Starting out in UX? How a startup might offer you better opportunities

5 things UX professionals need to know about working for startups

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

If you're looking for your first job in a recession, look towards smaller businesses and startups for better opportunities.

That's advice I received from the Recession Proof Graduate by Charlie Hoehn, and it's allowed me to have the UX career I have today.

I've spent half of my decade-long UX career working for startups and small businesses and learned a few key lessons the hard way. For example, I was fired from the first startup I joined because I didn't realize the company needed more than just UX.

So if you're a UX job-seeker and you're thinking about taking the plunge into the world of startups, here are 5 key lessons to take away.

"What else can you offer?" Or choosing multiple hats to wear

There's no getting around it; UX is not so important that it's the only thing you can do at a startup.

There are only two jobs in a startup that are allowed to wear only one hat:

1. Executives/decision-makers like CEOs/COOs
2. Revenue-generating jobs like Sales

Even Engineers wear multiple hats, doing QA and front/back end work or looking at Web Analytics to understand what's happening.

So if you sit around until it's time to do UX, you won't be at the job long. One thing that you need to consider is what else you can bring to the table. Here is a list of "other hats" I've seen UX people wear at startups:

1. Business/Product Knowledge (i.e., "Product Designer")
2. User/Business Research (Doing Competitive Analysis, SWOT analysis, etc.)
3. UX Writing/Copywriting
4. Data-Informed UX Design/Analytics
5. Front End Developer knowledge
6. Graphic Design/Infographics
7. etc.

However, while wearing multiple hats may be recommended, the primary purpose of UX Designers in startups is not to be a jack-of-all-trades: it's to reduce ambiguity.