Shannon Kelly is a senior UX strategist at OverDrive in Cleveland, OH.
As a user experience professional, you have many skills, methodologies, and tools at your disposal. With so many methods available, learning them all can be overwhelming (like those listed in Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions by Bella Martin and Bruce Hanington.)
But when standing out amongst your peers in an ever-fluctuating job market, sometimes you need to know more than traditional UX methodologies to put you ahead. You may need (and have attained) extra experience or skills to differentiate yourself from competitors for specific industries or positions. Let me preface this by saying you should NOT be a jack-of-all-trades and apply for jobs with multiple roles rolled into one. Instead, gaining some basic understanding of a different skill set makes you more marketable to hiring managers because it shows you can communicate effectively and work collaboratively.
Here are three skills recommendations I believe can make you more marketable as a UX professional:
1. Analytics
Traditional UX methods (User interviews and usability testing) are revered as providing qualitative data findings. As a researcher, you synthesize the information from these studies and make recommendations based on results. These methods are the holy grail of discovery and the primary methods for finding the “why” behind user behaviors. Due to testing budget and time constraints, limited sample sizes may not always provide a sense of urgency among stakeholders, and as the saying goes, “There is a big difference between ‘what people do’ versus ‘what people say.’”
Analytics data can help support (not replace) traditional research and provide (often massive amounts of) quantitative usage data. Having a skillset like Google Analytics (GA) in your toolbelt is one of the most undervalued skills a researcher can have. GA lets you quickly gather historical user behavior on a website or application and find out what areas your users are interested in, what they’re trying to do, and what areas are problematic.
Some key areas of analytics to learn:
- Segmenting Traffic Channels and User flows
- Tracking user retention and falloff (bounce and exit rates)
- Event and conversion goal tracking
By pairing qualitative and quantitative data, you can effectively convey a greater sense of urgency to decision-makers.
2. Conversion Rate Optimization
One of the skills I’ve learned over the years that helped prime my career in UX was Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). CRO is increasing the likelihood that website or application visitors will accomplish a desired action. A conversion can be anything actionable & measurable and is tied to a business goal. Some examples of conversions include adding an item to a cart, making a purchase, or filling out a form to download a PDF. The conversion rate is calculated by taking the number of conversions and dividing that by the number of sessions. For example, if you had 25 conversions from 100 sessions, your conversion rate would be 25%, or 25 ÷ 100 x 100 = 25%.
Often, the goal isn’t just to increase conversions but to increase the rate at which people convert. If marketing sends enormous amounts of traffic to a website, but users aren’t converting, the answer isn’t more traffic. The goal is to make incremental and measurable changes that help improve how users use the site and get them toward a conversion goal.
From personal experience, becoming a CRO specialist allowed me to learn Google Analytics, heat-mapping, and A/B testing platforms and become more familiar with digital marketing practices. It also taught me to tie design updates to quantifiable improvement metrics, sell ideas to stakeholders, and set goals for project work. When I had measurable project improvements, it helped me sell myself come annual review time and eventually changed the trajectory of my professional career in design.
3. Previous Transferable Skills
Is there anything you did in a previous job (anything at all) that you gained experience in and qualifies you for the position you’re going for? Did you work in restaurants or another customer-facing service job? What about customer support? Perhaps you’re a graphic designer who wants a change. Maybe you’re a writer, a psych major, a former medical professional, or military personnel. Either way, whatever experience you have, some skills you attained are likely transferable to the UX field.
For example, a former restaurant cook who decided to make a career change into development. While learning to code in school, he worked as a software consultant (or, dare I say, researcher?) and talked to restaurants to help improve their point-of-sale (POS) systems for order fulfillment. Thanks to his restaurant experience, he could communicate effectively with his restaurant employees, understood their needs and feedback, and conveyed that information to the developers to enhance the POS platform.
Especially if you’re transferring to a UX career, think about all the things at your former position(s) that you’ve learned, gained skills in, or even the processes you thought could be improved. Maybe you were a nurse and found the internal patient portals frustrating – what would you have fixed? Perhaps you traveled the world through the military and studied different cultures – sounds a little like ethnographic research. Whatever you’ve done, something can be transferable.
It is essential to be transparent about your unique experiences and how they distinguish you from other applicants in the industry. Highlight these relevant skills in your resume, portfolio, cover letters, and interviews. Promote yourself and your expertise – it’s not just about your UX knowledge but also your ability to apply past experiences effectively.
Our guest authors are carefully selected to spotlight thought leaders in Ohio’s UX community. Interested in sharing some insights? Or would like to hear from a local UX superstar? Reach out to uxakronteam@gmail.com to pitch us post ideas and author suggestions.
