Starting out in UX design can be difficult. Especially as time goes on, bootcamps are churning out more and more competition into the workplace, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to find that first job.

Any combination of things can be standing in your way. Many companies, after interviewing multiple bootcamp grads, have decided that they are all lacking in the same way and have stopped even giving the chance to interview. And, of course, there’s the chicken and egg problem that requires you to have real world work experience, which is hard to come by when no one will even let you interview for a job, let alone hire you for one.

It’s not an easy position to be in. It takes real tenacity and perseverance to make it over that first hump. But, once you do, it gets a lot easier.

In order to help, I have compiled a list of 5 bits of key advice to help you land that first job. This is not a guarantee, but I do hope it provides you with some insight.

1. You don’t know everything, so go out and learn

Technology and design are fields that constantly change and evolve. It is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting things about being a UX designer. You will never know everything.

Especially when you are starting out.

No matter your training, if you are just starting out in design not only do you have a ton to learn about the practice of design, but you still have not solidified your own fundamentals. Your teachers have given you tools and processes of design, but you have yet to apply them in a real life scenario.

This is frustrating to you. You have applied them in projects of your own; school or otherwise. The key difference between hypothetical and real world applications of design is that not all real world projects will check all of the design process boxes. Some will have been checked for you. Some are on tight deadlines that prohibit you from taking all the steps that you would usually prefer to take. Some don’t have the budget for the kind of research you need. More often than not you will have to work with less than. You will have to make compromises constantly. You will have to pick your battles and know how to win the ones you choose.

Designing for a hypothetical project is like designing in a vacuum with monopoly money. The key to success is revisiting the fundamentals of design process. Why do you create personas? What kind of information does it provide, and why is that important? How does it influence your design?

I have seen portfolios where the designer has checked all the boxes for no other purpose than to show that they did. One in particular featured personas with very specific demographics like gender and age. When asked why he collected that specific data and how he applied it, he became very flustered and said that he was not sexist.

In the case of his product, age and gender were not important. These can be useful demographics to capture in certain cases, but in this case they weren’t. All it did was show us that he did not truly empathize with his users. He did not respect the diversity of his clientele and applied the demographics simply because someone told him that is was good design practise to do so.

This is just one example of the ways in which we can better educate ourselves and hone our design practise, especially when starting out. Read books, blogs and portfolios, and always remember to ask questions. Challenge your ideas and the ideas of others so you can better understand yourself as a designer.

2. Be confident in your skills

You have spent most of your life developing your skill set. You, my friend, are a skilled individual. You have a method of approaching a complex problem that is completely personal to you.

Know your skills. Own your skills.

You may just be starting out in design, but you have a background already. Whether that is school, or work experience in a different field, you have been learning and growing every day of your life. Now you have to ask yourself: how do my existing skills translate to design?

I was an actor before I was a designer. Most people think that that is a large leap to make, but what they don’t understand is the nuanced ways in which acting and design are similar.

As an actor, I needed to intimately understand a character. I needed to know who they were, what were their dreams and what were their faults. I had to empathize with them, even if they were completely different from me. I had to take that knowledge and find a way to communicate it to an audience.

Sound familiar?

These skills translate well when I am trying to understand my users. But more than that, they help me when I work on a team. When I am collaborating with another designer, or developer, or project manager I can use my existing skill set to communicate and collaborate effectively.

Now that’s not something I learned in a bootcamp.

I also had existing skills in problem solving, public speaking and writing. These are all skills that make me a better designer.

No one knows you better than you. What are you good at? Break that down into its parts. How can those skills translate to design?

3. You know your skills, so what’s your specialty?

Now that you know what you’re good at and how it translates to design, you can leverage it to market yourself. Use that knowledge as ammo. It’s what’s going to make you stand out from your peers.

When a company is hiring, they are generally looking for someone to bridge a gap in their workforce. They know what their team needs, and you may or may not be the right person. But how will they ever know if you’re the right person if they know nothing about your true strengths?

Process is important. How you approach a design challenge is important. But your personal areas of expertise and skill is the difference between a maybe and a yes.

For me, it’s communication. My skills in empathy, speaking and writing make me a stellar communicator. That’s how I got my first job. My client was beginning an ambitious project and there was a major communication gap between himself and his developers. I marketed myself as a good communicator, was able to prove it to him when we spoke, and because of that I won my first freelance contract.

This works for any number of skills. Whether you are a great artist, have a keen business mind or speak multiple languages, there is a company out there looking for someone like you. The key is to help them find you.

4. Uplift your portfolio

I’m sure you’ve heard it before, and I’m here to say it again:

You are a UX designer. Apply your skills in UX as you design your portfolio.

Ask yourself the same questions that you would ask yourself at the beginning of any new project. Who are you designing for? What information do they need? Where would they expect to find that information? Why do they need to know that information? How might you give them what they need effectively?

When I was first starting out, I reached out to design leaders at some of my favourite companies. I wanted to pick their brains about their design teams and the future of design, and I wanted them to get the chance to speak with me. I knew, as I searched fruitlessly for my first permanent job, that if someone would just agree to speak with me that they would see that I had so much to offer.

I met with one such individual, a director of design at a company in downtown Toronto. He brought me into his office and we chatted for a while about the company and his design team. I asked about the structures of work and the hiring processes at his company. After speaking with me for a bit, he suggested we look over my portfolio so he could provide feedback.

At the time I had seen many portfolios feature stylish cards with screenshots of the subject product edited onto a desktop or a mobile screen. On hover the card would reveal the name of the case study. I had copied a similar design into my portfolio, thinking that if it was working for them, it would work for me.

I never stopped to ask why someone would want to click on a case study. What would compel someone to sift through paragraphs of information without first knowing what they would get out of it?

This flaw was pointed out to me in that meeting. He suggested that I include some information up front about what skills the case study featured. What would he learn about me and my process?

That information was within my power to give long before someone decided to actually read my case studies. Better than that, providing that information in a user friendly way would improve the scalability of my portfolio. It would allow me to call out my strengths so the right employer would have an easier time finding me.

Just like a project never feels completely done, your portfolio is never finished either. There are always improvements that can be made. Check out other portfolios and see what people are doing. Ask yourself what you like and don’t like about their design choices. Use your skills in feedback and design critique. Learn to recognize patterns that look good on the surface, but that undermine the user experience.

User experience design your portfolio. Answer the questions I laid out above. And, most importantly, answer them in a way that tells people who you are, what kind of designer you are, and what kind of designer you aspire to be.

5. Why not freelance?

I mentioned in an earlier section that my first job was freelance. When I graduated from my bootcamp, I was ready to hit the ground running. I sent out so many cover letters, I had a folder on my computer full of the versions I had sent out to different companies. My portfolio went through two full redesigns. I wanted to work. I felt qualified. I had a valuable skill to offer, and no one was going to tell me that I wasn’t good enough.

So, I set up an Upwork account. I wasn’t the only one from my bootcamp cohort to try this, but where my peers were labeling themselves as beginners and being gated from joining the Upwork community, I labeled myself as an intermediate designer.

I want to be clear: I did not, at any point, claim to be able to do work that I was not able to do. I never marketed skills that I did not have. I knew my worth, and I was going to prove it.

I was allowed onto Upwork, and I created a very vague profile. I continually lost out on contracts until I realized that my profile wasn’t marketing to my strengths. Shortly after shifting the focus of my profile to highlight myself as a great communicator, I won my first contract.

Freelance work can come by many different avenues. I chose Upwork, but I had friends that won work by word of mouth, and some who reached out to specific small businesses that they felt they could help.

The point is that you have something unique to offer. If you know what that is, you can position yourself to find work that fits your skill set. It’s not just about being a great designer and knowing your standard design processes. Design whenever you can, always be learning, and never give up on yourself.

Be tenacious. Be unapologetic. Someone out there is looking for a designer just like you. You just have to make it easy for them to find you.

5 bits of advice for Product Designers just starting out was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It all began with a search for a pair of pants. I found a pair that I loved, and when the associate told me that the pants were out of stock in my size at this particular store, they offered to send me properly sized pants — and asked for my email address. When retailers ask for my email I generally decline to give it to them. Why? I HATE marketing emails. In this particular instance, however, I had no choice but to divulge my personal information with my purchase so they could send me my pants.

That evening I received an email from the store, and I opened it in case it had something to do with my pants. I was delighted to find that the message was asking my permission to send me marketing emails:

The message included a list of benefits that would come with opting into the mailing list, and a clickable button for the purpose of confirming my subscription.

As a user, I was so happy that I had chosen to do business with them. I loved that they weren’t taking my purchase as an excuse to send me a billion emails. As a consumer, this simple email made me want to do business with them again. I didn’t opt in (again: I HATE MARKETING EMAILS), but they were more likely to get my patronage again because they had shown transparency and respect.

As a UX designer, I marvelled at the design choices made on behalf of the company. They were generating trust in their brand, and clearly stating benefits to the user. In my experience the biggest issue with retail marketing emails is that they never add value to my life — just spam to my inbox. Unless I’m a HUGE fan of the store and want to know each and every time they have a sale going, there really isn’t any point to receiving electronic flyers. But this particular retailer had benefits that went along with becoming an ‘insider’: I would receive a welcome offer, birthday offers, exclusive promotions, free alterations and early access to stock in exchange for the simple act of confirming an email subscription.

I deleted the email without confirming, and the next day I began to receive marketing emails from the store.

.

.

.

Wait, what?

Consent

Under Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) businesses are bound to receive (and record) consent from the people to which they distribute marketing materials. This seems pretty straight forward, but it’s more complicated than you’d think initially.

Receiving consent from someone means that person X has said ‘yes, you can do that thing that you want to do.’ But in the case of the retail email that I received and deleted, at no point did I say ‘bring on the marketing emails!’. They had taken the time to ask for consent, and I had not give it to them. So were they in violation of CASL?

Well, no.

CASL recognizes two forms of consent: implied and explicit. The scenario above in which person X says ‘yes’ is explicit consent. After attaining explicit consent, businesses can market to you forever, or until you give explicit dissent (i.e., actively unsubscribing from a mailing list). Implied consent can be attained in a couple of different ways. If you inquire about a business or the services they offer, this counts as implicit consent, and that business can market to you for 6 months or until you give explicit dissent. Additionally, simply making a purchase from a business counts as implicit consent. In this case, the business can market to you for 2 years or until you give explicit dissent.

So in my retail purchase anecdote, the store in question had already received implied consent from me, and had been green-lit to email me for two years. Their kicker was the email they sent asking for my permission to receive marketing emails: if I had clicked that ‘confirm’ button, they would have had my explicit consent and could market to me forever.

Those sneaky bastards.

User Experience

After my encounter with CASL, I returned to work and was assigned a project related to CASL implementation. My workplace was taking steps to become CASL compliant, and it was my job to consider the user experience of our approach. In many ways, CASL is very straight forward, but when it comes to storing thousands of email addresses and their corresponding consent status, things begin to get tricky.

Consider my experience as an example. I did not have an online account with this store, and when I immediately unsubscribed from the mailing list upon receiving their campaign messaging, they were obligated to record that the individual associated with my email address had given explicit dissent to reception of marketing emails. But what would happen if I made another purchase or created an online account? These are both forms or implicit consent, but under CASL my explicit dissent should override any future implicit consent they receive from me.

To make it more complicated, what if I shut down my email address and started to use a new one? It would make me fair game again because they don’t market to me, Jenna, they market to my email address. Since I’ve used new contact information, they have no information stored about my consent status regarding marketing emails.

What if, when I changed my email, I also updated this information in my online account with a retailer? The business would have no data about the consent status associated with the new email address. Furthermore, if I have not made any new inquiries or purchases, the business would have neither consent nor dissent. So when I log into my account and look into my settings, what does the interface tell me about my mailing preferences?

What if someone else began to use my old email address? This person may not know who has used the address previously, but businesses will have information stored about the email address and its linked consent status. There is no way for the business to know that there is a new person, and potentially new preferences, associated with that email.

What happens when the person who inherited my old email makes a purchase with a business at which I had used this old email address? All the business will know is that the user associated with the address has previously declined reception of marketing emails. But does the email they sent me asking for permission count as marketing under CASL? Perhaps they can call it a transaction dependant email and send it every time someone makes a purchase regardless of their saved preferences. This would give the business the best chance of gaining explicit consent.

These were some of the challenges that greeted me when I took on my CASL project. The trouble was balancing multiple and competing priorities: attending to the wants of the user while also accounting for business needs and CASL. If we made certain choices, did that put us in grey areas of the legislation?

As someone predisposed to HATE marketing emails my job required me to put that aside and think objectively. There were bound to be users who shared my views, but there were also undoubtedly others who had something to gain from marketing emails.

Conclusion

Simply put, the marriage of business needs with user-centric thinking is a puzzle. There are solutions to make everyone happy, but it takes advocation and collaboration from negotiators on both sides. It also takes respect. Representatives of the business must understand that it is the user that propels them forward and helps them grow. Transparency and trust are a huge part of the creation of meaningful relationships of any kind, including those between a person and a corporation. Those of us who are tasked with representing the user in business conversations must also balance our user centric thinking with a growth mindset. There is a middle ground to be found.

Legislations like CASL are instigating amazing leaps towards this middle ground. It’s incredible to think that prior to 2014 it was kosher for businesses to market to anyone without regard for the extent of their consumer relationship with the business. Because of legislation like CASL our junk folders receive fewer emails a day. I’d say that’s a worthwhile cause and worth wading through complicated scenarios.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Big thanks to Matthew Gartner for being my editor!

UX & CASL was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Standing on street corners trying to convince passers-by to buy whatever you’re selling is arguably the worst job in the world.

It doesn’t matter what it is that you are selling: whether it’s an experience or an item, whether it’s free or not, blindly casting a net into a crowd will rarely yield desirable results. But what’s the problem with that, really? Your product is great. Just about anyone can use it, so shouldn’t you be selling it to anyone and everyone? Probably not.

Basic business sense will tell you that you need to know your demographic: who is your product for? How old are they? How much do they make in a year? What’s their highest level of education? These questions need answering. Once you have your responses, do you then have empathy?

Well…..no. Demographics are like statistics. Who you are is not 35 years old. Who you are is not your diploma/major/college degree. You are a person (I hope) with behaviours, preferences, histories, failures, successes, dreams and needs. You are an incredible anomaly — there will only ever be one of you. I’m sure you share many similarities with people your age and with your fellow alumni at your alma matter, but you undoubtedly have differences too. Demographics do not satisfactorily take these things into account. Because your users are not numbers. They are people.

So you’ve sketched out your business plan: you know your user demographics, you know — very generally — who you’re building for, and maybe you even have personas. Your team has taken a shallow dive into the lives of your ideal user, you’ve conducted some interviews, and you know what pains your average user. You know some of their likes and dislikes, and you have created an amalgam based on your strenuous interviews and surveys.

So is this empathy?

I would argue that it is not.

Well, what the hell is empathy?

“Empathy is a powerful tool. You don’t have to have experienced things yourself to be able to feel empathy.” — Lewis Baumander

Over many years of screen and stage acting, I never encountered another acting coach quite like Lewis Baumander. He was brilliant. He never let ego get in the way of his teaching practice. He encouraged us to prove his theories wrong, and to find the science in everything.

There is a longstanding acting technique called Method acting. It is founded on the idea that an actor must experience something before they are able to convey it truthfully. Actors become famous for their dedication to the Method. They will throw themselves into a role and allow it to take over their lives. But is it necessary to experience something first hand in order to relate to those affected by it?

People have always been storytellers. Before Netflix and the written word, we have been passing stories down from generation to generation. Stories serve to entertain, to instruct and to aid in reflection. Stories have the power to make us laugh, to make us cry, to make us angry and to make us pensive. Stories invoke thought — they add meaning to our lives. We tell stories of everyday things to each other. Our personal stories are what we share with friends and family. Even without the theatrics of film, just listening to a story can envelop you. We can immerse ourselves in stories that are not our own. We can play them out in our mind. We can feel what protagonists feel. We can hurt because they hurt.

This is what it means to truly empathize: we do not need to have bled to feel pain, we do not need to have lost to feel sadness. As humans, it is our ability to empathize that helps us create meaningful connections with each other. As designers, it is our responsibility to make meaningful connections with our users — or, in other words, to empathize with them.

Empathy in Design

It is not enough to know what our users’ pain points are. We must also be driven by a need to minimize that pain. Business models are incredibly important to keep sight of, but we must also wholeheartedly design for our users. Users will remember a company that truly cares about them, and demonstrates a desire to improve user lives and ease user pains. If this can be achieved while maintaining good business sense, then your company is golden.

So what does this really look like? It begins with effective user research. Your company is there to solve a problem. Most entrepreneurs will know what this problem is before they begin. While it’s great to have an idea of the problem you want to solve, if you really listen to your users, their real needs might surprise you.

I set out to create a prototype of a fitness app that would revolutionize the way we view the industry. I was constantly being bombarded by apps that featured an ideal body type. These phrases “get fit” and “lose weight” seemed to yield the same definitions to these companies. I felt crazy for being of the opinion that personal fitness cannot be determined through body type alone: genetics lend such a great hand in outward appearance that a person might have the “ideal” body type, but may have never set foot in a gym. My goal was to change that perception. I wanted to encourage a larger sampling of people to focus on their fitness using body positive models to demonstrate exercises, and no mention of ideals or weight loss. When I delved into user research, I found that my assumptions were a little off.

It turned out that models with six packs were not holding the average person back from seeking improved fitness. In fact, it was terrible habits and habit building technique that stood in my users’ way. How was I able to discover this? Empathy and an open mind.

Before I hosted user interviews I had a problem to solve: places of fitness were not inclusive to all body types and all fitness goals. I even had a solution for this problem in mind. Despite thinking that I had all the answers, I put my assumptions aside and asked very general questions. What does your average day look like? What is your definition of healthy? Would you call yourself healthy? Why or why not?

By opening myself up to further possibilities, and listening to and empathizing with my users, it didn’t take long for me to see a pattern form. My desire to help my users, and my empathy for their struggles allowed me to pivot my product and to make something better for them.

This is how we use empathy in design. By listening to the stories of our users and being open to the possibility that everything we know is wrong, we create products that are better for our users and, in turn, better for our businesses. Ego has no place in empathetic design. Our users have problems, and they want products that will help ease their struggles. They want to tell us their stories, to share their opinions and to make connections with us. If we allow for this, and we create opportunities for them to do this, we will be taking the first step towards empathetic design.

Most importantly, we must listen. We must open ourselves up and allow their stories to envelop us. From there every design decision must be made with our users in our minds, and in our hearts. When we design for them, we design with empathy.

Empathy in Design was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A few months after graduating from a bootcamp found me at a Toronto Meetup for designers. Five local designers were chosen to talk about their path to UX. This involved sweeping generalizations and a glaring lack of specifics.

“I went to school here and then I got my first job here” left something to be desired for those of us struggling through a job search. Cool, but how did you get that job? Did you search through job posting after job posting? Send so many cover letters that the copies earned their own folder on your computer? Did you have to redesign your website three times? Did you struggle at all? No? Just me? Sweet.

One of the presenters included a timeline on her presentation slides. She hadn’t been in the game too long — only a few years. She already held a senior position at her company. Seemed aspirational. (Note to self: go talk to her after the presentations). Her timeline revealed that she had attended the same bootcamp as I did! Amazing. So if I played my cards right I too could have that kind of job security.

I made a point to go talk to her after the presentation, and was beaten to the punch by someone who I recognized to be a current student in the bootcamp I had just completed. I stood politely to the side to wait.

“So you went to Bitmaker?” the student asked.

“Yes.”

“As someone currently in a senior position, would you hire from a bootcamp?”

She paused before answering. “Honestly? No.”

….

….

I’m screwed.

She cited her reasoning. “I’ve come to know what to expect from people who apply out of bootcamps. It’s very cookie cutter. Bootcamps teach a prescribed process, and I rarely see graduates breaking the mould. In an interview, I know what they’re going to say before they do.”

She was not the first perspective employer I came across that was hesitant about bootcamps. Bootcamp graduates, in my completely unbiased opinion, get a bad rep. She was, however, the first person I’d come into contact with who had attended a bootcamp and still harboured those negative preconceptions.

So I’m here, young ones, to share with you the truth about attending a bootcamp.

The Beginning

I gave up a lot to go to Bitmaker. And I wasn’t alone. Every single one of my classmates had left something behind to be there. It was like ripping out pages from our life stories to start fresh. We were raw, but we were there, 100%.

I left my dream behind. The thing that I had worked towards since childhood. The thing that I had bled for, cried for, taken terrible minimum wage jobs for. I had sacrificed so much of my life for that dream. But I left it behind for a fresh start. For my chance at something tangible.

It’s important to stress this because, in the eyes of employers, we are like newborns. I’ve been talked down to, and belittled. But my career did not begin with this bootcamp. I am whole heartedly and unashamedly the sum of my parts. I have a university degree. I got my first job when I was 16. I am no stranger to the workforce. I have a multitude of skills born from years of sweat. And I am not alone.

I chose a bootcamp over a degree for many reasons. The most pressing, perhaps, was that I had already been there. I was not willing to walk backwards. I may have been starting again, but it was in an attempt to move forward. A bootcamp was supposed to be intense, immersive and incredible. I was ready to throw myself off of that cliff. To embrace the hardships and the teachings and to give myself completely to this new knowledge.

I don’t for a second pretend that 10 weeks of schooling have taught me everything there is to know about UX Design. I had skills going in. Bitmaker taught me to apply those skills to the basic principles of design. From there it was up to me to find a company willing to see me through further growth.

Many companies I have been applying to explicitly mention the desire to hire an applicant who is willing and excited to learn. Someone who does not pretend to have all the answers, but who is set on finding them as they work. I am such a person. Especially in an industry like technology, I know that the learning will never end. It’s one of the things that drew me to UX Design in the first place. I never want to be stagnant. I want to constantly move, to change, to adapt. Life would be boring any other way.

The Middle

Bitmaker was amazing. For the first time in my life, I liked school. We would be privy to 3 hour lectures each morning, and they never once lost my attention. I don’t know if this was a product of my inherent interest in the material, or if it was good teaching. I think it was a combination of both.

We were incredibly lucky in our primary instructor. Ahmed was passionate and eager. He was smart, and he cared about our journeys. I will always be grateful to him for all that he gave to us. His love for design was infectious.

Every day we were given at least one assignment to complete based on the lecture. This was my element — I learn by doing. I revelled in the opportunity to practice the principles that were being taught to me daily. I never once struggled to complete my assignments. Even as they grew more and more difficult.

But this time, I was the strange one.

People were dropping out because of the workload. It was too much — we were learning an incredible amount of information every single day, and before it could really sink in, we were being asked to apply our learnings on softwares that were brand new to us. This was too much for some people. I acknowledge that I am an anomaly. I loved it. There was so much coming at me, and it was exciting. I had been stagnant for so long. It was like standing after a long flight. I could run. And run I did.

I won’t for a second say that I was the best in the class. Far from it. We all had natural skills that aided us in certain lessons. My greatest asset was that I was efficient. This allowed me opportunities to iterate beyond the prescribed tasks. This is also where the cookie cutter metaphor goes to die.

Because of our diverse backgrounds, we all had such different perspectives to bring to each task. We had already developed methods for approaching a challenge. We were not raw cookie dough to be moulded. Rather, we were a harder, less yielding substance to be whittled. We were fully formed already. Our properties were not changing, they were simply being altered.

I revelled in my natural ability to problem solve. UX Design began with a problem, and that was like music to me. In everything I had done up to that point in my life, I had developed my skills for empathy and logic. I was an incredibly efficient communicator. I was told by the staff at Bitmaker that they had rarely seen someone with my level of soft skill. They told me it would take me far.

Others had a knack for visual design. Watching them work only served to teach me more. I began to develop the ability to break a design down to its parts. To figure out what made a great design great. I learned from my peers and they, in turn, learned from me.

The End

10 weeks went by faster than I ever could have anticipated. Despite this, I felt ready. I have always been prone to imposter syndrome, but for the first time in my life I felt qualified. I had found something that I was good at. It was tactical — UX Design involved so many of the skills that I already possessed. It was simply a matter of reimagining. Bitmaker helped me lay the foundation to begin construction on my hard skills. I felt confident that I could continue down that path.

In many ways, Bitmaker tried to prepare us for the hardship were were going to face upon graduation. They warned us that we would likely be out of work for 3–6 months. They gave us a method of job searching with a particular emphasis on networking. But nothing can really prepare you for unemployment.

I have been unemployed before. I am no stranger to financial struggle. What I was unprepared for this time was the intense feeling of frustration. I felt qualified. I felt capable. Employers felt differently.

No one would give me the time of day. I received email after email citing my lack of experience. Could they not see that I had experiences beyond UX Design? I’d never shipped a real project before. But I had done work that paralleled. But I’d never shipped a digital product before. So I did freelance work. Well one project barely counted as experience.

This is the risk of taking a bootcamp. Getting through it is one thing, but once you’re out, you’re out. Many bootcamps will stress their outcome programs as a source of support through your job search. But in my experience, the best support should be accessed through your peers. They share seats in the same boat. At times, our oars would disappear. We were floating; drifting in our search for an employer who would talk to us. Someone who would look past our limited relevant experience to our prior experiences. Someone who would talk to us to find out who we were and where our skills lay. In short, we needed someone to take a chance on us.

It’s a mantra that I hear myself repeat to people who inquire about my job search. “I just need someone to take a chance on me. I know eventually someone will take a chance on me.”

And there are those who inherently doubt bootcamp graduates. They might believe us to be bred the same, or perhaps that we have little to offer a company. They would be wrong.

Bootcamps exist to fill a void in the workforce. It serves not only the students, but the industry. In 10 weeks, they provide the job force with people who are dead set on proving themselves. The people who graduate from bootcamps have mismatched pasts that they anchor in new teachings. They give everything to enhance those skills, and to learn new ones. They press pause on their lives and devote their sanity to forge a new path.

To some, we are less than. We are carbon copies or a half-baked teaching. Those are the people who have not given us the time of day. If they did, they would know how wrong they are.

TLDR: Bootcamps provide a vital service to a rapidly growing industry. They do not seek to churn out perfect, fully realized designers, rather, they provide eager audiences the tools with which they may build a career. Bootcamp graduates often get a bad rep as people fail to see them for what they are: a sum of their parts.

The Truth About Bootcamps was originally published in NYC Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.