Your free design career guide, one email at a time

I know you signed up to hear about the release of my Design Career Guide, and I wanted to give you something better. Instead of making you wait for the full release, I’ve decided to send out the entire guide for free, broken down into bite-sized emails.

You’ll get everything in the guide, including career strategies, goal-setting frameworks, and actionable tips, delivered to your inbox every week. By following along, you’ll have access to the same high-value content that will eventually be sold in a PDF format – but you’ll get it for free by staying subscribed.

Today, I’m sharing part of the first chapter: Planning your career and setting goals.

Planning your career and setting goals - part 1

If you don’t know where you want to go with your career, any set of skills and behaviour will do. If, however, you plan to move into a more senior role, create opportunities, increase your responsibility, and earn more money—it’s better to have a plan.

I recommend a four-step process for planning career growth. I’ve used it for myself and with designers I’ve mentored.

Take the course Learn directly from me in a live, interactive environment with my hybrid course. ​Enroll now​

The four stages are:

1. Understand the core skills
2. Document your work
3. Assess your level
4. Set goals

This is why it works:

Understanding the core skills required to succeed as a designer is key. Sometimes, designers have a narrow view of the discipline of digital product design/UX design.

We often focus on what we’re good at, and managers are even taught that with “strengths-based management.”

The truth is that product design is highly multi-disciplinary, and if you focus on what you’re good at or comfortable with, you’re probably not doing enough.

1. Understand the core skills

In nearly all companies, except for very small startups, designers’ performance is measured against a list of competencies. The competencies vary from company to company. Below is an example of the competencies in the skill matrix used at PandaDoc, where I recently led a small design team.

• Research
• End-to-end process
• Writing
• Communication and facilitation
• Team culture
• Recruitment
• Mentorship
• Visual design
• User experience
• Design system

That’s just one company’s way of assessing product design competency; no standard approach exists. As you embark on this journey to be more strategic about your career growth, it’s helpful to analyse how different companies assess your role. Especially companies you aspire to work for.

2. Document your work

Keep a project journal, also known as a “brag doc” or a “hype doc”. Two occasions will repeat throughout your career when you will be extremely grateful you did: finding a new role and performance reviews. Think of each entry in your journal as a demonstration of one or more of the core skills.

When it comes to performance review season, your manager might have very little idea of your accomplishments. They don’t work alongside you on your projects, they might not have managed you for long, they might be busy with high-level strategy stuff, and perhaps they barely understand what you do day-to-day anyway. If you leave it up to them to evaluate your achievements, you’re probably doing yourself a disservice.

Instead, record the projects you work on, their impact, and your contribution to their success. Don’t stop there; keep a record of times when you’ve supported others, things you’ve learned, and endorsements you’ve received. Here’s a development plan template I’ve created for you in Notion to help you better understand what I’m talking about. Duplicate it and make it your own.

Resources

• ​Product designer job levels at Intercom​
• ​Figma product design & writing career levels​
• ​Get your work recognized: write a brag document by Julia Evans
• ​Brag Doc: Why and How? by Janahan Sivaraman
• ​Keeping Track of Your Accomplishments with a Brag Document by Jeff Humble
• ​My development plan template in Notion​

Next week

This week, we covered the first steps in planning your design career: understanding the core skills and documenting your work. Take a look at the development plan template I shared and consider how you might be more intentional about tracking your impact and planning your career.

Next week, we’ll explore career planning in greater depth, focusing on how to assess your current level to identify areas for growth and how to set actionable career goals that align with your long-term vision.

If you have any feedback for me, reply to this email. I'd love to know if you found this helpful and learn what you would like to hear more about.