/HR/Hiring Managers? Which channels should you focus your efforts on?

 

The most effective approach: have someone refer you.

Utilize the power of your network to dig out some job opportunities. Have you connected with designer and programmer friends you met from Meetups? Do you have any designer friends on Facebook?Do you still stay in touch with colleagues from previous companies?

It’s time to send a message to them to say hi, and ask if they know any openings for UX designers. Tips: If someone you know started in a new job, look up that company first just to check if it has any opening that interests you. If it does, then you can make your message more specific — “Congrats on the new job! I noticed you have been in X company for a while, hoe do you like working there? I notice your company is hiring a XX position, I’m really interested in it, would it be possible to ask you for a referral?”

It’s likely that s/he is happy to help you, even chat with you about the company and/or the job if s/he would really love to help. Generally, people love to refer you, because they can get a good bonus out of a successful referred hire.

Why is referral the most effective? As a job candidate from internal referral, your info is more likely to be reviewed by the hiring manager in a short time, and you may successfully get a phone interview soon after. Remember to update your friend after every interview, you may be able to get some more tips from her/him.

 

LinkedIn

It’s the era of social media, keeping your LinkedIn profile up-to-date is essential (remember to include a link in your resume). Nowadays, recruiters are all over LinkedIn and are likely to hit your profile page as well.

How to let recruiters know that you’re actively seeking for job opportunities? Go to Jobs page, find Update Preferences, and set the Let recruiters know you’re open to ON. I did this as soon as I started my job search. I can’t tell exactly how much this helped me, but this was how the recruiter from my current company found me, so chances are that it’s useful!

LinkedIn also has a premium plan for job seekers. I heard that it brings you up in a queue of candidates, so that your profile can be seen by the recruiters first. Try it if you’re interested.

 

Job Search Websites

Below are websites I used and recommend:

Hired: greatly made with nice user experience. Highlight your experience and skills in your profile, make sure it’s complete and polished. Companies will reach out to you if they think you are an interesting candidate. If you’re new to Hired, use my referral link https://hired.com/x/4b2d2 (if you find a job there, I’ll get a referral bonus, that’s what I call “mutual benefits”). There’s another similar services called Vettery, but I think they still need to do hard work to catch up with Hired. I got a couple of phone interviews from it, so I recommend it as well.

LinkedIn Jobs: this is your great friend during job search, both web and app. Check it often, apply for the ones that interest you and build up your job pipeline.

The Muse: this seems to be an emerging star website for tech jobs. Many great opportunities, frequently updated, too. What’s most interesting is that every company has an intro page, with pictures, videos and brief description about the culture and events, etc.

Glassdoor: people come to Glassdoor mostly to check reviews for companies and interview experiences. It has lots of job opportunities as well.

Angel.co: if you love to work for a startup, come to angel.co. It has a sea of startup jobs. You can also get an idea about the estimated salary range and equity percentage. Remember to look up funding and other info on Crunch Base to help you understand the company better.

Websites to put your resume: Indeed, Dice. Indeed has lots of jobs. I heard some job searching companies push their feed to Indeed. I also got my first job from it. Not long ago, Indeed starts offering Indeed Prime, a free service to job seekers to increase exposures to companies. Dice is another good website for tech jobs, especially for programmer positions. Put your info there and recruiters will reach out to you.

Facebook Jobs: Facebook’s new job searching website http://www.facebook.jobs/. Doesn’t have many job opportunities at this point, but a good one to keep an eye on.

Recruiting agencies: they may reach out to you (call or email), or you can reach out directly to them. If you pass the final interview, they can be a great help to you on salary negotiation, because the more your earn, the more they earn. Where to find recruiters? Search for “UX Designer recruiters” (or other job titles) on LinkedIn or Google, it should be easy to find a few. I reserve my opinion on how effective this can be, though, as I think they generally work with too many candidates and you can be forgotten.

Venture Capital websites: some venture capital companies displays job feeds of their portfolio companies on their websites. Give it some exploration.

A few years back, I used websites like Monster and CareerBuilder. Nowadays, they are really not worth taking my time, at least not the right options for seeking for a UX designer job.

 

Keep An Open Mind

Unless you’re absolutely determined that you will have to go for a specific company/industry (like “I will only work for a VR startup”), I suggest you keep an open mind and be willing to learn about the opportunities present in front of your face.

If you’re on the job market and some recruiter contacts you for a position, spend 0.5 hour chatting about the company and the job. Even if you don’t think there’s a match afterwards, it’s worth having new knowledge about a company and what it does within a short time span. Maybe you will find a direction that you’d like to give it a shot, like I did.

 

This post is also on Medium and LinkedIn.

A relevant post: What to Expect in Those UX Designer Interviews

 

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