As a part of my work at Leapfrog, I review and assess candidates who apply for various design roles. Most of them are love at first sight for me. But a majority of the applications we receive are from people who have never actually done any UI/UX Design. This has been a constant issue for us. We’re trying to figure out how we can make ourselves clearer to candidates what we’re looking for.
Read my previous blog: A designer’s guide to design job interviews
I’ve realized that this isn’t really just a problem on our end. A majority of designers who apply don’t simply know what a UI/UX Designer does. Most companies in Nepal have forever misunderstood this position for simply a “designer”. But when we say we’re looking for a UX designer, we really are looking for someone who knows what a UX Designer is. This disconnect often creates a lot of frustration, and 80% of the candidates don’t give us a reason to proceed them to next round because simply there are no examples that exhibit their skills.
When the job is explicitly looking for a UX designer, please understand: your logo designs or social media posts design is not going to do any good to your application; at all. Why would you include your logo design or t-shirt print design portfolio when the role is asking explicitly for a UX Designer? Please try to understand this fact that a UI/UX Designer is highly specialized individual focusing on a specific discipline of digital design. This is not a generic “designer” role, and regardless of what other companies or other teams say and do, it will not help you when you’re applying.
Employers, UI/UX is not a buzzword
The problem also lies with employers. They treat the “UI/UX” term like a buzzword. That’s like you’re an airline company and need to hire an officer-level manager and decide to call him/her a “Flight Officer”. Please understand that FO, in aviation term means an entirely different thing. Similarly, in terms of design, UI/UX Designer means something entirely different that what you think it does. It is not a replacement term for a theme customizer or a front-end engineer. A UI/UX Designer does a specific set of activity everyday at work and their role, significance and compensation is determined by the value they add to the product teams.
In this video, I take a closer look at different types of “designers” out there and what each one means. I provide examples of what a UX designer does specifically, or what a UI designer does and why they must not be confused with web designers or WordPress coders.
Please watch the video till the end and leave a like if you enjoyed. Also, please subscribe to the channel so that you get my design videos every week.