How I landed a UX/UI Designer job after a series of rejections
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For the majority of people, lay off started post corona hit India (around March end) but it hit me pretty early. I was working as a BDM with good pay in one of the top hospitality chain of leased and franchised hotel company. (*Cough* OYO *Cough*)
However, I had to bid adeus by January end as they were short staffing. Through a friend’s friend, I got to know about “ UX Design ” and after some research, I decided to shift my career into UX/UI Design. I found out about a few institutes and joined one. But had to stop that in between (Thanks to Corona🤦🏻♂️) as few of my batchmates of the cohort weren’t ready to shift to online classes so they put our batch on halt for three long months.
Fortunately, I hadn’t stopped learning. Through multiple courses on the net, few tutorials from amazing people like Chetan KVS, Abhinav CH, Saptarshi Prakash, Punit Chawla on youtube and thanks to the material given by the design institute I got a fair idea of the basic principles of UI and UX.
“ You don’t need a design degree to become a designer. You can become one, in a hard way, by self-learning”
Now it’s time to crack some job. All I need was a portfolio (pretty straight forward huh? Nope.) So, I looked and scanned multiple portfolios of famous people in this field and mimicked a few. But that wasn’t motivating enough. So, I started applying for internships and a few jobs. Luckily I was shortlisted for quite a lot of internships on Internshala. The companies were very prompt and gave me a design challenge so that they would review me based on that assignment. I dedicatedly worked overnights and submitted within the given timeframe. And the WAITING GAME begins. The first day has gone… No luck… The second day has gone… No luck… The third day has gone… No luck, a week has gone and still No luck. I got irritated, annoyed, frustrated (add other 100 synonyms) and dropped a huge mail to them and still No reply. I got to know from Twitter and LinkedIn that this practice by companies is pretty common.
So, I decided to put all these challenges in my portfolio (smart move right!!). After applying to 100’s of jobs, internships and a lot of rejections over 6 dreadful months, I finally landed a job in a great company and working among fantabulous people.
Lastly, I would like to say that
Don’t give up at any point of time even if you are getting rejected or being ignored because the best is waiting for you up ahead, my friend.
Feel free to reach me out through any medium and I would be glad to help.
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