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PODCAST

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX, Product Design, UX Research

Sarah Doody from Career Strategy Lab

Welcome to the Career Strategy Podcast, with Sarah Doody, a UX Researcher & Product Designer with 22 years of experience who helps UX and Product people design their careers. You’ll learn how to advance your UX or Product career including how get hired in UX, stay hired, get promoted, and build a personal brand and visibility. You’ll also hear no BS tips to optimize your UX resume and portfolio, navigate your UX job search, and prepare for UX job interviews so you can stop being invisible and be

business careers

All Episodes

00:57:59

195: UX Hiring Insights: Steve Durgin, From Candidate...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/10/05

UX hiring decisions are less scientific than most job seekers assume. Steve Durgin found that out firsthand, first as a candidate, now as the one doing the hiring.Steve is the founder of affinityUX, a research led innovation and product studio that helps companies find friction in their products and build experiences people actually care about, using methods like jobs to be done and outcome driven innovation.Steve came from a background in social work and human services, went through Career Strategy

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00:52:01

194: UX Hiring Insights: Marc Aquino, Senior Product...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/09/28

UX design burnout doesn't come from working too many hours. That's one of Marc Aquino's hot takes in this episode, and once it sits with you, it's hard to keep blaming the hours.Marc is senior product design manager at Deel, a global HR and payroll platform helping companies hire and pay employees and contractors in over 150 countries. He's spent 15 years in the industry, seven of them building and scaling design teams across startups, scale-ups, and global companies.His take started with a LinkedIn

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00:20:35

193: Should your UX portfolio approach change based...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/09/21

UX portfolio approaches based on seniority or role. That question lands in Sarah Doody's inbox nearly every day. Does the approach actually need to change? This episode answers a real question from a listener targeting director level UX roles, wondering if the portfolio frameworks taught inside Career Strategy Lab only apply to individual contributors.The process for building a strong UX portfolio doesn't change based on your job title. That's the real answer buried in a question Sarah gets

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00:45:02

192: UX hiring manager interview with Sylvain Maretto

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/09/14

UX hiring managers are looking for three things right now, and UX isn't specifically one of them. Not exactly reassuring if you've spent years polishing your process pages. That's the reality Sylvain Maretto lays out in this episode, and it's coming from someone actually reviewing applications, not theorizing about them.Sylvain is the director of design at Ecosia, the search engine that funds tree planting with its profits. He's spent 15 years building and leading design teams across Berlin, Tokyo,

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00:11:53

191: UX Portfolio Myth: Your personality is not what...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/09/07

Adding personality to your UX portfolio is one of the most repeated pieces of advice in the industry, and Sarah closes out her five part portfolio myth series by explaining why it's actually working against you. Personality and passion don't get you the interview. Proof does. That's the whole myth this episode takes apart.Sarah argues that trying to inject personality into a portfolio usually competes with the actual content instead of supporting it. A font chosen to feel "personal" can make a case

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00:09:55

190: UX Portfolio Myth: You can't show projects that...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/08/31

UX portfolio projects that didn't launch or didn't go as planned are exactly the kind of work recruiters and hiring managers want to see, not the kind you should hide.This is week four of a five part series on UX portfolio myths, and this episode tackles the belief that a canceled, pivoted, or unsuccessful project doesn't belong in your portfolio.Sarah pushes back on this directly. Smart hiring managers understand that things go wrong in real UX work all the time, and a project that didn't launch

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00:14:37

189: UX Portfolio Myth: Your case studies don't need...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/08/24

UX portfolio case studies don't need to walk through every single step of your process, and trying to do that is actually working against you. This is week three of a five part series on UX portfolio myths, and this episode tackles a big one, the belief that every case study needs to show the whole end to end process for a project.Sarah argues the opposite works better. Going deep into just one or two parts of a project beats trying to cram in everything you did, especially for projects that spanned

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00:18:56

188: UX Portfolio Myth: Your UX portfolio does not...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/08/17

UX portfolio websites eat up months, sometimes years, of time that could be spent applying, and Sarah argues you don't need one at all. This is week two of a five part series on UX portfolio myths, and this episode takes on one of the most repeated pieces of advice in the industry, that your portfolio has to be a website.Sarah's counter is a portfolio presentation instead. It's free, doesn't require learning new software, takes weeks instead of months, and can be duplicated and tailored for each

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00:12:49

187: UX Portfolio Myth: You don't need 3 - 5 projects...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/08/10

UX portfolio advice is full of numbers that sound official but aren't backed by anything. This episode kicks off a five part series on UX portfolio myths, starting with the most common one: that you need three to five projects before you can apply.Sarah says the opposite is true. One strong, detailed project beats five surface level ones every time. She backs this up from an interview she did with Alexander Zeh, former Head of Product Design at ManyChat, who said he'd rather see one or two case

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00:26:54

186: Why Positioning Is The Most Underrated Skill in...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/08/03

Positioning is quietly becoming the skill that separates people who stand out in UX and product from people who get left behind, especially now that AI can build almost anything in seconds.In this episode, Sarah makes the case for why the ability to build fast is no longer the advantage it used to be, and why knowing what's worth building, and framing it well, matters more than ever.Sarah traces this back to a belief she used to hold herself, that good work speaks for itself. It doesn't. She shares

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-1:18:-4

185: The one thing you can't DIY in your UX job search

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/07/27

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

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00:39:17

184: Natalie got hired for a Director level UX role...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/07/20

Landing a Director level UX role doesn't happen by accident, and neither does becoming the person on the other side of the hiring table a few months later.Natalie Kurz did both. She spent six months on a UX job search after a layoff, landed a Director of Experience Design and Content role at NextGen Health, and within months found herself reviewing over 600 applications for her own open positions.Natalie spent 25 years in UX, most recently as a people manager, before being laid off last May. She

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00:19:45

183: 3 Things I’d Do If I Was Laid Off From a UX Role...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/07/13

Just laid off from a UX role? If you’re tempted to open LinkedIn and easy-apply to every role with UX in the job title, don't do it!In this episode of the Career Strategy Podcast, Sarah Doody breaks down what she would NOT do after a UX layoff (e.g. play the numbers game) and the 3 things she’d prioritize instead.You’ll walk away with a clear order of operations: get specific about the UX role you want, get visible where hiring actually happens, and start showing up for the work you want to be hired

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00:10:53

182: 6 ways you'll get hired in UX faster with Career...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/07/06

This episode is a full walkthrough of how you'll get hired in UX faster with Career Strategy Lab and exactly what happens after you join. Sarah shares what genuinely helps UX people in their job search, after coaching UX and Product people since 2017 and running Career Strategy Lab since 2021. What You’ll Learn in This Episode:✔️ The six things that help UX and product people get hired faster✔️ What your first 30 days inside CSL look like✔️ Why positioning comes before your LinkedIn and resume✔️ How

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00:13:28

181: How UX people are leveraging relationships to...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/06/29

The UX job market is rough right now. If your LinkedIn feed looks anything like Sarah's, you already know that. But while everyone is complaining about the market, almost nobody is focusing on the part of the job search they can actually control.In this episode, Sarah breaks down why the job market feels so impossible right now, including the surprisingly outsized role that one-click apply has played in flooding recruiters with hundreds of applications per posting and what you can do about it

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00:58:59

180: UX Hiring Insights: Eric Shumake on Healthcare...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/06/22

Most UX professionals spend years trying to be good at everything. Eric Shumake, founder of HXR Labs, spent 20 years getting really good at one thing and it kept opening doors he didn't expect.Eric is a principal UX researcher and a well-known voice in healthcare UX. His career has taken him through companies like Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Myriad Genetics, and AliveCor.He also teaches, including a popular course on Maven on breaking into healthcare UX, and has been exploring how AI

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00:31:16

179: Feel Burnt Out & Invisible in Your UX Job...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/06/15

Re-entering the UX job market after years away is harder than most people expect, especially when you're doing it alone.After 12 years at Constant Contact, growing from associate interaction designer to principal UX designer, Emmanuel relocated, took a deliberate career break, and then tried to re-enter a job market that had completely changed. He spent three months rebuilding his portfolio alone, then another three months applying and hearing almost nothing. His LinkedIn hadn't been updated since

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00:25:38

178: Stop Mass Applying: How Carlos Got Hired in UX...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/06/08

If you're sending dozens of applications per day and you aren't hearing back, this podcast is for you.Carlos was applying to dozens of UX jobs a day, swiping through listings like a job board version of a dating app, and hearing almost nothing back. Out of hundreds of applications, he got two responses and both were rejections, but he knew he was a good designer.In this episode, Carlos shares how he went from mass applying with no traction to landing a product designer role at Covenant Eyes and then

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00:22:33

177: Getting ghosted in your UX job search? You're...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/06/01

Are you getting ghosted in your UX job search despite knowing you're qualified? When you have 5, 10, 15 years of experience and you're applying to 20+ jobs a week without hearing back or you're not making it past the first round, it's natural to start thinking you're the problem.You're not. You're just unpositioned.In this episode, Sarah makes the case that ghosting is usually a positioning problem, rather than a skills issue. Positioning is how you communicate what you do, who you do it for, and

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00:59:12

176: Stuck at the Final Round of UX Interviews?...

Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX,... ·

2026/05/25

What do you do when you have years of experience, you're making it through rounds of interviews, but you still aren't getting offers? For Andrew, the answer was scrapping his entire UX portfolio and starting over.Andrew had been applying to jobs for a year. He was making it to the final interview rounds at companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google, but he wasn't getting offers. On paper, everything looked great. He couldn't figure out what was missing.Eventually he did. After six years at GE, he'd

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