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Director of Design | Fall'20
Director of Industry Relations | Fall'20
You’ve a long and adventurous career ahead. You’re just getting started, and you’re going to leave footprints.
It can be hard to stay sane in the crazy competitive world of recruitment and networking. So before jumping straight into the tools needed for recruitment & networking, we wanted to provide some clarity into the job-seeking motive.
As author and professor Bill Burnett once said, prospective career options can help us prototype our life. Therefore, before hitting that apply button, we should be able to answer a simple question: why do we want this job?
Last month, we had the pleasure of inviting Facebook's first intern and former VP of product design, Julie Zhuo, for a fireside chat (which you will find below). In this chat, facilitated by the Director of LavaLab's Industry Relations Madison Gong, Julie discusses her unusual journey into product designer and what those experiences have taught her about management, tech, and the future of design.
Beyond this chat, Julie has also written fabulous articles on her Medium page expanding on these topics and more. We will be covering several that fittingly introduces this module in recruitment and networking for careers in design.
If you can get to the point where everything you make looks great and makes sense, you will not have trouble landing a design job.
In this first article we recommend, Julie shares her tips on what it takes to get started as a designer. In the beginning, she suggests we focus on building our "craft", such as growing both interaction design AND visual design. Down the line, this will make it smoother for us to transition our focus on to our UI and UX skills. Finally, our communication and presentation skills are key to our growth: something we discuss later in our portfolio lesson.
The biggest takeaway from this article is for us as early-designers to understand our "superpowers" in the workforce. Julie reminds us of the strengths we carry that all hiring managers want:
- Flexibility
- Curiosity
- Enthusiasm
- Ability to try new things and take risks
She also shares metrics of success we should strive to achieve in our internships or early careers as designers, and ultimately the obstacles and holes we will most likely stumble into.
The greatest skill you can develop to achieve success is self-control.
Finally, Julie reminds us in this final article of the importance of setting our goals and intentions from the beginning (just like with any design project). By doing so, we can truly take responsibility over our actions and ultimately our own careers.
Most importantly, it can be a great reminder for ourselves to grow into stronger designers and develop into better people. As Julie said: the pursuit is in success, and the journey is the goal.