Getting the Expectations From the Communication Gap
Now, everybody in the job market has their own expectations. Both employer and job applicant need to decipher each other’s expectation to really distinguish if they are a match. While one might think complete honesty would help everybody, from both ends of the job application process, it is a competitive area and most of us will be tempted to “tweak” either a job posting or resumé (depending on where you sit) to try to either to get the most and best candidates or to stand out from the crowd.
This is summarized by the communication process, where sender and receiver, will both encode and decode their messages in an interaction. Adding noise to this; it becomes easy to see how a simple thing like job experience can be misinterpreted. On one part, a job asking for 2 years of experience clearly states that a recently graduated should not qualify, but on the other hand, we’ve all heard stories where job experience was disregarded when someone we know was employed. So why was it there in the first place? Well, experience, of course, will play a big role in your capacity to execute your job, but motivation is most of the time what sells a candidate. Thus, employers will sometime voluntarily put this minimum experience requirement on junior roles to get more qualified applicants by getting people with experience or distinguishing the highly motivated people.
While this may be customs in North America, it may not be the same in other cultures. Thus, this could potentially eliminate potentially good candidates du to culture differences or even be gender discriminatory. Women are usually less inclined to negotiating and are less knowledgeable of their worth. While studies have mostly been focussing on salary negotiations, we can also view this experience gap as a form of negotiation.
What to expect for every level of UX designers?
While many do not employ the most honest communication in job postings, there are still people, both employers and job applicants, that are honest in their ask or capabilities for the job. But even if you are not radically honest, employers still need to know what to expect and job applicants need to know what will be expected of them. So, let’s look at what should be expected from the junior user experience designer to the UX lead.
Junior
The junior, or newly graduated, UX designer will have anywhere from 0 to 4 years of experience. Since they are new to the UX field, they probably won’t have a specialty and will need guidance and validation from more experienced colleagues. Needless to say, they will usually require quite a lot of support to complete quality, but they will usually do what is needed to complete the work they are assigned. In fact, they will sometime “get caught up in eagerness to please or pressure to get the job done.” Thus, it is important for junior designers to thrive to have either a lot of time to achieve their goals, or very detailed and specific task to accomplish. They will usually like more well-defined problems to solve as it is easier for them to know what they should achieve. They are not the most cost-effective at first, but quickly enough will take on more and more on their shoulders.
Intermediate
While depending on various factors, a UX designer can grow into an intermediate UX designer from 2 years for people with higher education to around 7 years of experience. This is usually the time when specialties are beginning to form either because of the project they handled or their own interest for certain aspects of the user experience field. In their past years, they managed to speed up their work to achieve a respectable pace and quality and they still get better and better as the time passes. They are mostly autonomous when creating but will only begin doing estimations and planning work. The intermediate UX designer will also be able to navigate through a project that is a bit less well defined. They will require less to no supervision but will usually benefit from still being mentored by a senior.
Senior
Starting at 5 years for the most proficient designers, but usually starting at 7 to 10 years of experience, we can consider that the UX designer will have attained a high level of maturity, enough to be autonomous in almost, if not all, his work. At this point, he will usually have a specialty, even if he’s a generalist. He will be well equipped to not only resolve ambiguous problems, but also define undefined problems. He can evaluate the work to be done, or at least plan a path to solving the issue at hand. He is the most well equipped to deal with abstraction and will be able to own the big picture aspect of the projects. As for intermediate UX designers, the Senior will be proficient in his work, but will usually be more valuable to bigger picture aspects of the projects as some work can become tedious to them.
Lead
Lead UX designer is not a degree of maturity per se, but it usually goes with it. There is no minimum years of experience for this position, but we usually won’t see anyone with less than 10 years of experience due to the fact that they will need to lead and assist the people they will lead. It also goes to say that you can’t really be a lead UX designer if you don’t have a team to lead. Thus, over the experiences in the field of UX, they will also need or develop leadership skills. It is not only a question of guiding your team towards the design goals but confide in them for the betterment of the team. The same would go for a UX manager or executive, although those position won’t need to be from a UX background.
When to Use Each
While there are a plethora of Junior (or wannabe junior) UX designer out there that either done a graduate degree or some kind of online class, the unfortunate news is that, although they are cheaper, we wouldn’t be setting them up for success if they wouldn’t have a well-established structure to fit in or at least a senior available to mentor them. Junior will be there to come help the intermediate or seniors to accelerate their jobs, but what the market currently ask for is mostly senior designers; UX designers that are going to be able to take the lead in the UX field for a project without much or any supervision. To summarize:
- If you are new to having UX in your team, a senior UX designer is what you need, but a strong intermediate could do the job.
- If you have a relatively simple project to complete, an intermediate designer will be the most cost-effective option.
- If you can guide and have patience with the learning processes, then you could take on a junior.
- If you need someone to unify the vision for many designers, then you need a lead UX designer.
Takeaway
The UX field is still a relatively new domain, and it is important to know what should be expected of every level of specialists. Even though there are a lot of junior user experience designer ready to give it all for a job, the sad truth is that there are not a lot of UX mature companies that can accommodate those designers. Companies will usually be better served with an intermediary or senior as they will be better equipped to accompany them through the different stages of the UX maturity. At the same time, a lot of companies won’t adequately frame their UX work (oh how many UX/UI position with no real user needs!) So if you’re not getting the adequate UX help you need for your projects, we can help you frame your needs and get you the right people for your team! Get in touch and get the resources you need.