Don’t Wait, Here’s Your Design Job-Seeking Plan For The New Year

It's a new year and routinely around this time of year in Australia, I talk to many designers who are ready for something new. They are tired after a long hard year in their current workplace or their contract is ending and job-seeking is the last thing they feel like doing. They say, “No one is hiring, we are going into Summer and I want to take the time off. I’ll look again in the new year. You know, in late February, when the kids are back at school.”

“Please don't wait! Waiting means you will be months behind.”

If you do find yourself feeling tired but want to get ahead of others in the market for the new year, think of your job-seeking as a series of small week or 2-week sprints, with an activity backlog. You can focus on activities that will make you match-ready. You don’t have to do them all at once, but scheduling a couple over two weeks means you won’t be behind or feel guilty about taking time off over the summer. 

Here are the four things you can schedule in job-seeking sprints to ensure you are ready to work in 2025:

1. Meet your network for coffee to see where the opportunities are and to make sure people know what YOU want. When an opportunity arises or budgets are being finalised, people will have you in mind.
   
2. Update your case studies from your work this year. Write, draw and diagram it while it is still fresh.
   * Do you have an amazing piece of design work you did this year?
   * A feature that shipped successfully?
   * Navigation: Did you negotiate with different people across an organisation?
   * A series of workshops that defined the direction of a product?
   * Research that found what users really needed out of your product?
   
3. Go to recruiters and see if there are any short-term contracts for organisations that may have underspent at the end of the year. Be ready to take a small job, because who knows what that connection could lead to.
   
4. Rework LinkedIn now! Write some posts, update your summary, and say you are open to work. Don't wait – when everyone else is celebrating the end of the year, an opportunity may come along because you were prepared with updated information, a story, video or blog post.

The new year is a great time to realise that you have a network, have completed great work in the last year and can set yourself up career-wise for your next move. Good luck!

If you want to know more about each stage and the decisions you make as a designer, you can buy the book Career Architecture at https://www.magshanley.com/career-architecture-book

© Mags Hanley

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