How to optimise your UX research CV / Resume

I do a lot of CV (or resume) reviews. I do these for aspiring researchers and for those that are pivoting into news roles. There are so many people career switching and it can be hard to know how your CV is being interpreted by hiring managers.

With my goal for information accessibility in UX research — I am going to outline what hiring managers look for in a resume and what you should be including to increase your chances for landing a role.

For generic templates, you can google these and layouts work for you.

Where to create the CV? — Word or Google docs!

We went through a wave of having very aesthetically pleasing looking templates, created on design softwares. But everyone seemed to forget that your CV is most likely going through ATS systems. Many design platforms aren’t compatible with ATS which means you’ll get screened out because it can’t read the text.

Creating your CV in word or google docs is probably the safest for ATS readers. You can also personalise it to have the same ‘industry style’ layout.

What are the core components that need to be presented?

Personal info

You should keep this information to a minimum, but obviously they need to know who you are and how to contact you. I recommend being selective about the information you include on your CV to exclude any biases or judgement that may be made by the hiring manager (even unconscious).

What to include:

• Name
• Job title (user researcher, duh!)
• Email address
• Phone number
• General geographical location (or remote if thats the case)
• Linkedin page (not a must, but doesn’t hurt)

What to not include:

• Your DoB
• Your nationality
• A photo of yourself
• Your portfolio

The above could put you at risk of unconscious biases such as ageism, racism, or gender biases. But why no portfolio if you need it to apply for roles?

I’ve never used a portfolio to land a job, even for a junior role. Yes, you are asked to present a case study in an interview, but I don’t have an active portfolio for people to peruse.

Heres the hard truth. Having a portfolio accessible for anyone to look at sets you up for scrutiny and judgement, that could get you screened out before you even speak to a hiring manager about the skills you possess. Especially for juniors, your portfolios are rarely in a ‘perfect’ state as you’re still learning and crafting your skill.

I prefer to keep this information to myself unless they request it.

Personal statement

Potentially controversial, but I lean against including a profile or personal statement just because of how poorly we utilise that space. Rarely do I see a personal statement that is conveying the intended information. Rather, it contains waffle and is a blanket statement that could be applied to anyone in the industry.

If you think you are good at writing a concise and effective statement that succeeds in highlighting your accomplishments, please put it in. Otherwise, leave it out and use the space for other things.

Education

It’s very important to include your education to show the level of certification you have. Even if you have not completed a degree, but have done a bootcamp or certification, it’s so important to include so that we can get a better picture on your career development.

Skills

Highlighting your skills as a researcher is what makes it easier for the hiring manager to quickly grasp the level of skill you possess and if it matches the role. But this is where I see a lot of people fall down, because they rarely go into the level of detail required to paint a picture of experience.

When we are looking at your skills, we are looking to understand not just what you know, but the methods and tools you use to do your job and move through the research process. This includes:

• What research methods you can utilise
• What analysis methods you can utilise
• The data tools that you can use to extract insight or manipulate data
• The communication tools you use to help increase user-centricity in your org

What not to include: UX researchers do not do the same role as a UX designer, so it won’t score you points to add design skills and it could harm their perception of you. Make your CV all about research.

Research methods

• This includes qualitative and quantitative methods, both primary and secondary. At minimum you should be able to carry out ‘user interviews’, ‘usability testing’, ‘desk research’ and ‘survey design’ if you’re starting out.

Analysis

• There are many ways to analyse data, depending on the type of data you’re working with. A fast method is ‘affinity mapping’, but a more rigorous method is ‘thematic analysis’. Quantitative analysis could take you down the more complex routes of performing ‘z/t tests’ or ‘regression analysis’.

Data tools

• There are several tools out there which allows you to work with data, that may inform your research.
• Examples: User testing platforms, data analytics, transcription, repositories, data transformation.

Communication tools

I like to categorise communication tools as research outputs that are specifically used to communicate to stakeholders or the wider company about the user. These include things like:

• Personas, empathy maps, user journeys, workshops.

What not to include: Don’t attach a percentage of capability or skill level to your skills listed. Expert or 80% or 4/5 stars is interpreted differently by everyone. It’s also super vague because we don’t assess this skill in a standardised way. Please don’t use templates like this — they are not helpful.

Work experience

This is where I see the most people fall down on. Highlighting your work experience is a way to link yourself to the job duties that are listed in a job ad. It’s also a way to highlight your accomplishments and impact in that role.

General things to include

• Job title
• Company
• Dates employed
• Location
• Concise bullet points listing your accomplishments and impact

General things to exclude

• Total time in employment (e.g. listing number of months)
• Whether it was voluntary or paid employment (only applicable to commercial experience)

What about career switching?

If you’re career switching, then you most likely possess several incredible skills that can be applied to UX research roles. This means that when you write about your job experience, you need to link it to the skills applicable to being a UX researcher.

Example: Did you perform qualitative research in an educational role?

Example: Did you carry out customer service?

Example: Did you work with stakeholders?

How to write the ‘meat’ of your work experience

When we are talking about our work experience, we want to show a detailed enough picture that the hiring manager understands the typical things you did in your role and the level of impact you had on the company.

You can present this by:

1. “What you did and how you did it”
2. What you did and what the impact was”
3. “What you did, how you did it and what the impact was”

Let’s say you created a research repository containing all of the research conducted and major findings:

What you did: Created a research repository

Why you did it: To increase visibility of research conducted and the major insights discovered

The impact: Allowed stakeholders to refer back to research findings when exploring new product features

Example: Improved user-centricity by implementing a research repository that allowed stakeholders to access tangible insights easily.

Things to be wary of

• Ensuring you are focusing on one point and not crossing your wires when talking about what you did and what you achieved.
• Sounding too fluffy — If you use descriptive words of success to describe every action you did at that role then it comes across as fluff and reduces impact. Be careful at not sounding like you’re bullshitting.
• Exaggerating your experience or impact. Be prepared to back up your claims when pressed by hiring managers. It is very clear when interviewing if someone has lied about their experience.
• Applying metrics to back up your impact. If you have these and can confidently say ‘yes my task was most responsible for this success metric’, then please include it. But a lot of the times I see candidates apply metrics irresponsibly and in a baseless manner. This again, reduces credibility.
• Lying about the seniority of the role. It’s not that we need to see linear career progression, but we need to assess if candidates have the appropriate experience for the role.

Fictitious experience gained through education projects

• It is also important to differentiate between commercial and fictitious experience. Commercial experience is experienced gained by employment or volunteering for a company to do a project for them. Fictitious experience is experienced gained by doing mock or education projects, such as from a bootcamp or as an assignment.

Useful exercises to help you write your CV

1. Write down all the skill you possess, categorise and prioritise by whats important for a UX research role.
2. Write down everything you did at your previous roles and categorise by what is related to UX research and for the role you are applying for.
3. Look at several UX research roles and identify the key tasks or skills that the roles are asking for. Try and match your experience to that.
4. Get a CV review by someone in the industry so they can tell you how they interpret it. Your CV will most likely take a few tweaks to get it right. It’s a process :)