Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody · 2026-07-27 · -1h -42m
This episode challenges the common belief that spending more time on DIY job search activities will eventually yield results. Sarah Doody, a 20-year UX veteran and founder of Career Strategy Lab, argues that without changing strategy, more time produces no better outcomes. She debunks myths like needing three to five portfolio projects before applying (one project is sufficient) and explains how following research-backed strategies - rather than social media tips - accelerates hiring. The critical differentiator she emphasizes is relationships and proximity to people hiring: something nearly impossible to manufacture alone. She illustrates this through Marcus, who got hired at Nava (a mission-driven consultancy) after joining Career Strategy Lab and getting a referral from a community connection, and Heather, whose referral from another alumni led to a six-month contract and opened doors for five additional hires. With 850+ alumni, Career Strategy Lab functions as a job referral network in a way individual networking on LinkedIn cannot. For job seekers stuck in months-long DIY approaches, the episode offers concrete guidance: get specific about what you'll do differently, focus on quality over volume in applications, and consider whether community-based support might be the missing piece.
Yes, you can get hired with just one project if it demonstrates what recruiters and hiring managers actually want, rather than following generic social media tips. Sarah cites Laura as an example who was hired with one project and also got discovered on LinkedIn.
The DIY approach fails because spending more time without changing strategy doesn't improve outcomes. Most DIY job seekers follow inaccurate tips online, play volume games with applications, and miss the most critical element: relationships and referrals from people inside hiring companies.
Marcus joined Career Strategy Lab and made connections with other community members; he discovered someone worked at Nava, reached out to her, received a referral link, and got hired as a user researcher - the referral was the key factor, not just his improved portfolio.
On LinkedIn, you're competing as a small fish in a giant ocean with millions of users, making you feel invisible. In a smaller community like Career Strategy Lab with 850 alumni, you're more visible and it's easier to form genuine relationships that lead to referrals.
Get specific and write down exactly what you will do differently - for example, apply to fewer but better-fit roles with customized materials, avoid comparison traps, or focus on quality over volume - because without changing strategy, more time won't produce different results.
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
DIYing your UX job search feels productive right up until you realize you've been doing it for six months, twelve months, or longer with nothing to show for it. If you've been telling yourself you're one tip away from finally landing interviews, this episode is worth sitting with. The core question Sarah asks is simple and a little uncomfortable: if you gave yourself three more months on your ux job search, your portfolio, or your resume, what would actually be different? Because more time doesn't automatically mean better results. More applications don't automatically mean more interviews. If you can't answer what you'd change, you're just planning to spend more hours doing the same thing that hasn't worked yet. Sarah backs this up with research from her own program, Career Strategy Lab. After analyzing over 1,700 responses from people who didn't join, the two most common reasons were not feeling ready, or wanting to keep trying the DIY approach first. But when she surveyed people after they did join, a pattern showed up just as clearly: regret over not joining sooner, and months lost to portfolios or ux job searches that stayed stuck.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: If you're thinking about diying your UX job search for another few months, this episode is for you. Now, maybe you have been working on your job search or your portfolio or your Resume or your LinkedIn, or trying to network and do all the things. Maybe you've been doing that for three months, six months, 12 months, or longer, and you're thinking to yourself, I'm just one Google search away from that tip or trick that's going to help me finish my portfolio, land the interview, stand out to recruiters, optimize my LinkedIn, whatever it is. So you continue down this DIY approach, hoping that you're going to stumble upon that one thing that is going to finally change things for you. And this episode is going to help you see how the DIY approach is not always the best one for your job search. And more importantly, the one thing you absolutely cannot DIY in your UX job search. Hey, I'm Sarah Dudy, uh, a user, researcher and product designer with 20 years of experience. In 2017, I noticed something a little ironic. UX and product people, despite being great at, uh, designing experiences for other people, often struggle to design their own careers. That's why I created Career Strategy Lab and this podcast to help you navigate your UX job search, grow in your current role, and and avoid skill and salary plateaus, all in a chill and BS free way. So whether you're stuck in your job search or wondering what's next in your UX career, you're in the right place. So if you and I were sitting across from each other having coffee right now, and you told me, you know, I've been trying to finish my portfolio or apply for jobs for the last three months, six months, 12 months. I think I'm just going to give it one more shot. I'm going to give myself three, three more months to see how much further I can get. The first thing I would say to you is, well, what's going to be different this time? And I say that because you probably are not thinking about what you're going to do differently. You're probably just thinking about, well, if I have more time, the time should result in better results, right? If I keep applying for three more months, the numbers game should eventually work in my favor, right? If I keep saying spending three more months on my portfolio, then I should, in theory, have a better portfolio because time equals progress, right? Except that's not what I see in reality with people who come to me after taking the DIY approach to their portfolio or to their job search or to their resume for three months, six months, 12 months, sometimes even two or more years. And if you cannot answer the question of, well, what are you going to do differently this time, then that's a big yellow flag that you are just going to spend more time the next three months working on whatever you working on, but you're not going to change your strategy. And if you want a different outcome with your job search, or if you want a better portfolio at the end of three months, or you want to have a larger, more authentic relationships in UX after three months, then you need a different strategy. Right? Because just scheduling a bunch of coffee chats with people you randomly meet, um, on LinkedIn is not relationships. Putting more and more hours into your portfolio is not necessarily going to lead to a better portfolio. And applying to more and more UX roles is not going to result in you getting interviews. Because I know getting hired in UX today is not about the numbers game. So if you are going to take this DIY approach, you need to be able to answer the question of, well, what are you going to do differently from what you were doing before this point in time? All right, before we go any further, I want to remind you that I am a user researcher and a product designer. So as a researcher, I really want to understand why people don't join Career Strategy Lab, my UX job search coaching program. So I open up enrollment for this program every couple of months. After the enrollment closes, I ask people why they did not join. I have 1,702 responses to this form. Those responses are from 1558 people. That means people have filled out this why did you not join? Form multiple times. Which tells me they've considered joining Career Strategy Lab more than once, but at the end of the day did not. Because, and I'm going to summarize my research here, they did not feel ready for the they were going to continue down the DIY approach. What's very interesting though is that after people join the program, I asked them to fill out a different form, the why did you join Career Strategy Lab? Form. And what I notice is a pattern of people who joined is a regret of not joining sooner. Meaning people say things like, I thought of joining six months ago but decided to continue my job search alone. And I, uh, continued to not get interviews or offers. And they wish they joined six months ago because if they had joined six months ago, maybe they would have been hired already. Right. Same thing with portfolios. I see people joining and then saying, six months ago I thought I could finish my portfolio on my own today. Six months later, I'm still stuck in my portfolio, and I'm still not stuck applying. And so that ultimately becomes the trigger for them to join Career Strategy Lab because they realize they are hitting this wall of using this DIY approach to their job search. I know you may also have this, uh, concern that some people have the feeling of I am not ready or my resume is not good enough, my portfolio is not good enough to join something like Career Strategy Lab. And first of all, I would say, well, you're missing the point of Career Strategy Lab, like one of the parts, or we call them sprints. Inside Career Strategy Lab is your portfolio. We also have a resume sprint, a LinkedIn sprint, a job search sprint, an interviewing sprint. And so maybe you have friends or maybe your parents even say things like, we have to clean the house before the house cleaner comes over. A lot of you are doing that with your job search, with your portfolio, with your, your resume, et cetera. And that's defeating the purpose of joining Career Strategy Lab. It's like you're paying the house cleaner to come over and clean your house. Why are you tidying up and spending that time? Why not just let them do that job for you? Right? So I would say, if you're thinking to yourself, I'm just going to tidy up my portfolio before I join Career Strategy Lab. If I were to look at your portfolio, I would guess there's like a, um, very strong, I would say, like, 80% chance that the work you do on your portfolio is not going to align with what recruiters and hiring managers want. Because do you actually know what recruiters and hiring managers want in a portfolio, for example? And yes, you probably read a lot of the tips and tricks out there on social media, but just to be brutally honest, a lot of what you read on social media is just opinions of people. It's not rooted in what recruiters and hiring managers actually want. Whereas everything I put out there, whether it's on this podcast, conversations I have inside my community for Career Strategy Lab. In the curriculum, Inside Career Strategy Lab, it is all based on research, meaning I am talking to recruiters and hiring managers to hear exactly what they want. So that helps me teach you, inside Career Strategy Lab, how to create that portfolio that gives recruiters and hiring managers what they want. So you are prepared to talk about your projects in an interview in the way that UX recruiters and hiring managers want to hear about them, and so on and so forth. Right? On the topic of portfolios, Here is like a perfect example. So I said earlier, if you continue down the DIY path, you'll likely be working on your portfolio based on inaccurate tips and tricks you found online. One of those tips and tricks are, frankly myths, is that you need three to five projects in your portfolio before you can apply. So if you subscribe to this myth, how long is it going to take you to finish your portfolio? Only you can answer that, but it's going to be a while, right? Whereas inside my Career Strategy Lab program, I tell people you do not need three to five projects. You can get hired and interviews only with one project. And so that's the difference with taking a DIY approach versus following strategies backed by what I hear recruiters and hiring managers want and backed by. I see what is working for people who are getting interviews and offers inside Career Strategy labs. So Laura is a person who got hired with just one project in her portfolio. Now imagine if Laura had waited to have three to five projects in her portfolio, she would have waited to apply. And what does that mean? It means that maybe she would not be in that new UX role until three months from now. And what does that mean? That means that by only having one project in her portfolio and applying, she got hired faster. Therefore she was earning that salary faster. Right. And that's the power of not taking that DIY approach, is that you're not just, in Laura's case, finishing your portfolio faster. You're finishing a portfolio that gives recruiters and hiring managers what they want. And when you do that, you're going to get more interviews, which is going to lead to offers, which is going to lead to getting hired faster, which means there's a financial benefit to that. Right. The other cool thing about Laura is she didn't even apply for the job because she also optimized her LinkedIn profile. That person at that company found her on LinkedIn. That's how then she got the interview and then she got hired. But if she'd continued with the DIY approach, she might still be working on her portfolio trying to get those proverbial three to five projects in there. I want to get to the big topic in today's episode, which is the thing that you cannot DIY in your UX job search, and that is relationships and connections and proximity to people hiring. So I want to tell you about Marcus. Marcus was laid off from his role at ebay and he did what maybe you are doing right now. He decided to take the DIY approach to his job search. He spent six months Applying, tweaking, his resume, portfolio, et cetera. And he got rejection after rejection or sometimes ghosted like you've maybe experienced, right? And with those rejections and with those, the ghosting came confidence, right? A total decline in confidence, thinking that he was not good enough, that he was not a desirable candidate anymore. And then he joined Career Strategy Lab six months after trying to DIY his job search, right? He got hired as a user researcher at uh, nava, which is a mission driven consultancy where he works on federal projects with the Department of Justice. And that happened because Marcus decided to stop the DIY approach after six months. Now, how did Marcus get hired? It was partially because of his improved portfolio, LinkedIn and resume. But here is what really moved the needle for him. It came down to relationships. So inside Career Strategy Lab, he made a couple of friends, right? And he noticed they that someone worked at NAVA where he wanted to apply. So he reached out to her, she gave him a referral link, and that's how he got the interview at Nava, because he knew someone on the inside who could give him a referral link. If you want to hear more about Marcus's episode in his own words, I interviewed him in episode 122 of the podcast. I will also link it in the show notes. But relationships and proximity to people hiring or people who work at companies where you want to work, that is very hard to diy. It's a lot easier to do that when you are in a community of other people. And the amazing thing about Career Strategy Lab is that now with 850 alumni and growing, we have become a job referral network because people are being able to get referrals to roles like Marcus did, but they're also being connected with people who are actively hiring for roles at, uh, their company, on their team, et cetera. All right, I want to give you another example of this really important differentiator between the DIY approach to your job search and not doing it alone and instead doing it in a community with other people. So Heather, Heather got laid off and she signed up for Career Strategy Lab pretty soon after the layoff. She'd interviewed at, uh, I think five or six places, didn't get hired, and decided to not continue down the DIY path and join Career Strategy Lab. And while she was in Career Strategy Lab, she saw another person post who said their manager was hiring a contractor. So she reached out to this other person in Career Strategy Lab saying sent him her resume. She ended up, um, getting an interview, went through two or three rounds, and took a six month contract at this company. This company has now hired five other alumni from Career Strategy Lab because of really this network effect that is happening. And this is very difficult to kind of manufacture on your own when you're working on your job search in isolation or you're working on your job search and trying to network in like the ocean of LinkedIn. Right? Because on LinkedIn you are a small fish in a giant ocean. Whereas in Career Strategy Lab with 850 and growing alumni, that might sound like a small network, but it is a lot easier to form relationships with people in a smaller pond, if you will. Because you are more visible, right? Versus you feel like you invisible on LinkedIn. And why is that? It's because of the gigantic volume of people on that platform. So I want to wrap up today's episode and ask you this. Three months from now, what is going to be different in your UX job search? Because you really have a fork in the road here, right? You can continue doing what you've been doing, but I would argue if you want a different outcome, you have to do something different. And only you know what you've been doing since so far. But uh, if you decide to take this DIY approach, then I would challenge you to write down on a piece of paper what you are going to do differently. If you have struggled with comparison, for example, maybe you are going to tell yourself, I'm going to give myself another month to work on my portfolio, but I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of comparing my portfolio to other people's because I don't even know if their portfolio got them interviews or offers. So. So that's one example. Maybe you are thinking to yourself, I am going to just keep applying for another three months and see what happens. I would challenge you that if you are applying, maybe you're not focusing on applying to more roles and playing a volume game, but instead maybe you are applying to fewer roles, but roles that are more of a fit and you are customizing or tailoring your resume and your portfolio. Hopefully you're writing a cover letter for each of those roles that you're applying for. So it's not about just apply, apply, apply. It's about be intentional about the roles you are applying to with better quality and more tailored materials because that will help you stand out. So DIYers get very specific about what you are going to do differently. Cause if you want a different outcome three months from now, you have to do something differently. And if you are choosing not to diy your job search anymore and you're wanting to leverage the support the community, the referrals, the critiques, the live calls and more that I have inside Career Strategy Lab, then get in touch with me, send me a DM on LinkedIn, reply to one of my emails, use the contact form on my website, Career Strategy Lab. Com, and I will share the details of how soon you can get in to that program. Because if you have been applying for three months, six months, 12 months or longer, and you've reached that wall, really, then I want you to know you don't have to keep doing this on your own anymore. And that myself and my team are the experts at helping you navigate the UX job search today. And we have the receipts to back it up. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you hear the episodes I do where I'm interviewing alumni, where they're sharing how they got hired, and you can go back and hear for yourself. Why not? Going down that DIY path was the pivot point for them to getting more interviews and ultimately offers. All right, that is all that I have for today's episode. Uh, I will see you next week in another episode of the Career Strategy Podcast. Hey there. I just wanted to say thanks for listening to this episode all the way to the end. If you're looking for links or resources mentioned, visit careerstrategylab.com podcast to find this episode details and, um, the details of the hundreds of other episodes. If you're looking for help with your UX or product job search, you may want to consider checking out my program, Career Strategy 1, where I help UX and product people just like you navigate unexpected challenges in their careers, whether that's a layoff, trying to get promoted, or getting hired without applying to hundreds of jobs. To learn more about that, just go to careerstrategylab.com and click UX Career Coaching at the very top. That's all for today and I will see you next time in another episode of the Career Strategy Podcast.
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