The job market feels noisy and frantic right now, and it is harder than ever for candidates to connect with hiring managers. Jared Spool explains the causes well; increased interest rates, the expiry of key tax credits leading to massive layoffs, bootcamps flooding the market, remote work, and automated application systems lowering friction. Essentially, there are lots of candidates on the market compared to fewer open roles, especially compared to the 2022 COVID hiring peak. Remote work and AI are adding to the noise. This made the last couple of years an unprecedented challenge after a decade of utopian conditions for tech workers.

Javier Andrés Bargas-Avila talks about the impact of these changes on job seekers; employer unresponsiveness and ghosting, demands for speculative work or excessive interview rounds, employers requiring a ‘perfect match’ rather than hiring for potential, and the disappearance of visa sponsorships. He also mentions the rise of myths like fake job postings or needing to optimize your resume for AI — a natural reaction to these conditions, but myths nonetheless.

I’ve interviewed hundreds of UX candidates over the course of my time at Google, Multiverse, and Tessl. At Multiverse, I had a crash-course in building a hiring pipeline, growing their UX team from 4 to 20 over two and a half years. I’d like to share my own observations as a hiring manager on how the recent market changes have affected hiring, and what that should mean for anyone looking for a new role. Here’s what I’ve seen.

What’s changed about communication in hiring?

Communication between hiring teams and candidates has gotten muddier in the past couple of years. During the Covid hiring rush, many companies used inflated job titles (and inflated salaries) to compete for top talent, eroding the meaning of those titles. This means that hiring managers and candidates have different ideas about what a “Senior” looks like in terms of their skills and experience. The shift from in-person to remote work (and later pushback against it) means that there’s an ongoing negotiation that plays out during the process, with managers trying to get candidates into the office more, only sometimes needing to relent to make the hire they want. And as everyone is painfully aware, the tech industry has laid off hundreds of thousands of employees over the last few years. This means that the market has been flooded with people from brand name companies who have strong experience and training, all competing over existing roles.

Hiring managers are inundated with communication from candidates and recruiters on every channel. A recent role I opened received over a hundred applications in just a few days — but only one or two were strong enough for a first screen, and none of them went past that point. The rest were not the right level, didn’t meet our bar for portfolio quality, or didn’t fit our location needs. As a small team, handling the application volume while finding few meaningful candidates didn’t work for us. Ultimately, we closed the job posting and worked with a trusted recruiter instead. Most people we interviewed for the role came directly from the recruiter or were referrals from our team.

What can I do to stand out in all this noise?

Being aware of these changes can help candidates close the communication gap. These are my top suggestions, having seen what works and what doesn’t:

👁️ Focus on fewer roles
When hiring in a highly competitive environment, I’m looking for people who are an excellent fit for my specific role. That’s why I’m a big advocate for fewer, higher quality applications. Focus your energy on roles at the right level, where you fit the job requirements to a T, and ideally where you have relevant industry experience. Pay attention to non-negotiable conflicts like location, visa requirements, and any in-office requirements since these usually mean an automatic rejection. You may need to recalibrate after the last few years, which has been a time of title inflation and competing on salaries — talk to other people in the industry to see how you’re lining up. If you’re finding that it’s hard to meet the bar for the roles you want, you can pivot towards different roles or invest in independent learning and projects to demonstrate those skills.

🤝 Connect personally
When hiring in this kind of environment, I value referrals because they offer an extra layer of relevance checking. As a candidate, the best way to get your application reviewed is to enter the process via a connection. Folks sometimes find it intimidating to ask, but those working at a company will usually be excited to hear from you since referrals are so highly valued. So check if you know someone before submitting and ask them to connect you directly with the hiring manager. Submit an application at the same time so they won’t have to ask you for details manually. Make sure to let your referrer know before submitting your application to ensure they get any referral incentives.

🪡 Tailor your communication
After a personal connection, the next best option is to reach out directly to the recruiter or hiring manager. Because we’re being inundated with applications and Linkedin requests, hiring managers will usually ignore anything that doesn’t come with proper context. For example, instead of posting a generic “I’m interested!” message in response to a Linkedin post (which makes the hiring manager do all the work), reach out via Linkedin or email and highlight how your experience aligns with their specific job posting, with links to work examples. (Unfortunately, this might mean paying for Linkedin premium if you’re out of personalised messages.) When I’ve gotten these types of messages from candidates, I always took the time to review and respond. In the role I mentioned above, the only candidate we spoke to after closing the application (who wasn’t recruited or referred) came in via an email like this.

😍 Partner with a trusted recruiter
Because of this inundation problem, a lot of roles aren’t being shared openly in the same way they were a few years ago. (We chose to work with a recruiter on our role instead). To tackle this, find a few recruiters who specialise in your discipline and work closely with them. This means interviewing them to understand how they work, getting a sense of how well they understand your needs, and prioritising the ones who care about fit. The best recruiters build relationships with candidates long-term and might place them multiple times over their career. Working with someone like this will give you an extra network to leverage, often with insider knowledge of what it’s like to work at those companies.

🎨 Portfolio & CV quality are everything
The best way to stand out in the midst of all this noise is still with 1–2 high quality case studies and a clear, impact-based CV. I wrote about creating an outstanding portfolio in this article and have updated it recently. A key change of the past few years is around visual design. In the past, strong design thinking could stand alone, but today, hiring managers expect polished, compelling visual design too. If your portfolio and resume don’t meet this bar, they may not get a second look. It should also go without saying that you need to include your portfolio and CV with every application, but at least 20% of applications I’ve seen are missing one of these pieces. If there is a link, make sure that it works. Employers may have chased these up in the past but are less likely to do so now.

The 2025 job search outlook

The job market is tough, but we may be seeing a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. In his latest newsletter, Lenny Rachitzky reported on the state of the industry in 2025 through the TrueUp dataset. He highlighted that open tech roles are trending up since bottoming out in late 2023. In Design, our roles are up 19% from the low point. More importantly, layoffs are slowing and capital investment is increasing. There has also been an explosion in AI related roles, so it’s a good moment to invest in learning about new AI related technologies and to emphasise that knowledge.

Given the unprecedented change, it’s likely that it will take months or years for this period to settle out. In the meantime, you can cut through the noise by being intentional, prepared, and focused. Companies are looking for clear signals in a sea of applications. With patience and strategy, and a focus on quality over quantity, you’ll land the right role.

I’m a Freelance Product Designer with over a decade in UX & experience leading and building teams. If you’re looking for support with interim management or hiring Design and User Research in 2025, get in touch!

Thanks to Javier Andrés Bargas-Avila and Alexander Zacherl for their feedback on this article!

Hiring in 2025 isn’t just more difficult — it’s more noisy than ever. Candidates are overwhelmed, hiring managers are drowning in applications, and great matches are getting lost in the flood. I’ve interviewed hundreds of UX candidates over the course of my time at Google, Multiverse, and Tessl. At Multiverse, I had a crash-course in building a hiring pipeline, growing our UX team from 4 to 20 over 2.5 years. Here’s what I’ve learned about hiring in this new context, where the key problem is finding signal in the noise.

First: Candidates are finding open roles — but they see that hundreds of applications have already been submitted. They’re forced to re-enter the same details from their resume into clunky online forms, often without receiving so much as a rejection email. And with the new norm of remote and hybrid work, many jobs have hundreds of times more potential candidates. In this world, many have started using AI-powered application tools that amplify the noise.

A recent role I opened via only our (niche) website received over a hundred applications in just a few days — but only one or two were strong enough for a first screen, and none of them went past that point. As a small team, handling the number of applications while finding few meaningful candidates didn’t work for us. Ultimately, we closed the job posting and worked with a trusted recruiter instead. Most people we interviewed for the role came directly from the recruiter or were referrals from our team. This experience showed that we needed to adapt our hiring process to the new world–what used to work well wasn’t helping us find the right candidates.

Another part of the puzzle is this: LinkedIn is quietly gatekeeping direct outreach. When I opened a role as a hiring manager in the past, I was flooded with LinkedIn connection requests — most with no attached message. At first, I found it frustrating. Then I realized why it was happening.

Many candidates are advised to bypass traditional applications and reach out directly to hiring managers. This makes sense in the new, more noisy environment. But unless they pay £30/month for LinkedIn Premium, they can’t send DMs — and even personalized connection requests are limited. This means that only those who can afford it get a real shot at networking on the platform. This again shows that we need new strategies to make the right connections.

In summary, noise and overwhelm are affecting hiring managers and candidates, meaning great connections are getting lost in the shuffle. Here are some tips hiring managers can use to do their part in bridging the gap while attracting the right candidates for their roles:

• 🎯 Share your non-negotiables: Be direct about salary range, location, visa requirements, and in-office requirements. Many hiring managers aren’t comfortable being honest about this up front, but now is the time to focus on the right fit. Not all candidates will take care with this when applying, but it will help with targeting for the many who are. It will also help avoid disconnects later in the process, and save time on both sides.
• 👁️‍🗨️ Address blind spots: Try enabling Open Profile Premium so candidates can message you for free (if it’s available to you). This should replace those random Linkedin invites with a proper message for some, helping you prioritize the candidates that have something thoughtful to say when they reach out.
• ⛲ Source directly: Unless you’re at a large company with a tried and true hiring process for your roles, you should own your hiring process fully and be directly sourcing for your roles. This is especially important if you’re in the process of building the team or hiring pipeline at a company where the role is new. Reaching out to candidates flips the script and helps you connect personally with the right people, faster.
• 😍 Partner with a trusted recruiter: Find a recruiter who specialises in your discipline and work closely with them in a structured way. This gives you an extra network to leverage, often with historic knowledge of how those candidates were in-role. They will also have the latest viewpoint on how the hiring environment is shifting and how AI tools are being used. They can help you build a fast, powerful hiring process.
• 🛎️ Prioritise candidate experience: For my pipeline, we shortened input forms, reduced rounds, and threw away legacy take-home exercises. Instead, we pre-reviewed a relevant case study ahead of a deep in-person discussion of it. We took the time to share brief but thoughtful feedback with everyone we interviewed. Candidates are feeling undervalued right now. Show them that you deeply value connection and engagement and your preferred pick will accept your offer without hesitation.
• 📕 Require reading: Interviews and in-person time come at a premium when navigating this high noise environment. Create high quality written materials about your role, the team, and the process for your candidates so they can asynchronously learn and prepare. Consider asking candidates to mention a specific detail from the job posting or ‘password’ in their application to filter out automated applicants. This will help you quickly prioritize the candidates who read the job description and are targeting your role. (I’m still learning whether this one works well — please let me know how it goes for you!)

It’s a difficult time to create meaningful connections through the noise when trying to hire. At the same time, the hiring experience is one of the loudest ways you communicate what you’re like as an employer–and word travels. Choosing quality over quantity matters.

For the Multiverse UX team, we developed a high quality hiring experience with a focus on candidate experience over the course of half a year (though we continued to refine it for my full time there.) It significantly increased our conversions across the process, and ultimately the close rate at the end of our funnel. Anecdotally, I’ve been told by candidates “a friend of mine interviewed with you guys — even though they didn’t get the job, they had great things to say about the process”. Music to our ears.

More importantly, we hired great people who stuck around and drove the company forward. Thoughtful hiring isn’t just about filling roles — it’s about building a team that lasts.

If you’re looking for support with hiring Design and User Research in 2025, get in touch at rachel.i.simpson@gmail.com or rachelilansimpson.com.

Thanks to Javier Andrés Bargas-Avila and Alexander Zacherl for their feedback on this article!

Hi there, I’m Rachel. I’m Director of UX at Multiverse, and was previously a Design Lead & Manager at Google where I spent 8 years working on Chrome and Search. Folks sometimes reach out to me for advice on how to break into UX, and on other topics — so over the years I’ve also developed some thoughts on how to do this effectively. This is a primer on how to successfully approach folks who are already in the industry for support.

Advice, Mentorship, and Sponsorship… what does it mean?

These are different kinds of supportive relationships that you’ll build in your career, which might have different goals, lengths of interaction, and levels of involvement:

🙏 Advice: help with a specific problem from someone well placed to solve it, like “Can you connect me to Jane at Company X?”

👂 Mentorship: personal coaching over a longer period with someone who understands your goals and helps you work towards them

🖐 Sponsorship: being put up for opportunities by someone else, where you wouldn’t be able to do it on your own (e.g. from a position of authority)

These relationships are fluid, and asking someone for advice might turn into mentorship and sponsorship over time.

What does a good request for help look like?

Mentorship and sponsorship come from relationships that develop organically over time, which might be kicked off with a first request for advice. That first ask should be personal and actionable:

👆Personal: it’s clear why you think they’re the right person to help
👁Actionable: a specific question framed in an easy-to-answer way

Putting together a request for help

📍Pinpoint your request: Define what problem you need help with. This might be to learn about a particular company, learn requirements for a role, get feedback on a case study, be connected with a particular kind of person, get a referral, etc.

🦸Choose the right person to ask: Consider where they work, what role they have, and their level. Someone in a more junior role may have better advice about breaking into the industry, since they’ve done it recently, whereas someone in a hiring role would better understand requirements.

🔬Do your research: Before reaching out, look at their company website and job postings, and look over their linkedin. Don’t send a request that could have been answered with a simple web search.

💬Ask! Be brief and specific: Your message should be few sentences or a paragraph, not more. Instead of a general request like “I’m looking for a job” or “I’m trying to get into design, do you have any advice?” you’ll get a more useful response to something like “I’d like to learn more about your experience working at company X as a Visual Designer, because I’m deciding whether to apply to large companies or agencies.”

A good example

Hi Rachel,

I’m Fergus, a designer currently interning at Company X. I enjoyed your talk on “Designing for Llamas” at the Llama Design Conference.

My case study on building the Llama App at Company X seems related, including on theme A. I’m interested in a role at Company Y where I’d have the chance to deep-dive into Llama systems, and it would help to know if my work is meeting the bar for a Senior Llama Designer.

I’ve already applied the advice in your article here. I wonder if you’d have time to give me some brief feedback?

Best,
Fergus

Common mistakes

• Remember the details. If asking for feedback on a case study, add the link & password. If asking for a referral, add your resume, contact info, and case study.
• For the large tech companies, many employees don’t mind submitting a referral for a promising contact. If you’re going to do this, do ask for the referral before you apply.

Feel free to drop me a line if you have questions I haven’t answered here.

Get help: Asking for advice & finding mentorship was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In Rachel Simpson’s roles as Head of UX at Tessl, Director of UX at Multiverse, and as Design Lead and Manager at Google, she’s got plenty of experience with recruiting talented Product Designers. Having a strong portfolio is critical to getting hired.

Hi there, I’m Rachel. I’m Head of UX at Tessl, where we’re building the future of AI and Software Development. In previous roles, I’ve been Director of UX at Multiverse and Design Lead & Manager at Google Chrome & Search. I’ve worked freelance for clients like BMW & Freeletics, and with a couple Design Agencies too. I’ve done around 50 interviews for Design roles at Google, and more than 200 for Multiverse.

What does a strong portfolio look like?

A portfolio is a limited set of your best projects described in case study format. It should be:

🖼 Curated: 1–2 projects is enough, since a 5 minute screen is the first step
🥩 Robust: communicate your thinking & process as succinctly as possible
👁 Clear: the format should let your content shine

What projects should I include?

Choose your very best work. Include only pieces that are relevant to the roles you’re applying for. They should be recent, launched projects. Including older and weaker projects for the sake of volume won’t serve you well.

What should I include in each case study?

This is a balance — it should be as concise as possible, and thoughtfully explain the nuances of the problem and your solution. Include:

• The solution as a teaser at the top, with screens (don’t bury the lede!)
• The problem you were trying to solve & the constraints
• Your role — Did you work with Product and Engineering, User Research, and/or other Designers? What parts did *you* actually do?
• Your design process — include:
  🔬 Key insights from research, competitive review, or user testing
  🗺️ Takeaways from mapping the problem space
  ✍️ Sketches, mockups, prototypes, & UI/interaction ideation
  👩‍🔬 Iterative prototype testing, with changes highlighted
  💻 Final screens, with highlights of UX/interaction problem solving
• Answer these key questions:
  ℹ️ How did insights from research drive decisions made in the design?
  ℹ️ ️How did you solve problems specific to the interaction model or visual design? (Not all of them — just a few well-chosen examples)
  ℹ️ How did you solve implementation challenges?
• The measurable impact when the project launched (this means metrics), tying the outcome to the original problem

Consider the visual design and communication of the content in your case studies. Can the reviewer get all the key information at a glance? Are the images large and clear? Is the visual hierarchy correct? In 2025, there is a renewed emphasis on visual design alongside UX — your case studies themselves need to be beautiful and compelling.

What tool should I use to build my portfolio?

A slide deck in pdf format or a website are both good options. The final outcome needs to be simple, easily understood, and allow your projects to shine. The interviewer isn’t evaluating your portfolio design itself unless it distracts from your work. That’s why it’s often better to use a pdf when in doubt — a website with confusing navigation or janky animations is a strike against you.

Consider how easy it will be to update. You’ll want to add projects in the future and something overly complex will become obsolete more quickly.

Common mistakes to avoid (and my personal bugbears)

• Too much low-fi process, not enough UX/UI problem solving
• Poor hierarchy, confusing spacing, or blurry / small images
• Angled beauty shots of screens that make it hard to see your UX design
• Websites that aren’t accessible on mobile — use a pdf if in doubt
• Behance (& similar sites) lend themselves well to breadth of projects, but aren’t set up well for a deep case study format

Great examples & why

Kurt Winter, via Tobias van Schneider’s selection of great examples. Kurt’s portfolio is simple & polished. It features 3 case studies which are explained with the right level of depth and nuance, while keeping it as concise as possible. It’s also just lovely.

Olivia Truong does a solid job of conveying her case studies. She uses the right level of detail to explain her problem solving, and shows key artefacts at a large enough size to be meaningful.

Common questions

1. UX Design? Visual Design? UX Research? What does it all mean?Companies define these roles differently. One person might handle UX Design, Visual Design, and Research, OR one specialist might take EACH role. The best way to understand how a company sees these positions is to look at the open roles on their website. This article is specific to my experience as a Hiring Manager at Google, Multiverse, and now Tessl.
   Google Design roles / Multiverse UX roles
2. What about projects under NDA?
   You may have projects that are under NDA, or have not been publicly released yet. If you want to share one of these projects, you can often still show it as long as you treat it carefully. You can blur images, remove the company name, or otherwise obscure details while still describing all of the important parts for your interviewer. Be sure to review the details of your NDA before proceeding.
3. What if I don’t have launched products to show?
   This is a common challenge for folks who are moving into the UX field. Show the most realistic project you can (from school or ideally from client work). Where you’re not able to speak to things like the measuable impact, give examples of the kind of impact you would ideally measure for a project of this kind. This demonstrates that you understand the concept, if you haven’t yet had the chance to apply it.
4. Feel free to drop me a line if you have questions I haven’t answered here.