I’m 30-years-old and I am in an absolute career rut.
I lost my job last December after the start-up I worked for was acquired and my professional situation since then has been bleak. To be blunt, I could not find a job for eight months.
I rewrote my resume, I redid my website. I tried to focus my abilities and catered to the parts of my process that were not just web design. I talked about interviewing users, I showed wireframes, I wrote about testing. But when it came down to it, everything I had done was a website, not an app or a product, so no one cared.
I applied to every product/ux/ui job that didn’t specifically state “must have shipped an app” in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, North Carolina, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, any place that was a reasonably sized city. I have a spreadsheet listing everyplace I applied to and the statistics are staggering.
I feel as if “can do more than just web sites” will be etched into my gravestone. Web design is a dead field and I can’t get anyone to take me seriously as anything else.
I’m not sure what to do next. I am on a year-long contract that ends next August and I need to be able to make a move afterwards. I’ve started studying for the GRE with the possibility of applying for programs in 2018. I’m not sure what else I can do. The past two positions I’ve held have been visual/web design roles that promised a transition to UI/product and that never happened. Do I keep bidding on UpWork projects and hope one of them turns out to be a real idea and not just a half-baked rip-off of some app? Bootcamp? What?