Quit my job and get educated?

Careers & Mentoring
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#1

Hi all,

I’d like some advice.

I’m currently a content designer with a background in web design and trying to transition into a UX design.

I was told at my current company I’d move into a UX role after 6 months providing a senior developer was hired.

We are now in month 8 and still no developer has been hired. The promise of moving to UX will be to work in a team with one UX designer who has been in the company for over 10 years and let’s politely say, he’s a bit stale and not mentor material.

I thought getting the job title would put me in a better position for getting another UX role or at least an interview but I’m now thinking about leaving to study.

I’m lucky enough to be in a position where I can quit my current job (which I’m not happy in) and take out 3/6 months to get educated to hopefully land a UX role in a great team.

My questions are…

Has anyone been in this situation?

What courses would people recommend?
I’m currently taking User Experience (UX): The Ultimate Guide to Usability and UX by DR David Travis on udemy.

Can anyone recommend a decent place to meet a mentor?

Would anyone like to be my mentor? :slight_smile:

Love to hear your thoughts

Thanks
Ross

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#2

Hey Ross,
Sounds like a frustrating situation to be in, but one that you’re handling well. I think your idea is a good one if you’re feeling unhappy in your current job.

I’m going to call in @Louise and @deprecated because they always have great advice in these situations.

Regarding training, do you have a budget? Bootcamps are costly but the immersion is effective. @jdebari is a good person to talk to about that. We have reviewed some of the most popular ones here.

Regarding mentoring, @maryshaw offers mentoring for a small fee if you have pressing questions, but long term that may not be sustainable. Where are you based? There is a section in finding a mentor in our book – have you read it?

Another idea that I’ll throw out there – would your work let you take on a side project so you could do some pro-bono UX work to get experience? Or perhaps even let you work some UX on the job as a side avenue? I hear from so many people that are struggling to get experience so I wonder if you can leverage your current situation in some way.

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#3

Ignore q about book. Just saw your other post.

#4

Hey Ross,

First and foremost, congrats on taking a huge decision for moving into UX roles and good luck :slight_smile:

IMHO, in order to learn UX you don’t have to quit your current job, you actually need your current job to practice some aspects of UX. I believe being a UX designer is not just having a title and working with developers. In UX, more than everything we should all be able to initiate teamwork, user research and think about users’ daily life. We need to learn about empathy, how business processes are working and what makes a better conversion rate in a solution.

You actually have this opportunity to learn as much as you can from the environment around you, and at the same time you can enroll in an online UX course (like the ones presented by designlab) and use your business questions to practice UX. If you want to be a great UX designer, you need to practice to make sure that your thought process is also ready for that. So prepare yourself for a much better job that you can get hired for today. Learn about Lean UX and Design Sprints, you don’t necessarily need to be a UX designer to go after these topics, I believe everyone who works in an agile product development should learn about them.

There are a lot of things that you can learn while you still have your job. This gives you an opportunity to apply your UX mental model into your current job. Then when you go for your first UX interview, you have a lot to say and present. If I want to hire a UX designer for my team, I don’t necessarily hire them based on their years of experience, it’s all about personality and process. If you can learn what is a good applicable UX process for product development, you can apply it everywhere that there is an interaction among a group of users, a brand and you.

In a nutshell I believe you still need your current job as a platform to practice the new knowledge, as you are gaining them. :slight_smile:

Good luck and have a lot fun learning about cool UX stuff.

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#5

Hi,

Thank you both for taking the time to reply and in such detail. Much appreciated :slight_smile:

I think it’s sound advice to continue in my current role (grind it out) while continuing to learn and improve my UX process.

I will definitely research lean UX.

Thanks again and I’ll no doubt be back with more questions :smiley:

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#6

We’ll be here. :slight_smile:

1 Like