Design and Product

Hello! My name is Rushan, I’m a product design specialist at Red Collar and a mentor in an online school. This is my first time writing here :)

I often communicate with designers who have just finished their courses and are starting to look for a full-time job. Many of them aim for product roles, arguing that the decision comes with higher salaries, a focus on thinking, and measurable goals and results.

I’ve decided to share a few thoughts on this.

1. Getting into IT is not as easy as it used to be. Skills that were enough for Middle positions three years ago are now only suitable for Junior levels. The competition has significantly increased, making it harder to enter the world of design, and the narrowing funnel to product roles makes the process even more complicated.
2. A product designer is a mix of analytics, visual skills, and background with a broad perspective. Developing all these competencies takes a lot of time.
3. You can develop skills needed for product work in agencies. Improve your visual style, learn to justify decisions, acquire skills in working with hypotheses and testing methods — in short, constantly enhance your portfolio and skills.
4. Behance is not suitable for creating product cases; it focuses only on visuals. A great product case can be made in Notion — it will be easier for you to describe solutions, and for readers to absorb the content (sadly, I’ll have to assemble a new portfolio too).

The key message of this post: products are cool, but when taking your first steps in design, it’s important to aim not only at them. You can gain relevant experience outside of product teams as well.

That’s the situation.

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