Hello, my name is Leon. I’m one of the youngest product design leads in big tech, and a UX educator dedicated to helping students jumpstart their UX careers.

No doubt, If you clicked on this article you’ve noticed, 2023 is going to be a stressful recruitment cycle.

From multiple hiring freezes from FAANG, big tech refusing to hand out return offers, and even potential layoffs right around the corner. In Game of Thrones terms “winter is coming”.

However, if you follow my advice in this article, there are actually still many opportunities for you to land an interview and secure yourself an offer. (even if you have no prior industry experience)

All it takes is more commitment and articulated planning, aka good goal setting.

When students or up-and-coming designers set “bad or inaccurate goals”, they will fail to meet their own expectations, such as applying to 50 companies but not landing a single interview.

This results in a strong sense of stress and feeling lost.

To combat this, you must set the “correct goals”. Correct goal setting includes both long-term goals and short-term goals. Goals must be broken down into concrete milestones.

In order to set these accurate goals, you need to give yourself a strong reality check through self-critiquing. What are your strength and weakness as an applicant? In other words, why would someone hire you?

Everyone will be very different. So understand who you are first, before setting your goals.

To better help you understand who you might be, I will share examples from three very different students I’ve coached through UXGO.

Victoria (Currently Interning at a fintech start-up)— Someone who is actively studying a UX-related program at a renounced college or university?

Yvette (Recently Joined Apple as an FTE)— Someone who has had previous work experience, freelancing for high-profile clients.

Ruchi (Just completed Amazon’s UX apprenticeship)— A stay-at-home mom transitioning industries, but has put in a lot of dedication and passion into UX with a unique journey to share.

So critique yourself, who are you, and what do you need to improve?

1. Have you actively studied a UX-related program at a renounced college or university?

Meet Victoria! Victoria’s goal was to work in big tech.

If you are like Victoria, you may attend RISD, or some other prestigious design school. This means with a strong resume and portfolio, through leveraging your academic background, you should be able to secure an interview at a FAANG company even with less industry experience than other candidates.

Therefore the first thing we worked on was to craft Victoria’s resume all over again alongside redesigning every case study structure on her portfolio website.

With these two steps completed, victoria can begin comfortably applying while building additional work experiences through an internship opportunity UXGO was able to reach out to her at a highly desirable fintech company called Nav.it.

The internship learning would then be vital for her to gain real industry experience working with her mentor, manager, PM, and engineers as she shipped out real product features impacting thousands of users.

Since it was hard for Victoria to find an internship until her resume and portfolios were optimized.

If Victoria were to skip the process, and not take set up the proper milestones, going straight to applying at big tech companies, her chances of landing an interview would be extremely low, which would greatly unmotivate her.

Therefore it was very important for us at UXGO to set these goals in this order for Victoria, so she would maximize her chances of landing that role in big tech, while not sacrificing the opportunities to build precious work experience by interning at a start-up.

2. Are you transitioning industries, having put in a lot of dedication and passion into UX with a unique journey to share?

Meet Ruchi, a stay-at-home mom. Ruchi reached out to me asking for help on securing an offer with an Amazon UX apprenticeship program.

A few months ago, I was able to help Ruchi, all the way from crafting her first application letter all the way to her final interviews for a unique apprenticeship program with Amazon.

Ruchi was extremely hardworking. However because of her circumstances in immigrating to the US alongside the responsibilities of raising a child, breaking into UX for Ruchi of course much more challenging compared to many of my other students. To her, all she had was her Bootcamp studies, which are highly looked down upon by most big tech companies, with no prior interview or UX work experience like Yvette, Ruchi felt like she was fighting against impossible odds.

So, I shared insights with her on what was needed from her to be an exceptional Amazon apprenticeship candidate. I broke down every industry topic she needed to learn in a systematic way, in relation to the Amazon leadership principles, and we tackled it one topic at a time.

I also told her to be proud of being a stay-at-home mom and weave that into her storytelling and presentation. That was what really stood out in one’s presentation because everyone is unique. Always be appreciative and leverage your life experience in UX interviews.

Being the ideal candidate doesn’t mean you are cookie-cutter. Instead, it means being exceptional in your most authentic and true-to-self fashion.

After two months of working together, Ruchi was able to secure her offer at the UX externship program at Amazon.

As you can tell from Ruchi’s experience, even if you come from an untraditional design background, there are still opportunities for you. You just need to know where to look, and how to work even harder than others.

3. Have you had previous work experiences, such as an internship or contract work with big tech companies or freelancing for high-profile clients?

Meet Yvette, a student of mine now working at Apple.

When Yvette came to me after reading some of my articles, she had just started school in the US and wanted me to help her prepare for an upcoming interview with Amazon.

Similar to Victoria, Yvette needed some help with her portfolio and resume.

However, since Yvette came from a strong design background studying fine arts at one of China’s top art schools during her undergrad, alongside freelancing for many known clients such as Audi in her past, the majority of her resume and portfolio work was focused on polishing.

The challenge she needed to overcome was her communication skills since she had just moved to the US for her very first year.

I quickly pointed this out to her. I recommended that she needed to spend 30 minutes every day practicing her communication skills.

Because English was not her first language, confidence comes from practice.

I customized a list of reach-out templates for her and taught her how to network with industry professionals alongside recruiters. To prepare her for upcoming interviews, I gave her a custom list of interview questions and asked her to send me a recording of answering these every day.

She ignored my advice at first because who wants to spend 30 minutes every day recording themselves, right? That is just too silly. Being self-critical and honest was not easy.

So when her first interview for Amazon came, she blew it. Although we had spent a week working day and night preparing her presentation and I’ve tackled every possible behavioral question that may come her way.

This really hurt Yvette’s confidence, she was very disappointed in herself and felt like she has failed me.

She admitted her communication gave her cold feet during the interview, leaving her unable to answer most of the questions, although we had prepared them. Yvette was frustrated and defeated, she said “being fluent in a new language is not something anyone can learn within a few months or even years.”

To convince her, I invited another coach, Hannah, to join me in our lessons and give Yvette feedback. Hannah was also someone who never spoke English until coming to the US just a few years ago.

I told Yvette that strong communication skills have nothing to do with perfect pronunciation or strong vocabulary. It’s the confidence and your presence during the interview.

Hannah rarely spoke English with her friends, since it’s hard for learning a new language for her too. Yet at work, Hannah is always complimented on her communication skills and strong logical thinking. She was able to leave this impression on her team because she was always confident in her presentation and used simple words to get straight to the point.

Being coached by Hannah showed Yvette the challenges she was facing are not impossible to overcome.

Of course, to further help Yvette build confidence, a lot more practice was needed. Thus, we set up weekly mock practices to push her out of her comfort zone, again and again.

With Hannah’s and my unwavering support, being the artistic and talented designer she already is, just four months later, Yvette landed a full-time role at Apple. (With no prior experience working or even living in America.)

Yvette called me and shared her joy in tears, saying how surreal it felt after getting the call from the recruiter. Whereas it wasn’t a surprise to me.

I know Apple was a great match for her. This is the power of dedication when one is constantly working on the right priority.

That is why — you have to be honest with yourself. If you ignore skills you lack because they are hard to improve upon, you are shooting yourself in the foot.

This is why I encourage you to save your precious time by working with the right mentor or coach.

Finding a mentor isn’t hard these days. However, I would strongly advise you to be highly selective, and think twice about using free services like ADP list.

Spending time with an inexperienced mentor could result in doing tons of busy work that isn’t your priority. Which significantly hinders you from landing your dream role within your time frame.

Again, time is your most valuable asset during a recruitment cycle — “free” often means that you will need to pay more.

Many schools offer great alumni mentors, which, if possible, you should definitely reach out and connect with. Try to look for qualified mentors with a successful track record who is fresh in the industry and share a similar journey with you.

If you still find it difficult to find a good mentor on your own, check out our UXGO platform, where you can find coaches like myself that offer 1:1 coaching sessions.

Thanks for reading! Work hard, I believe in you!

Remember, even with all the depressing news, not all hope is lost, if you know what needs to be done!

Four of my students recently received new grad interviews across a wide range of industries such as Splunk & Palantir, two B2B Data-driven companies, to RIOT & Epic Games, two of the best gaming companies out there.

Therefore, if you followed my advice in this article, there are actually still many opportunities for you to land an interview and secure yourself an offer. (even if you have no prior industry experience)

Make sure to take advantage of all free resources such as our 2023 Job board on UXGO.

You’ll be able to find the most up-to-date 2023 internships & new grad positions. Feel free to use this resource to plan ahead and keep applying to every position that interests you on this job board.

My name is Leon, and I’m always happy to chat! Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or check out our UXGO platform for more free resources and 1:1 coaching sessions.