Ask a UXR #3: How to break into user research
On transferable skillsets and early career programs
This is the third post in a UXR Q+A series. Submit your questions in the comments, or in this Google form, and it they may be answered in future posts. Follow “Ask a UXR” by subscribing here for email updates.
“I wanted to ask how to change careers from a different background to UXR. I often see people from academic roles or other research roles going into UXR, which makes me feel less capable of competing in a job position.”
-Anon 1“Do you have any advice for someone trying to break into the UXR field? I believe I have the necessary skills and a unique lens, but am finding myself a bit lost in my current job search.”
-Anon 2
Breaking into user research, especially from a a non-traditional or non-academic field, can be a daunting — and lengthy — process. Everyone has their unique path towards user research, but here are a few generalizable first steps down that road.
Identify your transferable skills
One of the hardest things about breaking into a new field is that the skillsets required seem so different from our current roles that it’s hard to know where to start. And the way job descriptions are written don’t help, either. But the reality, as this New York Times analysis shows, is that many seemingly unrelated jobs actually have a lot in common. Identifying those shared threads and transferable skills is a key first step.
I’ve written previously about how UX Research is fundamentally a hybrid of two skillsets — people skills and data skills. While a research-based background or a PhD might be a natural route into UX Research, there’s a much broader set of disciplines that can help develop those skills.
Being in people-facing roles that require deep empathy, and one-on-one communication — for instance, medicine, journalism, counseling, or filmmaking — can help build the human-centered foundation that UX Research roles look for. Consider whether your background requires you to identify and ask questions to help understand human behavior. And don’t overlook other important skills, like storytelling, or developing new methods to understand people and their stories.
Likewise, qualitative or quantitative data skills can come from academic work (graduate theses, working in labs) or prior internships in a variety of different fields. Business, statistics, hard sciences, or marketing and sales are just a few fields where quantitative data skills are critical. And anthropology, sociology, or history/theory in most humanities fields need the ability to analyze and synthesize large amounts of qualitative data.
Thinking distinctly about people and data — and recognizing that these two skillsets can come from different prior experiences — can help cast a wider net when identifying transferable skills. Go through each previous role or project and extract the achievements that demonstrate either of these skillsets. You might find, for instance, that an MBA internship helped you build data chops, but your work as a crisis line volunteer has taught you interviewing in sensitive situations. Put together, these experiences can help build a holistic narrative about the way you see the world and make sense of information, in alignment with what a UXR role is looking for.
Frame your previous work for a UX industry audience
Once you’ve identified your transferable skills, frame them in a way that speaks to what hiring managers in industry are looking for. Some important aspects of industry research, for instance, are identifying the right questions, delivering value quickly, and being able to show impact and influence on a set of stakeholders.
I often see career-changers describing their accomplishments in ways that don’t speak the language of their target audience. For instance, the fact that you presented your work to hundreds of people at a conference might be the most important thing to highlight for an academic audience, but for a UXR hiring committee, it’s likely just an impressive footnote. Instead, the more pertinent things to focus on would be someone using your work to approach a real-world problem in a new way, or convincing a challenging set of stakeholders to secure resources for your work. Identifying the right places to add emphasis (and what to leave out) can make all the difference.
The same goes for the content of your portfolio presentation, or the anecdotes you choose in interviews. I see job candidates dive into specific insights from past research or the details of something they designed, in order to demonstrate expertise. But what you did is almost never as meaningful or as transferable as how you did it — in fact, the more deeply domain-specific your framing is, the harder it is to see how that experience translates. Instead, focusing on your human-centered thought process, information-gathering, and impact can help a hiring committee better imagine how you could fit into a research role.
Take advantage of early career UX Research roles and programs
Of course, as in any field, there’s no substitute for real-world experience, and using your transferable skills to land an early-career user research role can give you an incredible introduction to the field and be a great way to level up.
One type of early-career opportunity is a “research assistantship,” which is often a temp or contract role where you’ll be paired with a senior researcher to execute on projects. I’ve seen these advertised on Linkedin, sent out in UX mailing lists and newsletters, and matched via staffing agencies. These roles can be a great way to hone your craft, network and learn about the industry, and test the waters for a full-time role. I started my own UXR career as a research associate at Google X, and I’d highly recommend that type of introduction. The learning curve is steep, but the growth is well worth it.
An increasing number of companies are now offering full-time, explicitly early-career programs that come with the expectation of dedicated mentorship. These are short-term roles (not bootcamps) that vary in structure and duration, but all are targeted towards people who have little to no formal UX Research experience. Some to consider in tech include Meta’s (previously Facebook) Research Associate Program and Lyft’s User Experience Associate (LEAP) program. Google’s UX Design Apprenticeship is design-focused, but does teach the fundamentals of UX thinking.
Many companies also offer full-time early career opportunities, such as Microsoft’s New Grad UX Research roles. I’d recommend finding these roles by appending “new grad” to any job search you’re doing.
Finally, if you’re looking for variety and want to work with multiple companies, consider joining a UX Research agency, like AnswerLab, Bold Insight, or Key Lime Interactive, who often have openings for early career researchers as well.
A parting thought…
If you’re in a non-research field and find yourself interested in UX Research, there’s probably a good reason why. And more than likely, it’s because there are some parts of your current job or field that you enjoy, and you believe that UX Research will let you do more of that. Think about what draws you to UXR, and reflect on what you’ve done in the past that has tapped into those same elements — it’s likely the work that you’ve most deeply enjoyed. Start writing a narrative that ties those career moments together, and you might find that your background is more relevant to user research than you assumed.
Have a question? Drop it in the comments, or in this Google form, and it might be answered next time. Experienced, new, aspiring, and non-UXRs welcome. Follow this series by subscribing here to get email updates. Read Ask a UXR #1 and #2.
