Apply for a UX research (or any) job using investigative research

Taking a spray and pray approach to apply for jobs is ineffective.

Clicking “apply” without reading the job description, not aligning your resume to the role, or not doing any homework on the company or role wastes your — and the HR recruiters — time.

There is a better way to apply for jobs.

The Investigative Research Method is SIMPLE.

SIMPLE is defined as:

• S — Surveillance — Survey the landscape and get the necessary background and context.
• I — Identify — Identity parameters and people.
• M — Map — Map out the connections.
• P — Present the case — Develop and present a story about how you can solve their problem.
• L — Learn — Learn from an early MVP.
• E — Execute — Have a bias for action and keep iterating.

The SIMPLE approach in applying for jobs looks like this:

Conducting Surveillance begins with reading, and re-reading, the job description you are applying for. Cross-reference this against similar roles on Indeed and LinkedIn.

Next, Identify the most important things listed in the role. Spend time understanding what they are asking and why.

Are they asking for qualitative skills? Quantitative skills? Why? What is being asked of the job performer?

At this point, you should have identified the most important parts of the job. Map the most important parts of the job to the skills and competencies in your resume.

Present the case showing how your experience solves the problem(s) the company has. Use the updated data in your resume as evidence.

Apply for the job. Learn from new data and feedback in the process, i.e. # of rejections, # of interviews, new job postings you come across, etc.

Continue to Execute by applying what you learned to apply for other roles. Or, celebrate that this works after landing your dream role.

Using an evidence-based approach to applying for jobs is an effective way for you to land your next role.

This post was created with Typeshare