What do employers expect from UX designers?
I went over 150 job offers in order to determine the most valuable UX skills and traits in 2017.
Professional knowledge
How do you select the most relevant experience to highlight in your portfolio? Most employers look for experience in visualizing ideas and user testing.
Accessibility isn’t one of the often required competencies.
👉 0 % of these job positions require copywriting skills
What do industry surveys and reports say?
Data from UXPin enterprise UX industry report.
This correlates with job descriptions. Visualising, testing, and researching are the most important skills for UX designers.
Soft Skills
What soft skills do I need to improve to be a better designer?
70% of companies expect UX designers to have excellent collaboration skills. Roughly half require strong presentation and communication skills.
Surprisingly, analytical thinking and problem solving are mentioned in only 14% of ads. It probably goes without saying that a UX designer should be a problem solver.
Tools
No surprise here. There is no one leader among UX tools. Most companies don’t require specific software knowledge. Rather, they expect designers to be familiar with any wireframing and prototyping tools.
What do industry surveys and reports say?
HackingUI asked over 1,000 participants what design tools they use. Designers prefer Sketch and InVision.
Takeaways
- Most desirable skills: visualising concepts (wireframes and prototypes), testing, and research.
2. Tools aren’t important. What designers are capable of is important to companies, not what tools we use.
3. Don’t take job descriptions too seriously. Sometimes they are collections of random buzzwords. Too many companies describe unicorns even though they don’t need one.
Date of research: Summer 2017
Sources: Indeed, Just UX Jobs, Berlinstartupjobs, UX Jobs Board, Remote UX jobs, Uxjobs.cz, Behance.
