Researchers: Let’s talk about Impact
How do you tell your impact story?
Researchers are at a distinct disadvantage in the UX job market. Why? Because companies hire people to get things done. And researchers spend most of their time talking about the things other people do.
In a job interview researchers might talk a lot about how they did the research that led them to learning about the things other people do, but this is still off the mark. What did the researcher do for the company?
Yes, yes, we are advocates for the users and customers and members and all the other types of people who we research. But we can’t ignore that we’re doing this research for a business. And at the end of the day a hiring company needs to know why our research matters.
Last year I spent several months volunteering alongside other UX Researchers doing mock interviews and providing resume guidance for UXRs who’d been laid off. I’ve also served on numerous interview panels when I worked at Google. I have interviewed a lot of UXRs and the ones who stand out are the ones who know how to talk about their impact.
How to talk about Impact
When I ask most researchers about the impact of a project they often say something like, “I concluded the research with a presentation that was later shared with senior-level leadership.” Or, “The research resulted in several new journey maps.” Or even, “The team took my advice.”
- Your impact is not your deliverables.
- Your impact is not your recommendations.
- Your impact is not that a team did the thing they were probably going to do anyway and that your research generally agreed with.
Those aren’t impact. The last one gets close (sometimes) but it’s still not really talking about how the work you did impacted the company. Because it doesn’t talk about change. Change in a company largely shows up in the form of increasing or decreasing.
I am aware that researchers, especially qualitative researchers, get a little nervous when asked to add numbers to their resumes and talking points. You don’t necessarily need to have numbers (although doing so can catch the eye of people who scan resumes quickly). You do however have to think a little more deeply about the chain of actions coming before and after your research.
Let’s fix those example statement so that the impact they represent is clear.
What does it mean to the company that your presentation was shared with senior-level leadership?
It might mean that you helped boost the visibility of the research function, leading to an increased frequency of research requests from higher-level stakeholders, and a new standing invitation for your manager to join the products team’s monthly update meeting. You changed the way the company interacted with the research team.
What does it mean to the company that your research produced journey maps?
Perhaps it meant that the company now had a more nuanced understanding of the many steps involved with learning how to use their product, and this new understanding led them to create a new onboarding program. You changed the way the company brings users into the product. Bonus points if you know how much the abandonment rates went down after this program began, or the resulting increase in revenue.
What does it mean that the team followed your recommendation?
This one sounds kind of good already. The team took your advice. That’s a start, but the team believing in your results does not help you stand out as a job candidate. Pull back a little further in time. How long had the team been debating about this feature change? What prompted the discussion? Without your research, how would the decision have been made? It’s possible that your impact here is around increasing the confidence of a decision that was holding back other work. You changed the velocity of the team by unblocking their decision making.
Seeing your impact
Clearly, if your project did not lead to these changes, and you lack the supporting evidence I outline above, don’t make these claims. But I hope as examples they help you think more profoundly about what changes might have come from your work, and the impact that made on the company.
To see your impact requires lifting your head up out of the nitty-gritty detail we tend to love as researchers. You need to think about the signals you get from how your research is requested, how it’s received, how it’s shared, what decisions come from it, and what happens next.
Not every project will result in a strong impact story. It’s not realistic to expect it to. That’s why you curate which projects to highlight in your resume or talk about in an interview. Review your project history in your mind and think about the work that makes you feel good. Why do those projects stand out? You probably have some hidden intuition about the impact of this work that’s making you reflect on it so positively. As an astute researcher you’ve picked up on a signal. Follow it.
Addendum
Are you thinking: Thanks for all this Kelly, but I’ve been bounced from job to job for a couple years now and I have zero insight into any of the changes you described. As for numbers? Ha!
I am so sorry.
This is a factor in the research job hunt today. Don’t despair. (Or, despair a little less.) What you do instead is turn the discussion from organizational impact to your proficiency as a researcher. Your flexibility in research approach, your ability to adjust to new project circumstances, your creativity in recruiting a nearly-impossible sample, something about how you turn a bad situation into a better one. You say something like,
“Because I’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of organizations it’s difficult to track impact, but I’ve really had the chance to flex my adaptability muscles. For example…”
In short: be straight forward about your reality, and shift the conversation toward one of your strengths. Talk about why the team brought you into that project and how you handled each challenge that came up. Similar to having an impact story, an effectiveness story can set you apart from candidates who talk about how they watched people do things and then created the assigned deliverables that reflect that. Because the company needs to know what you’ll do for them.
I hope this helps. Keep at it!
