🔖 UX Career Playbook
My personal collection of posts, videos, podcasts, and other resources with excellent advice on various topics related to starting and getting hired in UX.
The Why
I’ve been in your shoes.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours searching the Internet for the answers. I’ve consumed (too) many articles, blog posts, books, videos, and podcasts that often contradicted each other and confused me even more.
I’ve interviewed at more than 50 companies and spent the last 12 years practicing UX design and learning the insides of this industry at several companies, from small startups to Fortune 100 corporations, and now a FAANG company.
I’ve talked to dozens of recruiters and hiring managers, and hundreds of designers looking to get hired in UX.
This is what I wish I had had when I was starting my career in UX.
What’s Inside?
- 260+ posts, videos, and podcasts to help you get hired in UX.
- 4 Bonus PDF guides with deep dives.
🐣 UX Career Basics
❓Is UX For You?
The best way to learn what you like (and don’t like) and what you’re good at is by ‘doing.’
Kirill Vechtomov
☀️ Day In Life
It can vary widely depending on the phase of the project, company type, product life cycle, etc.
Kirill Vechtomov
📒 Terminology
It’s essential to make sure you and your team members use the same vocabulary.
Kirill Vechtomov
⛹️ Important Skills
Review and analyze the descriptions of the jobs you are considering to better understand what the company is looking for.
Kirill Vechtomov
🪪 Job Titles And Roles
Job titles were created a long time ago, and due to bureaucratic processes, hiring managers are very reluctant to update them.
Kirill Vechtomov
🔄 Transitioning Careers
Accomplishments and learnings from your previous career can be relevant to the UX world.
Kirill Vechtomov
🎓 UX Degrees vs Self-taught
Both options have pros and cons that will depend on your particular circumstances.
Kirill Vechtomov
🥾 UX Bootcamps
Seeing a boot camp in the Education section on the resume could get you immediately dismissed.
Kirill Vechtomov
📜 UX Certifications
I’m an entrepreneur, designer, writer, and thinker. Through side projects, experiments, and reflections, I share thoughts from my journey—wins, failures, takeaways, and personal observations.
Kirill Vechtomov
Psychology - Kirill V
I’m an entrepreneur, designer, writer, and thinker. Through side projects, experiments, and reflections, I share thoughts from my journey—wins, failures, takeaways, and personal observations.
🔎 Job Search
👀 Job Search Tips
They receive dozens and sometimes hundreds of applications per week.
Kirill Vechtomov
🛜 Networking Tips
Be humble. Give before you ask.
Kirill Vechtomov
📄 Resume Tips
Simple, structured layouts focusing on content and clarity is a the winner.
Kirill Vechtomov
📝 Cover Letter Tips
Some hiring managers are ok with getting this information not as a separate document but in the body of the email communication.
Kirill Vechtomov
👔 LinkedIn Profile Tips
LinkedIn has become a monopoly in the corporate jobs world. It gets less and less usable, but it’s still the major channel for finding a job.
Kirill Vechtomov
🤐 Hidden Job Market
Some companies have more favourable treatment of referred candidates, while others are fairer and do not give any extra points when evaluating talent.
Kirill Vechtomov
🍱 Portfolio
🍱 Portfolio Tips
I find lots of advice valuable, but keep in mind that some hiring managers may have different opinions (as humans usually do 😄)
Kirill Vechtomov
📑 Case Studies
The main interest is primarily your thinking and decision-making, and visual design is secondary. But…
Kirill Vechtomov
🔦 Portfolio Examples
Trends come and go, if you decide to ride a trend wave, chances are it will get outdated very fast.
Kirill Vechtomov
🚀 Side Projects
My very first UX design case study was a side project. It helped me go through the whole process and share my thoughts.
Kirill Vechtomov
🦄 Personal Brand
🦄 Personal Brand
The only way to truly stand out and find your way is to crystallise your brand.
Kirill Vechtomov
🤩 How To Stand Out
Treat it as your unique strength. There is no other person in the whole world with the exact combination of those.
Kirill Vechtomov
🧪 Personality Tests
Some employers believe in these and are interested to know what kind of personality a candidate has.
Kirill Vechtomov
🗺️ Design Your Career
Treat this planning as a temporary “map” of the next few years and keep revisiting this to iterate and refine based on the current situation at the time.
Kirill Vechtomov
👯 Interviews
🗣️ Interview Tips
When you are starting, try to do as many interviews as possible.
Kirill Vechtomov
💬 Interview Process
There are many varieties with additional steps, which sometimes increases the timeline to quite frustrating lengths.
Kirill Vechtomov
🙋🏼 UX Designer Interview Questions
Most of their questions (at the last and most intense stage) are behavioural
Kirill Vechtomov
🗯️ Questions To Ask Interviewers
The questions you ask have a chance to earn you more bonus points with the interviewers or lose them.
Kirill Vechtomov
🤝 Interview Etiquette
These tiny details may be that last bonus point that you may lose to another candidate.
Kirill Vechtomov
😴 Take-home Design Tests
The majority of companies use these to measure candidates’ design skills, and very few do it in a ethical way.
Kirill Vechtomov
🪧 Whiteboarding Exercises
Many great designers shine during deep thinking time, and this is the opposite of that.
Kirill Vechtomov
🤑 Salary Negotiation
The market is changing regularly, and you do not want to ask for an outrageous number or miss out.
Kirill Vechtomov
🛠️ Tools
UX Design
📌 Every company will have their suite of tools depending on multiple factors. The most popular one you will likely need to learn is Figma, it's all the rage these days.
- UX Database — a directory of tools.
- Design Tools Database — a directory of tools.
- Color.review — my favourite tool for checking colour contrast.
- Tally — my favourite surveys/polls tool.
Portfolio creation
📌 There are 2 different schools of thought: web vs PDF format, both with their pros and cons. I prefer the web for the online presence but often use a PDF-tailored version for a particular interview/company.
Resume building