UX Design: Most Juniors FAIL At This!

this is something you can use if you already have a job it's how to get more money how to boost your career if you already have a job if you don't have a UX job yet this is going to be a great way to get you into the position where you can get your first job and actually really nail it hey Jonathan here from AJ and smart and today's video I'm going to talk about the number one strategy for getting a job in UX or to be honest in almost any field but because I came into my 10th career as a UX designer that's just one I know so that's what I'm going to be talking about so first of all for anyone who doesn't know who I am I'm a UX designer like at heart but I started a design agency called AJ and smart almost 10 years ago we've worked for all of your favorite clients I've worked on hundreds billions of different UX projects and have also been hiring designers for the AJ and smart team for the last 10 years as well the concept I'm taking this from is called the canvas strategy now the canvas strategy is in my opinion the best way to boost your career but the great thing is most people even if they learn about it most people won't learn about it but even if they do learn about it they won't actually execute on the canvas strategy because usually a lot of young designers are not humble and they think they know everything so that's one of the reasons why a lot of people watching this video will also not take action and not do anything about it so if you're one of the few people watching this and actually does something about it really really great okay so what's the kind of strategy the canvas strategy is something I learned from a guy called Ryan holiday Ryan holiday wrote the obstacle is the way he wrote a lot of really great New York Times bestsellers and my team will probably put the link to his canvas strategy article in the description but the canvas strategy is in a nutshell it's about learning how to get what you want by learning how to get other people what they want and an even an easier way of thinking about it's about making other people look good as well that's another way so a quick example would be a lot of people ask me how did my company how did AJ and smart and working with these massive cool brands like how did we end up working with Twitter how did we end up working with companies like Lego how did we end up partnering with the guy who wrote the book sprint for example well almost every single one of those cases which helped boost my company like into the stratosphere what were related to the fact that I was using something called a canvas strategy and the kind of strategy basically there's there's like three steps in the beginning one is you need to know where you are in the food chain so for example three or four years ago maybe I'll take a piece of paper here and write on it lovely AJ and smart notepads which we're not selling don't worry like paranoid that people think I'm trying to sell something here so the first thing is you need to know where you are so know where you are in the food chain so for me I okay let's talk about working with Lego or something and actually I'll even change Lego to jake nath because a lot of people know jake nap is the guy who wrote the book sprint there's like a billion copies of it up there and a lot of people were surprised that I managed to get in touch with him and then work with him and then he connected me to a lot of other big companies like Twitter for example so I realized that I was here and Jake was up there and because I realized this I was humble enough to realize that I can't just go and say hey by the way Jake let's work together let connect meet all of your cool clients and that's what a lot of people do that's a really big mistake a lot of people make is they're like hey can you look at my portfolio hey I want to work at a Jane smart hey I'll do an internship at AJ and smart or even even they'll say hey I'll do a free internship at AJ and smart and they think that's enough right first of all we don't do free internships so don't ask but they don't think about where they are who we are all of this kind of stuff so that's step one just understanding where you are in the food chain and it's also good to know who's below you right so below me right now would be junior UX designers who want to learn things so what you're wanting to do in a nutshell and in a very simple graphic is the person let's say Jake so in my life right now or in my life three years ago it was me the person the people who I wanted to get in touch with and access their networks and then under me was like junior UX designers who I was teaching through the YouTube channel okay so step one is knowing where you are in the career food chain okay and if you're just starting as a UX designer then you're know where you're at the very bottom and you have to accept that and the sooner you can accept that the sooner you can actually boost your career okay step two and this is the step a lot of people skip let's say you wanted to get in touch with me you're like thinking oh I'll just send Jonathan a message and ask him what he wants right that's the biggest mistake you can make you're putting work on me if you're asking me what I want so the second thing is learning and doing the research on what the people want that you're trying to access now the people are the people working at the company want to work at or for example it might be someone who you want to access their network let's say Chris Dole right you probably know Chris dole because he's got a big YouTube channel and we did some videos together I didn't just send Chris a message and say hey will you come to Berlin let's do a video together right you have to think about what are the things that would be interesting for this person right I did my idea my research and a lot of people would just send Chris a message saying hey what can I do for you right and it's a waste of time so do your research if you want to ask access somebody and access their network for example as well if you want to work at a cool company if you want to work at an agency so what are the things these people want or one of the things this company actually wants to do okay so are the team that maybe you want to work on maybe you want to work on the Occulus team at Facebook or something what is it that they would want what is it that they're looking for right and number three is then you you just do it right so let me give you a good example one of the people who work at AJ and smart today was one of the people who was writing the show notes for my podcast for about six months didn't ask him to do it didn't know who he was maybe I didn't even know for a little while that someone was even doing the show no it smells like holy crap like this person's doing something that was so annoying to me and when he finally sent me a message saying hey I'm gonna be in Berlin which a million people do every week this one person who had already figured out oh this is something that Jonathan doesn't like doing and made my life easier this is someone I met so you know the third step and this is someone I met up with and then someone who ended up doing an internship at AJ and smart and this is someone who works at AJ and smart still two years later so the third step is actually do it so a lot of things around building your career is trying to figure out where you are in your career who you want to access and what it is that you can do for them and I think it's really interesting so when I do interviews we did it I did a video recently enough on how to get a how to do a UX job interview one of the biggest mistakes people make is they do no research on the company they don't do research on AJ and smart and so when they come here they don't really have anything they can give they don't really have anything they can say they're just like well here's the prototypes that I can make and everyone can do that right everyone knows how to use figma everyone knows how to use Adobe XD if you don't that it means you're just not looking at YouTube videos on how to do it it's very easy but not everyone is willing to do the work of like where am i where do I want to go and what is it that I have to do to get there now in the article the canvas strategy which teaches you a little bit how to do that there's like these three keys for getting in touch with people who are maybe outside of your field where you can't really access or getting in touch with people at companies who you can't really access so like people maybe VCS who are investing in companies that you want to work at so the three keys are find new trains of thoughts to hand over to them and explore so what you're trying to do is maybe contacting these people with ideas so saying hey Jonathan by the way I've been watching what you're doing your YouTube channel and here's some ideas that I would have to grow it here's some ideas and here they are I've already made the video goodbye see you later the second thing is find outlets people associate and connections so connecting people is super powerful that's something that I do a lot if I'm trying to access somebody to do a project sometimes I'll connect them with someone that I know they would love to be connected with and that might even be just getting them on someone's podcast that they maybe wouldn't feel comfortable asking themselves so making connections is something that's really powerful that's something that can really boost your kind of canvas strategy the third thing is finding inefficiencies waste and redundancies so basically looking at someone's process or a company's process and saying hey by the way there's maybe a better way for you to do this and here I've already done it here you go just handing it over and they said these are just three examples of things that you can actually do if you're right if you don't have ideas for what you would provide for someone or a company that's above you so that's the canvas strategy and the canvas strategy is basically trying to figure out so I want to work I'm just going to use a Jane smart as an example again so someone wants to work here a lot of people want to work here and they they kind of know step one they know that they're juniors they know they don't have a lot of experience so they know that technically they don't have a really good chance of working anywhere so step one is really accepting that and saying okay right I don't have any proof that I'm good at what I do so I need to prove myself right whatever I'm at the bottom of the bottom of the ladder so the second thing is saying but I can see that a Jane Smart has a really bad website what someone did recently is saying I can see that Ajay and smart has a there's no webpage for the podcast or something like this or something like that or maybe the thumbnails on YouTube aren't great or something and then the third step is just doing it and handing it over and saying hey this is what I can do this is me but like just creating some attention and I think this might rub some people the wrong way because you're thinking hey I you know why shouldn't work for free I've heard of although I've read all these articles which is net work for free because I'll demote myself and I'll you know I'll chief and design in general I think that's complete first of all nobody here are they Jane smart none of the interns work for free people would like to work here for free but we don't allow it however people who work for free in general people who do things things for free in my opinion almost always get ahead faster I'll give you a good example I we still work for free today at AJ and smart for example oke the meditation app which is one of the most popular videos on this channel we did this project for Kevin Rose who's like this Silicon Valley investor who's invested in some of the coolest companies in the world no chance of me ever meeting this guy right he's too busy but I worked out a way using the canvas strategy by the way and of course thousands of people would be messaging saying hey I'll do stuff for free but I figured out hey this is what he probably wants and I just did it and our my company just did it and we sent to him we said hey look this is what we've been working on and he was excited and I flew over there and spent my own money to fly over there and that like moved AJ and smart from like here to like here and that by the way then ended up making my company a lot more money than it would have if I hadn't done that so you have to understand that doing free work even though it might be below you what you're actually doing is pushing yourself even further ahead of other people because you're getting in there before while everyone else is thinking should I do this for free you're already well you're already getting ahead and meeting people and making the connections so what I would recommend you doing is reading up on the canvas strategy and think about okay so maybe I'm working in a company and there's this person above me and I'd love if they would promote me then use the canvas strategy or you're a junior that just came out of college and you're here and you want to start working at this startup figure out some people who are working there you know figure out who the boss is contact them using the canvas strategy don't say hey I am a designer look at my portfolio don't say hey I want to help can I do something figure out where you are do your research and then just do the thing and show them how you work so that's basically it I hope if you like this very low video give it a like let me know in the comments if you agree or disagree with this canvas strategy approach to getting a job or to boosting your career and let me know if this sort of low Phi approach is something that you like alright thanks so much goodbye okay I don't even know how long this thing will record oh this is this sucks I like it know where you are and I actually don't know if that's reversed but whatever that's because I'm on my own at the AJ and smart office here in Berlin and nobody else is here by the way this does get back to how to get your first UX job or how how to use strategies to either boost your career or get your first job I'm getting to that [Music] you [Music]

Channel: AJ&Smart

Views: 75,323

Rating: 4.9439254 out of 5

Keywords: UX Design, User Experience Design, UX Designer, Junior UX Designer, UXD, UXUI, UX / UI, ux career path, UX Career, UX Design Career, ux design basics, UX Designer Career, learn ux design, learn ux design free, learn ux design for beginners, ux for beginners, ui ux for beginners, jonathan courtney, UX AJ&Smart, aj&smart

Id: crcAGDnZoHk

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Tue May 05 2020