Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX, Product Design, UX Research

UX portfolio advice is full of numbers that sound official but aren't backed by anything. This episode kicks off a five part series on UX portfolio myths, starting with the most common one: that you need three to five projects before you can apply.

Sarah says the opposite is true. One strong, detailed project beats five surface level ones every time. She backs this up from an interview she did with Alexander Zeh, former Head of Product Design at ManyChat, who said he'd rather see one or two case studies that map directly to the job description than five that walk through every step of the design process without any real depth.

The episode shares two specific examples. Laura got hired as a Principal Product Designer in cybersecurity with a single, unfinished feeling project still sitting in Figma slides, and was actually found and reached out to on LinkedIn before she even applied. Leon, laid off after 11 years at the same company and an author of a book on wire-framing, got hired after focusing on just one project instead of trying to rebuild an entire portfolio from scratch.

If you've been stalling on applying because you don't have "enough" projects yet, this episode is a direct challenge to that belief, and a reason to ask where that number actually came from in the first place.

Topics Discussed
✅ Why the three to five project rule is a myth with no real backing, and where it likely came from
✅ Why one detailed project beats five surface level ones, and what "confuse and lose" means for a UX portfolio
✅ What a former Head of Product Design at ManyChat said he actually wants to see in a portfolio
✅ How Laura got hired as a Principal Product Designer with one unfinished project, and was found on LinkedIn without ever applying
✅ How Leon got hired after being laid off from an 11 year role, focusing on just one project instead of rebuilding his whole portfolio
✅ Why working on your portfolio alone can make you more critical of it than recruiters and hiring managers actually are
✅ The question to ask yourself if you believe you need three to five projects, and where to trace that belief back to
✅ What Sarah says to look for in UX job descriptions instead of following a generic project count

Links & Resources
🔗 Episode 172 of the Career Strategy Podcast, the full interview with Alexander Zeh, former Head of Product Design at ManyChat
🔗 Laura's episode, sharing in her own words how she got hired with one project in her portfolio
🔗 Leon's book on wireframing for UX

💸 See how you can get hired in UX with the help of my UX job search coaching program
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Positioning is quietly becoming the skill that separates people who stand out in UX and product from people who get left behind, especially now that AI can build almost anything in seconds.

In this episode, Sarah makes the case for why the ability to build fast is no longer the advantage it used to be, and why knowing what's worth building, and framing it well, matters more than ever.

Sarah traces this back to a belief she used to hold herself, that good work speaks for itself. It doesn't. She shares how she avoided a required public speaking class in college, only to realize later that the real skill was never about sounding polished or the delivery.

It was about the thinking that happens before you say a single word, or type a single sentence, or design a single sales page.

She also shares a recent story from her own business, where a team she hired to build an AI tool ignored the detailed context she gave them and rushed straight into building, producing a prototype that missed the mark entirely. She ended up building it herself, faster, because she had the clarity they skipped in the process.

That story becomes the jumping off point for two ideas Sarah argues will define who stands out in UX and product going forward, knowing what's worth building, and framing the work so people actually say yes to it.

If you've ever felt invisible in a meeting, passed over for a promotion, or like your UX job search ideas keep getting ignored, this episode reframes that feeling as a positioning problem rather than a skills problem, and gives a concrete way to start fixing it this week.

Topics Discussed
✅ Why "good work speaks for itself" is a myth that's quietly keeping talented people invisible
✅ The real reason some ideas get funded, approved, or hired for in UX, and it's rarely because they were the best idea
✅ A story about hiring a team to build an AI tool, and what happened when they skipped the thinking and rushed straight to building
✅ Why knowing what's worth building is about to matter more than how fast you can build it
✅ A real example of a stakeholder update that got buried, and the exact rewrite that would have gotten a faster yes
✅ Why leading with the "so what" instead of the "what" changes how quickly people respond to your ideas
✅ How the same positioning skill applies just as much to your UX job search, your portfolio, and a promotion conversation as it does to a pitch
✅ A simple challenge to try this week on your next email, Slack message, or update

Links & Resources
🔗 Future Product Days in Copenhagen, September 22 to 24, where Sarah is giving a talk and workshop on positioning

💸 See how you can get hired in UX with the help of my UX job search coaching program
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Landing a Director level UX role doesn't happen by accident, and neither does becoming the person on the other side of the hiring table a few months later.

Natalie Kurz did both. She spent six months on a UX job search after a layoff, landed a Director of Experience Design and Content role at NextGen Health, and within months found herself reviewing over 600 applications for her own open positions.

Natalie spent 25 years in UX, most recently as a people manager, before being laid off last May. She joined Career Strategy Lab during that UX job search, and the shift she describes isn't really about tactics.

She stopped using the "spray and pray" method long enough to get clear on what she actually wanted in her next UX role. She let her LinkedIn profile, UX network, and a background she almost left off her resume, do some of the work for her.

What makes this episode different is that Natalie is now the one hiring for UX roles.

A few months into her new position, she's already brought on multiple UX designers, including someone from Career Strategy Lab. Natalie now experiences the exact hiring process she was on the other side of not long ago.

So this conversation moves between her UX job search story and what she now looks for as a UX hiring manager, which gives listeners a rare before-and-after view of the same process.

If you're currently employed in a UX role and feel like your resume, portfolio, or LinkedIn presence isn't ready to go if an opportunity showed up tomorrow, this episode is worth sitting with.

Topics Discussed
✅ How a recruiter found Natalie and reached out about a completely unrelated UX role, purely because of how her LinkedIn profile came across
✅ Why she eventually stopped applying to every job with "UX" in the title, and what she focused on instead
✅ How a cold, polite message to a lead UX designer on a team she wanted to join turned into a warm handoff before she ever talked to a recruiter
✅ The background she almost left off her resume entirely, and why it ended up being a key reason she got hired
✅ What it was actually like reviewing over 600 UX applications as a hiring manager, and what made a resume or portfolio stand out in the first three to five seconds
✅ The line she now tells every UX applicant about generic resume bullet points, and why it matters more than people think
✅ Why she doesn't see contract roles, career gaps, or career changes as red flags in a UX resume, even now that she's the one hiring
✅ How she uses AI to check her own UX hiring decisions for bias, rather than to write applications
✅ Why she believes she'd be far more prepared for her next UX job search than she was for her last one, and what she does now to stay that way

Links & Resources
🔗 Episode 180 with Eric - UX Hiring Insights: Eric Shumake on Healthcare UX, Specializing, & Thinking of Your Career as Gigs​​
🔗 Natalie Kurz on LinkedIn

💸 See how you can get hired in UX with the help of my UX job search coaching program
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Just laid off from a UX role? If you’re tempted to open LinkedIn and easy-apply to every role with UX in the job title, don't do it!
In this episode of the Career Strategy Podcast, Sarah Doody breaks down what she would NOT do after a UX layoff (e.g. play the numbers game) and the 3 things she’d prioritize instead.
You’ll walk away with a clear order of operations: get specific about the UX role you want, get visible where hiring actually happens, and start showing up for the work you want to be hired for.

🎯 In this episode we discuss:
- Why easy-applying to every “UX” job backfires after a layoff
- How to get ruthlessly specific about the UX role you actually want
- Auditing past jobs and naming your “superpowers” (and why to ask others)
- Where UX recruiters and hiring managers actually hang out
- The LinkedIn order of operations: headline first, then everything else
- Why turning on Open to Work is a signal, not desperation
- What to post on LinkedIn so your profile gets found, without becoming a “thought leader”

Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:30 Why I wouldn’t play the numbers game in my UX job search
02:50 Step 1 — Get specific about the UX role you want
07:37 Step 2 — Increase your visibility
13:23 Step 3 — Post about what you want to be hired for
16:17 Putting it all together
17:44 UX Layoff checklist + final word

💸 See how you can get hired in UX with the help of my UX job search coaching program
📋 Take a peek inside my UX job search coaching program
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This episode is a full walkthrough of how you'll get hired in UX faster with Career Strategy Lab and exactly what happens after you join. Sarah shares what genuinely helps UX people in their job search, after coaching UX and Product people since 2017 and running Career Strategy Lab since 2021.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ The six things that help UX and product people get hired faster
✔️ What your first 30 days inside CSL look like
✔️ Why positioning comes before your LinkedIn and resume
✔️ How the portfolio, case study, and critique process works
✔️ How monthly recruiter Q&As and the 850-alumni referral network help you get hired

Topics Discussed:
✅ The 6 things Sarah has found consistently help UX people get hired faster
✅ How the first 30 days inside Career Strategy Lab are structured and why every step is intentionally sequenced to build on the last
✅ What a Compass Statement is and why it comes before everything else in your UX job search prep
✅ How getting clear on your positioning makes fixing your resume and LinkedIn significantly faster
✅ How the weekly critique system works and why submitting imperfect work early beats waiting until everything feels ready
✅ The monthly recruiter and hiring manager Q&A sessions: who shows up, what you get to ask, and why this is one of the most underrated parts of the program
✅ How Career Strategy Lab's 850-person alumni network functions as a UX-specific job referral network and how members are actively using it to get hired
✅ The open to work area, interview debriefs, and hired recaps and why watching other people get hired in real time is some of the most useful intel you can get in a job search

💸 See how you can get hired in UX with the help of my UX job search coaching program
📋 Take a peek inside my UX job search coaching program
👋 Follow me, on LinkedIn, Instagram, & YouTube