The UX job market REALLY sucks right now

Why you should pivot and change directions right NOW

Credit: Unsplash

I had to change the title of this article a little bit because another medium writer beat me to it, but the sentiment remains so let’s get to it.

I do a something I call a “twenty application test” every quarter where I will send out my resume to 20 companies who are hiring designers to see if I can make the cut.

I’m not the kind of person who will send 100 resumes and accept 100 rejections; as someone who was a hiring manager and also a seasoned job-search artist, the sweet spot for me is 20 applications with a resume format change every 5–7 applications.

And the results this quarter are the most shocking for me, because the amount of interviews I got was a big fat zero. A 100% rejection rate from the first screening.

This has never happened before, not even during my junior years, not even a quarter or two ago in recent history.

So I repeated the test with a junior mentee’s resume, and got another big fat zero. What does this all mean?

We’ve all been expecting this, and I’m smiling as I write this because I’ve again managed to successfully predict the market’s doom but here it is:

The UX bubble has finally popped.

What does this mean for us in the industry?

A lot of articles have covered why this struggle is happening so I won’t get into the bits and pieces. There is no point analysing the past that led to the present so I will try to focus on the future.

There has been a lot of change within the industry itself, specifically on how hiring is being done.

Here’s the low-down folks: It’s a referral market now where your best bet to getting a job is getting a referral from someone you’ve worked with before.

Yes, not referrals from mentors and random strangers you meet on LinkedIn, but referrals from actual humans you worked before.

What’s the difference?

Referrals have developed a pretty nasty reputation in the tech recruiting scene, with professionals…