Grow your content design career with a coach

This panel was originally recorded via Zoom webinar and transcribed using Sonix.

WEBINAR TRANSCRIPT

What are some of the most common questions you’re seeing in these one-on-one coaching sessions?

Jenny:

I love this question because it surprised me. I think the question that feels like it comes up a lot is, “Is this normal what I’m experiencing? And am I doing okay?” I feel like the people that I’ve worked with often are people who are already working in the industry, maybe have like one or two years of experience. There’s both a sense of, “Am I doing well enough? Am I doing okay in this job?” And also, “Here are some of the things I’m seeing. Is this normal?” And so some of that comes from imposter syndrome. Like we all have it. It’s all very, very, very prevalent and very common. But I think there is also a sense of, “I have this one perspective and this one little design team or this one organization. Is this what it’s like everywhere?” So that’s that feels to me like a theme that I’ve seen quite a lot.

Laura:

One of the more common questions that I’ve gotten is there are folks who are making the transition to UX writing and content design, and people are getting calls for interviews and they have interviews coming up and they have a scenario: How do I show work if I haven’t ever done the job before? So you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. Maybe the person does have writing experience, but they know they need to sell it to an audience that’s interested in their UX writing skills. And another one, which made me kind of sad, but I can see how this would be something that’s swirling around in your mind, is how can I be taken seriously for a role I’ve never had? And so to Jenny’s point about imposter syndrome, it’s difficult to sort of channel that, “Yes, I can do this job.” And some of the coachees that I speak with, those are some of the top questions that I hear. But usually, we work through that in a portfolio review and we’ll get very, very specific in the samples they have or samples that they plan to show in an interview setting just so they know how they can speak to that work in that particular interview setting.

Mark:

To piggyback on what Jenny and Laura said, it’s almost the most common unasked question, which is, “How do I parlay my prior writing skills and copywriting skills? How do I sell those to a hiring manager?” The overwhelming majority of the coaching sessions that I have facilitated have consisted of people who have a couple of years of experience writing professionally, just in a different capacity, not in UX writing or content design. They have value and they have skills in writing, but they just can’t quite seem to figure out how to break in and how to make themselves relevant in that new kind of language, if you will. It’s not often explicitly asked, but it’s the most frequent pain point that crops up in my sessions.

What are the common mistakes you see people making?

Mark:

I think there are two ubiquitous mistakes that I see.  For example, your LinkedIn profile, your resume and your portfolio are all saying different things. You know, you’re talking about a project on your LinkedIn and on your resume, but it’s not represented on your portfolio. I’ve seen different job titles on resumes and LinkedIn profiles and stuff like that. And for me personally, that’s a that was a big issue. It’s important to have one brand, if you will, extend across everything. I want the hiring manager who’s consuming my materials, my portfolio, my resume, my LinkedIn, for it to be one fluid experience. And I think when it’s not, I think you’re doing yourself an injustice and it can come off a little iffy or you might lose some trust with the hiring manager.

The other issue that I see is, and this is to go back to something we were talking about earlier is, and I love this, this is my favorite part about doing a portfolio review or a resume review, is coming across one throwaway blurb and asking, “What’s that about