Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX, Product Design, UX Research

Sarah Doody from Career Strategy Lab
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Welcome to the Career Strategy Podcast, with Sarah Doody, a UX Researcher & Product Designer with 22 years of experience who helps UX and Product people design their careers. You’ll learn how to advance your UX or Product career including how get hired in UX, stay hired, get promoted, and build a personal brand and visibility. You’ll also hear no BS tips to optimize your UX resume and portfolio, navigate your UX job search, and prepare for UX job interviews so you can stop being invisible and be seen as an in-demand UX professional. Get ready to UX your career, ironic, right?!

  1. 4d ago

    192: UX Hiring Insights: Sylvain Maretto, Director of Design, on Why AI Hasn't Taken Over Hiring and What He Looks for in UX Portfolios

    UX hiring managers are looking for three things right now, and UX isn't specifically one of them. Not exactly reassuring if you've spent years polishing your process pages. That's the reality Sylvain Maretto lays out in this episode, and it's coming from someone actually reviewing applications, not theorizing about them. At the time of this recording, Sylvain was the director of design at Ecosia, the search engine that funds tree planting with its profits. He's spent 15 years building and leading design teams across Berlin, Tokyo, and beyond, with stops at Omio (joined when it was 25 people), Zalando, Tour Radar, and GetYourGuide. He also helped seal the acquisition of Holoplot, the audio technology behind the sound system inside the Vegas Sphere. He joined Sarah after leaving a comment on a LinkedIn post arguing portfolios need to be more experimental. He disagreed, and what follows is his actual answer: a triangle of AI fluency, UI craft, and business acumen. UX gets treated as a given, not a differentiator. From there, Sylvain walks through what happens inside an applicant tracking system when 500 people apply for one role. Why the AI built into most of those tools produces noise instead of signal. What a job description is actually telling you, if you read it twice. And how to talk about results when a project got canceled before it ever shipped. If you've ever wondered what's actually happening on the other side of your application, this is that answer. Topics Discussed ✅ The three things Sylvain actually screens for when he opens a portfolio, and UX isn't one of them ✅ What happens to your application the second it lands in an ATS, and why you're one of 500 people applying for the same slot ✅ Why the AI built into most hiring software is, in Sylvain's own words, mostly noise ✅ The STAR framework he wants every case study to follow, and why your "action" section is probably too long ✅ What to say about a project that got canceled or never shipped, when you still need to show results ✅ How reading a job description twice instead of once changes what you should actually be highlighting ✅ Whether hiring managers expect different things by country, or if it's really just about company stage ✅ Why Sylvain thinks a narrow, specific niche beats trying to check every box on a job post ✅ The values-based signal he built into his own hiring process at Ecosia that most candidates don't see coming Links & Resources 🔗 Connect with Sylvain on LinkedIn 🔗 Learn more about Ecosia 🔗 Sarah's book: The Product of You 🔗 Ioana Teleanu's LinkedIn post that started this conversation 🎯 How I can help with your UX job search 📋 Get my UX case study template 👋 Follow me, on LinkedIn, Instagram, & YouTube

  2. Sep 7

    191: UX Portfolio Myth: Your personality is not what UX recruiters want in your portfolio (Myth 5 / 5)

    Adding personality to your UX portfolio is one of the most repeated pieces of advice in the industry, and Sarah closes out her five part portfolio myth series by explaining why it's actually working against you. Personality and passion don't get you the interview. Proof does. That's the whole myth this episode takes apart. Sarah argues that trying to inject personality into a portfolio usually competes with the actual content instead of supporting it. A font chosen to feel "personal" can make a case study harder to read. Extra design elements, background flourishes, or animation pull attention away from the work itself, and animation in particular can even make some viewers physically ill. A personal logo shrunk down to fit a slide often becomes illegible. None of it proves you can do the job you're applying for, which is the one thing recruiters and hiring managers are actually scanning for. She backs this up with a line from Steph McDonald, lead recruiter at HubSpot focused on UX design roles, who compares a well edited portfolio to a fashion designer who puts on all her jewelry, then takes a few pieces off before walking out the door. The move isn't to avoid adding things you care about, it's going back afterward and cutting what isn't earning its place. Sarah's takeaway is direct, less personality, more evidence that you've done what the job description is asking for. This episode also wraps the full five part series. Sarah runs through a fast recap of all five myths, from project count to portfolio websites to showing failed work, and asks listeners who followed along to share whether it changed how they think about their own portfolio. Topics Discussed✅ Why personality and passion don't get you an interview, and what actually does ✅ How trying to show personality through fonts, animation, or design flourishes can work against your portfolio instead of for it ✅ Why a personal logo in your portfolio often backfires once it's shrunk down to a smaller size ✅ What Steph McDonald, lead recruiter at HubSpot focused on UX design roles, said about editing a portfolio before you hit send ✅ Why Sarah says the goal is proof over personality, and what that actually looks like in practice ✅ A full recap of all five UX portfolio myths covered across the series ✅ Where to learn more about Career Strategy Lab if your portfolio has been stuck in redesign mode for months Links & Resources🔗 Episode 168 of the Career Strategy Podcast, Sarah's full interview with Steph McDonald 🔗 Episode 187, Myth 1 of 5, on why you don't need three to five projects in your portfolio 🔗 Episode 188, Myth 2 of 5, on why your portfolio doesn't need to be a website 🔗 Episode 189, Myth 3 of 5, on why your case studies don't need to show the full UX process 🔗 Episode 190, Myth 4 of 5, on why you can show projects that didn't launch 🎯 How I can help with your UX job search 📋 Get my UX case study template 👋 Follow me, on LinkedIn, Instagram, & YouTube

  3. Aug 31

    190: UX Portfolio Myth: You can't show projects that didn't launch (Myth 4 / 5)

    UX portfolio projects that didn't launch or didn't go as planned are exactly the kind of work recruiters and hiring managers want to see, not the kind you should hide.  This is week four of a five part series on UX portfolio myths, and this episode tackles the belief that a canceled, pivoted, or unsuccessful project doesn't belong in your portfolio. Sarah pushes back on this directly. Smart hiring managers understand that things go wrong in real UX work all the time, and a project that didn't launch says nothing about whether you're a good researcher or designer.  In fact, she argues that a messy or canceled project is one of the best opportunities to show how you adapt, collaborate, and think under real constraints, exactly the soft skills recruiters are trying to evaluate. She walks through common scenarios people worry about, like research getting cut entirely or not being able to run usability testing, and gives specific ways to handle each one in a portfolio.  Rather than hiding the gap, she suggests explaining what happened, what you did instead, and what you would do differently with a do-over, which turns a limitation into a chance to show your thinking. She backs this up with a clip from her interview with Jeni Bible, a UX Manager at Home Depot and a Career Strategy Lab alum who is now hiring herself. Jeni's take is simple, projects get canceled constantly, and what she actually wants to hear is what you did, what you learned, and how you collaborated along the way.  If you've been sitting on a portfolio project you assumed was too messy or unfinished to include, this episode makes the case for why it might be exactly what you need. Topics Discussed ✅ Why a project that didn't launch doesn't signal that you're a bad researcher or designer ✅ How to handle a portfolio project where research got cut or skipped entirely ✅ What to include if you never got to run usability testing on something you worked on ✅ The "do-over" framing Sarah recommends for showing what research or testing you would have done in hindsight ✅ What Jeni Bible, a UX Manager at Home Depot and Career Strategy Lab alum, said she actually wants to hear about canceled projects ✅ Why a canceled or pivoted project can be one of the strongest ways to show adaptability and collaboration ✅ A preview of the fifth and final myth in the series, coming next week Links & Resources 🔗 Episode 173 of the Career Strategy Podcast, Sarah's full interview with Jeni Bible on hiring and portfolios 🔗 Episode 187, Myth 1 of 5, on why you don't need three to five projects in your portfolio 🔗 Episode 188, Myth 2 of 5, on why your portfolio doesn't need to be a website 🔗 Episode 189, Myth 3 of 5, on why your case studies don't need to show the full UX process 🎯 How I can help with your UX job search 📋 Get my UX case study template 👋 Follow me, on LinkedIn, Instagram, & YouTube

  4. Aug 24

    189: UX Portfolio Myth: Your case studies don't need to show the full UX process (Myth 3 / 5)

    UX portfolio case studies don't need to walk through every single step of your process, and trying to do that is actually working against you. This is week three of a five part series on UX portfolio myths, and this episode tackles a big one, the belief that every case study needs to show the whole end to end process for a project. Sarah argues the opposite works better. Going deep into just one or two parts of a project beats trying to cram in everything you did, especially for projects that spanned six months, a year, or longer. Trying to show it all just skims the surface of everything and overwhelms the person reviewing it, which is the opposite of what you want. She backs this up with a clip from her interview with Alexander Zeh, former Head of Product Design at ManyChat, who said he's specifically listening for problem solving language, phrases like "I facilitated," "I unblocked," "I synthesized," because those signal maturity in how a candidate thinks, not just what they produced. The bulk of the episode is a screen share walkthrough where Sarah rebuilds a weak case study slide by slide, showing exactly what it looks like to go from a shallow "next, I made some wireframes" slide into one that explains the problem, the decision, the reasoning, and the impact. If your case studies currently read like a list of what you did, this episode shows you exactly what to change and why. Topics Discussed✅ Why cramming your entire UX process into one case study actually works against you ✅ What Alexander Zeh, former Head of Product Design at ManyChat, said he's actually listening for in a portfolio walkthrough ✅ A live screen share breakdown showing the difference between a shallow case study slide and one that goes deep ✅ Why "next, I made some wireframes" is what Sarah calls a five alarm fire in a portfolio ✅ How to handle a case study for a project that spanned six months, a year, or longer without trying to cram in everything ✅ What questions your case study should actually be answering, beyond just what you did ✅ Why you might choose to highlight different parts of the same long project depending on the specific role you're applying for Links & Resources🔗 Episode 172 of the Career Strategy Podcast, the full interview with Alexander Zeh, former Head of Product Design at ManyChat 🔗 Episode 187, Myth 1 of 5, on why you don't need three to five projects in your portfolio 🔗 Episode 188, Myth 2 of 5, on why your portfolio doesn't need to be a website 🎯 How I can help with your UX job search 📋 Get my UX case study template 👋 Follow me, on LinkedIn, Instagram, & YouTube

  5. Aug 17

    188: UX Portfolio Myth: Your UX portfolio does not need to be a website (Myth 2 / 5)

    UX portfolio websites eat up months, sometimes years, of time that could be spent applying, and Sarah argues you don't need one at all. This is week two of a five part series on UX portfolio myths, and this episode takes on one of the most repeated pieces of advice in the industry, that your portfolio has to be a website. Sarah's counter is a portfolio presentation instead. It's free, doesn't require learning new software, takes weeks instead of months, and can be duplicated and tailored for each specific role in under an hour. She walks through a full comparison of time, cost, customization, and what she calls interview readiness, the idea that a presentation portfolio doubles as the exact thing you'll need to present in interviews anyway, so you're never scrambling to build something new once you land one. She backs this up with two hiring manager perspectives. Patrick Neeman, Director of UX and AI Experiences at Workday, told her he prefers presentations because that's the format his own team works in day to day. Steph McDonald, a lead recruiter at HubSpot focused on hiring UX designers, said presentations are completely fine as long as the craft level is polished. Sarah also shares Marcus's story, who got hired as a Lead Product Designer at NAVA after building his portfolio as a presentation instead of a website. If you've been stuck for months trying to wrangle a website builder instead of actually working on your portfolio content, this episode is a direct permission slip to stop, and a breakdown of exactly what to do instead. Topics Discussed✅ Why a portfolio website can actually hurt your first impression with recruiters and hiring managers instead of helping it ✅ The alternative Sarah recommends instead of a website, and why it takes weeks instead of months to finish ✅ A full breakdown of time, cost, customization, and interview readiness for a website versus a presentation ✅ What Patrick Neeman, Director of UX and AI Experiences at Workday, said he actually prefers to see in a portfolio ✅ What Steph McDonald, a lead recruiter at HubSpot, said about presentation portfolios and craft level ✅ How Marcus got hired as a Lead Product Designer at NAVA using a portfolio presentation instead of a website ✅ Why "link to portfolio" on a job application doesn't actually mean your portfolio has to be a website ✅ The exact question to ask anyone who insists you need a portfolio website, and why most people can't answer it Links & Resources🔗 Episode 155 of the Career Strategy Podcast, Sarah's full interview with Patrick Neeman on portfolio presentations versus websites 🔗 Episode 168 of the Career Strategy Podcast, Sarah's interview with Steph McDonald on what recruiters want to see in a portfolio 🔗 Marcus's episode, sharing how he built his portfolio presentation and got hired at NAVA 🔗 Last week's episode, Myth 1 of 5, on why you don't need three to five projects in your portfolio 🎯 How I can help with your UX job search 📋 Get my UX case study template 👋 Follow me, on LinkedIn, Instagram, & YouTube

  6. Aug 10

    187: UX Portfolio Myth: You don't need 3 - 5 projects in your UX portfolio (Myth 1 / 5)

    UX portfolio advice is full of numbers that sound official but aren't backed by anything. This episode kicks off a five part series on UX portfolio myths, starting with the most common one: that you need three to five projects before you can apply. Sarah says the opposite is true. One strong, detailed project beats five surface level ones every time. She backs this up from an interview she did with Alexander Zeh, former Head of Product Design at ManyChat, who said he'd rather see one or two case studies that map directly to the job description than five that walk through every step of the design process without any real depth. The episode shares two specific examples. Laura got hired as a Principal Product Designer in cybersecurity with a single, unfinished feeling project still sitting in Figma slides, and was actually found and reached out to on LinkedIn before she even applied. Leon, laid off after 11 years at the same company and an author of a book on wire-framing, got hired after focusing on just one project instead of trying to rebuild an entire portfolio from scratch. If you've been stalling on applying because you don't have "enough" projects yet, this episode is a direct challenge to that belief, and a reason to ask where that number actually came from in the first place. Topics Discussed✅ Why the three to five project rule is a myth with no real backing, and where it likely came from ✅ Why one detailed project beats five surface level ones, and what "confuse and lose" means for a UX portfolio ✅ What a former Head of Product Design at ManyChat said he actually wants to see in a portfolio ✅ How Laura got hired as a Principal Product Designer with one unfinished project, and was found on LinkedIn without ever applying ✅ How Leon got hired after being laid off from an 11 year role, focusing on just one project instead of rebuilding his whole portfolio ✅ Why working on your portfolio alone can make you more critical of it than recruiters and hiring managers actually are ✅ The question to ask yourself if you believe you need three to five projects, and where to trace that belief back to ✅ What Sarah says to look for in UX job descriptions instead of following a generic project count Links & Resources🔗 Episode 172 of the Career Strategy Podcast, the full interview with Alexander Zeh, former Head of Product Design at ManyChat 🔗 Laura's episode, sharing in her own words how she got hired with one project in her portfolio 🔗 Leon's book on wireframing for UX 🎯 How I can help with your UX job search 📋 Get my UX case study template 👋 Follow me, on LinkedIn, Instagram, & YouTube

  7. Aug 3

    186: Why Positioning Is The Most Underrated Skill in the AI Era of UX

    Positioning is quietly becoming the skill that separates people who stand out in UX and product from people who get left behind, especially now that AI can build almost anything in seconds.  In this episode, Sarah makes the case for why the ability to build fast is no longer the advantage it used to be, and why knowing what's worth building, and framing it well, matters more than ever. Sarah traces this back to a belief she used to hold herself, that good work speaks for itself. It doesn't. She shares how she avoided a required public speaking class in college, only to realize later that the real skill was never about sounding polished or the delivery.  It was about the thinking that happens before you say a single word, or type a single sentence, or design a single sales page. She also shares a recent story from her own business, where a team she hired to build an AI tool ignored the detailed context she gave them and rushed straight into building, producing a prototype that missed the mark entirely. She ended up building it herself, faster, because she had the clarity they skipped in the process.  That story becomes the jumping off point for two ideas Sarah argues will define who stands out in UX and product going forward, knowing what's worth building, and framing the work so people actually say yes to it. If you've ever felt invisible in a meeting, passed over for a promotion, or like your UX job search ideas keep getting ignored, this episode reframes that feeling as a positioning problem rather than a skills problem, and gives a concrete way to start fixing it this week. Topics Discussed ✅ Why "good work speaks for itself" is a myth that's quietly keeping talented people invisible ✅ The real reason some ideas get funded, approved, or hired for in UX, and it's rarely because they were the best idea ✅ A story about hiring a team to build an AI tool, and what happened when they skipped the thinking and rushed straight to building ✅ Why knowing what's worth building is about to matter more than how fast you can build it ✅ A real example of a stakeholder update that got buried, and the exact rewrite that would have gotten a faster yes ✅ Why leading with the "so what" instead of the "what" changes how quickly people respond to your ideas ✅ How the same positioning skill applies just as much to your UX job search, your portfolio, and a promotion conversation as it does to a pitch ✅ A simple challenge to try this week on your next email, Slack message, or update Links & Resources🔗 Future Product Days in Copenhagen, September 22 to 24, where Sarah is giving a talk and workshop on positioning 🎯 How I can help with your UX job search 📋 Get my UX case study template 👋 Follow me, on LinkedIn, Instagram, & YouTube

  8. Jul 27

    185: The one thing you can't DIY in your UX job search

    DIYing your UX job search feels productive right up until you realize you've been doing it for six months, twelve months, or longer with nothing to show for it. If you've been telling yourself you're one tip away from finally landing interviews, this episode is worth sitting with. The core question Sarah asks is simple and a little uncomfortable: if you gave yourself three more months on your ux job search, your portfolio, or your resume, what would actually be different? Because more time doesn't automatically mean better results. More applications don't automatically mean more interviews. If you can't answer what you'd change, you're just planning to spend more hours doing the same thing that hasn't worked yet. Sarah backs this up with research from her own program, Career Strategy Lab. After analyzing over 1,700 responses from people who didn't join, the two most common reasons were not feeling ready, or wanting to keep trying the DIY approach first. But when she surveyed people after they did join, a pattern showed up just as clearly: regret over not joining sooner, and months lost to portfolios or ux job searches that stayed stuck. The episode also gets specific about the one thing Sarah says is genuinely hard to DIY, which isn't your resume or your portfolio. It's relationships and proximity to people who are actually hiring. She shares two real examples, Marcus and Heather, both laid off, both stuck after months of solo applying, and both hired only after they stopped going it alone. Topics Discussed✅ Why simply giving your job search "three more months" rarely changes your outcome unless your strategy actually changes ✅ The specific question to ask yourself before committing to another few months of DIYing your portfolio or resume ✅ What over 1,700 survey responses revealed about why job seekers hesitate to get outside help, and what those same people said after they finally did ✅ The popular portfolio myth about needing three to five projects before you can apply, and why it can quietly cost you months ✅ How one person got hired with only one project in her portfolio, and was found on LinkedIn without even applying ✅ Why relationships and proximity to people hiring are the hardest thing to build alone, no matter how much networking you do on LinkedIn ✅ How a referral from someone he knew got Marcus hired as a user researcher after six months of rejections and ghosting ✅ How one person's post about her manager hiring a contractor turned into a job for someone else, which then led to five more people getting hired at that same company ✅ Why being part of a smaller, closer network can make you more visible than posting into the endless scroll of LinkedIn Links & Resources🔗 Episode 122 of the Career Strategy Podcast, Marcus's full story in his own words 🎯 How I can help with your UX job search 📋 Get my UX case study template 👋 Follow me, on LinkedIn, Instagram, & YouTube

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Welcome to the Career Strategy Podcast, with Sarah Doody, a UX Researcher & Product Designer with 22 years of experience who helps UX and Product people design their careers. You’ll learn how to advance your UX or Product career including how get hired in UX, stay hired, get promoted, and build a personal brand and visibility. You’ll also hear no BS tips to optimize your UX resume and portfolio, navigate your UX job search, and prepare for UX job interviews so you can stop being invisible and be seen as an in-demand UX professional. Get ready to UX your career, ironic, right?!

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