You’re already a content designer
My best advice for new content designers
For the past year I’ve been mentoring incoming content designers. Every Friday, I set aside an hour to talk to someone new through an organization called UX Coffee Hours. The program is entirely driven by volunteers in the UX industry who lend a helping hand to strangers. I’ve met people from all over the world with a wide range of backgrounds. The conversations and connections I’ve built have been some of the better moments during a very trying year.
Like most content designers, my own path to UX was a windy and uphill road. I start my mentoring sessions with a recap of my background and I share the good and the ugly. The good is I’ve had managers who supported my pursuit of UX and gave me agency to apply it to my job. The bad is I’ve been told it’s too competitive for someone like me with such little experience. I thank important mentors in my career for helping me realize my potential. I want to help others realize their own.
There are a lot of commonalities with the advice I’ve given and the questions I’ve received this past year. I’ve compiled my best advice for anyone looking to land their first job as a content designer, UX writer, content strategist, or whatever new title the industry comes up with.
Imposter syndrome is real
Job descriptions that include a laundry list of impossible qualifications and years long experience, often stop people in their tracks and make them feel unqualified and inadequate. Those perfectly qualified people won’t apply to that job.
Many people I talk with describe their experience and previous projects to me but never label them as being content design, even though they clearly are. When people don’t have the proper title, they often don’t see themselves as actually occupying that role even if they are doing the work.
You are a content designer.
Let that sink in. Now take that new vow of confidence and inject it into your LinkedIn, portfolio, and the narrative you tell in your future interviews. There are no degrees for content design. So many people fall into the industry through a web of events. You can practice the craft as a marketing writer, a content manager, or a journalist.
Once you recognize that you are a content designer, you’re already halfway there.
UX writing isn’t just microcopy
I said it. UX writing isn’t just short sentences or button content — it’s any writing done through the UX toolkit. It’s not a final product, but a process. Your portfolio doesn’t have to highlight microcopy. Your portfolio needs to highlight your UX process.
If you’re putting together your portfolio you can include any content that you created through UX methods. This can be a marketing email, landing page content, even a brochure.
Your portfolio should highlight content that best amplifies your design process, not examples of microcopy.
Your portfolio should tell a story
There are a lot of opinions on how to create the best content design portfolio. I’ll share mine.
More is better. Your portfolio isn’t an example of microcopy.
Be succinct, but don’t stress about word count. Case studies in your portfolio should tell a story, not just the highlights. Include important details — even constraints. Was it a school project and you didn’t have resources to run a research study? That’s fine — tell your reader what research study you would have run if you had a researcher or the time to do it yourself. Show iterations of your content and how they came to be. Explain why you chose a specific tone and explain how you came to choose your information architecture. All these details illustrate how you approach a problem.
End your case study with next steps. Design is an iterative process. We never get it perfect, because it never is. Let your reader know what plans you have to continue to improve the work. It could be as simple as letting the data run for a few months to evaluate performance and make updates as needed. Or perhaps it’s improving the translations, or adding a part of the feature you just didn’t have time to include in the MVP.
A captivating story will grab your reader’s attention.
Create your interview presentation now
Not everyone I talk to realizes how much goes into UX interviews. Spoiler alert, it’s a lot.
The interview process typically involves a phone screen with a recruiter, a phone interview with a content designer that may or may not include some questions about your portfolio, a timed take home writing exercise(s), and the final interview loop which may include a presentation of your work. Creating the skeleton of your interview presentation now, is going to save you a lot of time when the interview process kicks off.
That’s a lot of work to do in a week or two, especially when you may be working full-time or have other responsibilities like kids. By getting a head start on your presentation for the loop, you’re saving yourself a lot of time and future anxiety. These presentations can easily be tweaked for different roles at different companies and can be useful to you for years.
It’s a small industry
The people you meet today, may be the people you work with in the future. It’s a growing, but small industry.
I was in the San Francisco airport flying back to Seattle after an interview, when I ran into a product designer I worked with at a previous company. We had both just finished up interviews for companies in the Bay area.
I didn’t get an offer at a small startup I interviewed for. However, a year later the CTO who interviewed me, reached out to me personally for a job at his new company. He remembered me and while I didn’t get the job, I obviously left an impression.
It’s easy to feel discouraged when you feel like nothing is working out, but take care of these connections you’re making along the way because they can surprise you in the best ways.
So as you go into the world to land that first official content design role, just know you’re almost there. Present yourself as the content designer you already are, tighten up that portfolio, and get yourself a few steps ahead for future interviews.
Good luck. You’ve got this!
