What you need to prioritise

Once you're more familiar with UX design, you'll want to start thinking about how you can get a UX design job.

To successfully get a job, you'll need both tangibles and intangibles.

Tangibles	Intangibles
A portfolio with projects	Someone in the company who can vouch for you
A resume	Interview presentation ability
Interview presentation slides	Improvisation ability
A cover letter*	Thorough research and knowledge of the company, team, and role

* I think this is kind of optional depending on the company and how badly you want the job. Some require that you submit a cover letter in the process of applying (short-form answers count). Cover letters do more telling than showing, and the idea is that the intangibles will cover that for you.

To rank those in order of importance:

1. Portfolio with projects Your portfolio is everything. It shows what you've designed, , and how well you've designed your portfolio itself. This should be what you're spending the most time on above anything else.

2. Thorough research and knowledge of the company, team, and role Again, this is going to depend on how much you want the job. This is kind of a given, but actual, real, in-depth research should affect how you approach applying — it should mean that you tweak your resume, your networking approach, your presentation slides, and basically all of your tangible deliverables. Think of it like creating work for a specific client. If you're mass applying to jobs (likely), it's not worth sinking time into this for every single application — do this for the ones that you really like and care about.

3. Someone in the company who can vouch for you The job market is horrendous currently and I'm assuming it will remain incredibly competitive over the next few years. To put it bluntly and pessimistically, I think recruitment is not a meritocracy. You need someone to give you an in, whether that's directly referring you or introducing you to the hiring manager themselves/someone else who's closer to their team.

4. Resume If you worked at a FAANG company or went to a prestigious university then your resume is most likely getting to the top of the pile. If, like me, you didn't, you're going to have to optimise the hell out of it.

5. Interview presentation slides I put this a bit further down since it's dependent on you getting through the recruiter screen first. Perhaps a hot take, but I do think visuals are more important here. There is an art to presenting during interviews, and the visuals will be the first thing that your potential manager and coworkers evaluate you from. You can have a horrendous interview session and chalk it down to nerves, but if you have a horrendous slide deck, then people will assume it's because you're a bad designer.

6. Interview presentation ability I'm talking about pacing, humour, making your voice sound natural and not like you're reading off of a script. Know when to give your content room to breathe; know when to slow down and take a sip of water. You're going to be presenting a lot in your job as a designer and it's important to show that you'll be good at it.

7. Improvisation ability What happens if your internet starts lagging out during an interview? What do you do if you can't screen share for some reason and you can't restart your entire computer to enable new permissions without leaving a whole panel of 5+ designers hanging? How do you adapt on the fly and what content do you choose to skip through?

If you're wondering how much time you should be putting into outreach, here's a helpful stack ranking from Julie McConnell, a UX Director and design veteran who's worked at Bungie, Epic Games, Riot Games, and Google:

TL;DR Do everything you can to avoid a 'true' cold application!

Likelihood of "getting in the door," stack ranked:

1. Direct, internal referral through Greenhouse or similar* *Bonus points for writing out why you're a good fit. You can help by supplying your friend with exactly what you'd like them to highlight!

2. Introduction to hiring manager or close party from someone in your network (i.e "a good word")

3. Internal recruiter who works for the company you're applying for

4. External recruiter, specialized (e.g recruits for gaming industry only, UX only, Los Angeles area only, etc.)

5. External recruiter, general

6. Cold application