2 Ways To Improve Your UI/UX Design Resume was originally published on Springboard.
If you are just beginning to embark on your UX/UI design job search, your first step should be a strong resume that showcases your skills, experience, and impact. Whether you are finishing a degree program, online bootcamp, or online refresher course, highlighting your past experience on your resume will increase your chances of being recognized by a recruiter or potential employer.
What Is an Impact Statement?
Impact statements on resumes explain not only what you did, but why you did it. When you are talking about your past experiences, you need to give more than just the grunt work. Everything you did had a purpose—explain that purpose so that recruiters and hiring managers will know that your work was important.
One of the best ways to change your grunt statements into impact statements is by providing context to your task. Some people get worried about the one-page limit for resumes, but longer statements that tell the story of the work are much more effective than shorter statements that just describe what was done. It is better to have fewer long bullet points that tell a complete story than more short bullet points that just explain what you did without any reasoning.
This is the difference between a grunt statement and an impact statement:
- Grunt statement: “Designed an office fridge app to let people in the office know about leftover food.”
- Impact statement: “Conducted research, wireframed, and designed an app to reduce food waste in the company fridge by notifying people if they had leftover food for more than one day.”
The first statement explains that the candidate designed an app, but the second statement shows what the purpose of the app was and why the recruiter or hiring manager should care. The impact statement also includes more information about the candidate’s process, which shows they are a well-rounded team member who can handle multiple aspects of a design job.
What Is Quantification?
There is a way to make an impact statement even stronger. The best way to get recruiters’ attention is by adding quantification.
Most people are skimming your resume on the first view, so if you include numbers, they will jump out and catch their attention. To find these numbers, you should ask yourself two questions:
- What was the scale?
- How many different methodologies did I implement?
- How many tools did I use?
- How many people did I manage?
- How many scenarios/tests did I consider/handle?
- What were the results?
- By what percentage did I improve our old process?
- What percentage of our old process did I replace?
- How much money did I produce in value?
- How much time/money/etc did I save the team or the user?
- How many people used it or will use it?
How To Use Impact Statement and Quantification On Your UI/UX Design Resume
For our impact statement above, we can quantify the scale to show the recruiter that the candidate is proficient with a number of different tools and methodologies or we can quantify the results, which will show that they were successful in their venture.
Here is an example of both options:
- Impact statement with scale quantification: “Interviewed 100 employees, wireframed with three rounds of iterations, and designed app with Slack integration to reduce food waste in company fridge by notifying people if they had leftover food for more than one day.”
- Impact statement with results quantification: “Conducted research, wireframed, and designed an app to reduce food waste in company fridge by notifying people if they had leftover food for more than one day, resulting in 85% less food wasted by 100-person team.”
If you are looking for additional help with your UX/UI design resume, check out Pathrise’s product design resume guide, which includes a resume template that you can adapt for your own use.
Pathrise is an online program that works with students and professionals to land their dream job. Mentors work 1-on-1 with fellows on each component of their job search, including resume, LinkedIn, and portfolio optimization, cold emailing, behavioral and technical interviewing, and negotiation.
The post 2 Ways To Improve Your UI/UX Design Resume appeared first on Springboard Blog.
