How to navigate this terrible job market? Niche down.

How I landed a Product Designer role in 2 applications.

After over four years of working freelance/contract, I entered the full-time job market for the first time this year. I had seen the layoffs, the astronomical applicant counts, and the barrage of pessimistic takes about the state of product design all over LinkedIn. I braced myself for a painful, prolonged process.

To my surprise, this was my quickest job search yet. I landed a role that checked all my boxes, and it only took 2 applications to get there. This is pretty atypical, and in addition to what I’m sharing below, I can attribute much of this to the experience and network I’ve built over the last decade and the privileges/advantages I’ve had in life that have allowed me to do so. So I don’t want to act like I have a magic bullet solution that will work in every circumstance.

Let’s start with acknowledging reality: It objectively sucks out here, and corporations are preying on our precarity. Job searching should not be this convoluted, confusing, and exhausting. Workers should not be getting laid off while CEOs make 200x their wage. Marginalized workers should not have to fight stereotypes about our merit. We should not have to pay for services that tell us whether or not a robot can read our resume. There should be more junior roles. There should be more unions. Applicants should not be ghosted or put through 10 rounds or asked to do free labor.

There is so much outside of our control, but since many have been asking me for advice, I wanted to share my approach here with the hope that I can make things the tiniest bit easier.

Why Niche Down?

To start, let me define what I mean by “niche down.” When I say “niche down”, I mean finding the narrow slice of the market where you can beat out all of the competition. The narrower your niche, the fewer people you compete with, the higher likelihood you have of getting the job.

I don’t have a fully baked opinion on the current state of product design (that‘s a different article), but I do believe the field is evolving, and the problems that need to be solved are getting increasingly specific. For many of us generalists, the breadth and flexibility of product design drew us to the field. Now, to play the game effectively, we need to capitalize on what makes us unique.

I’m proposing a well-rounded model of specialization (beyond “T-shaped“, etc) that encompasses not just craft but also domain expertise (and more), as traditionally non-technical industries — like healthcare, education, and government — grow their technical teams.

Conventional wisdom teaches us:

• List as many skills as we can justify on our resumés
• Appear strong at everything and weak at nothing
• Submit as many applications as we can to maximize the number of callbacks
• If we aren’t getting bites, learn even more skills

Niching down takes the opposite approach. It’s about narrowing our focus so that we can devote our limited time and energy to the most relevant opportunities and give each process the meticulous, individualized attention we hope to receive in return. In other words, quality over quantity. Depth over breadth.

I couldn’t avoid the 1,000-resume stack, so I had to find the stack where I would be number one. Not the top 250. Not the top 10. The top one.

Niching Down Doesn’t Feel Good (At First)

Niching down felt unnatural, disorienting, and uncomfortable for me. One week, I reminisced on the warm fuzzies from helping customers in CX, another week I’d consider how UX Research felt like second nature to me, then I’d remember how much I enjoyed entering a flow state in Figma as a Product Designer. I’m a big advocate of embracing multiplicity. I’ve also spent a great deal of my career in a more curious, exploratory headspace. So the idea of defining myself narrowly not only felt like I was ignoring large swaths of myself but also decreasing my possibilities, which felt counterintuitive in a tough job market.

But it helped to consider this through the lens of branding and sales. I wasn’t turning people away; I was just making a conscious choice about how I wanted to present myself during a particular sprint in the job search, knowing I could always go back and change my approach.

Edge

Many people who make career transitions tend to view their pre-pivot or non-tech experience (or even their pursuits outside of work) as irrelevant. This could not be further from the truth. Your journey is your edge! It’s easy to have an inferiority complex when your past job experiences don’t look exactly like the job you’re applying for; I am telling you to resist this at all costs. A unique background is an opportunity for some really memorable storytelling. Focus on the transferrable skills, acknowledge the gaps (aka “growth opportunities”), and own the crap out of your story.

For example, having a background in education can make you well-suited to UX writing because you’re great at translating technical concepts into plain language. Retail and hospitality translate to CX because you understand the front and backend processes that facilitate a smooth customer journey. Lawyers have an edge in legal tech, nurses in health tech, musicians in creative tech, and so on…

We are all human, and exploring different career paths is a sign of curiosity, introspection, and initiative, not a lack of discipline. Again, I could write a whole piece about this topic, so I’ll just leave it at that!

How I Niched Down

I made decisions on where to focus first by considering:

• What problems have I consistently solved?
• Where do I have strong network connections?
• What do I genuinely enjoy and see myself doing for years to come?
• What industries and job titles are growing?

I had lots of conversations with my colleagues to learn about their domains and how they found their niches (or how their niches found them!). And I learned there were lots of ways to niche down. For example, my partner is a software engineer who works at early stage creative tooling startups but can work any part of the stack. I have another friend who is a UX Researcher who focuses on developer advocacy for B2B software but isn’t tied to a particular industry. In many cases, a niche developed organically by following a particular thread across multiple engagements.

It’s not about finding the narrowest niche per se; it’s about striking a balance between passion, experience/expertise, and feasibility that resonates with you and makes you uniquely memorable. The goal is to think critically about what would make someone in my network say “Oh, I know someone who’d be perfect for this!” when they see a new job posting or, even better, when they speak to a hiring manager.

An Exercise For Getting Started

When I first started thinking about this, I took a variety of criteria and brainstormed possibilities for each one. My experience was quite varied, so I played around with lots of different combinations (and validated them with my peers) and ultimately landed on these bolded/starred options as a starting point for my first sprint:

Industry

• Creative
• eCommerce
• Fintech
• Gaming
• Government
• Healthcare*
• Non-profit
• Productivity
• Social media

Company Size

Preferences based on experience:

• Early stage startup
• Growth stage startup*
• Medium sized company
• Large/public enterprise

Business Model

Again, preferences based on experience:

• B2B* or B2C
• In-house* or agency
• Office, hybrid, or remote*

Role

I could sell myself as a number of things, but I decided to target product design for my search:

• Product Designer*
• UX Designer*
• UX Researcher
• Product Manager
• Customer Experience

Seniority

• Junior
• Mid*
• Senior

Problem Area

I found patterns in my experience that I could highlight on my portfolio:

• Accessibility
• Billing
• Design systems
• Developer experience
• Growth
• Internal tools*
• Mobile
• Monetization
• Onboarding*
• Personalization
• Scheduling*

The Outcome

From there, I spent many hours somewhat neurotically tailoring my LinkedIn, portfolio, and resumé to speak to these specific areas. Then, I turned on daily email alerts for new job listings and only applied to the roles that fit my criteria. In my first week of searching, I put in a grand total of 2 apps (with referrals). Of those 2, one was a form rejection and another led to an offer I could not have been happier with.

Leading with this particular cluster of niches would have gotten me insta-rejected from 99% of the job listings out there. But that was kind of the point. I was trying to find the 1%, the needle in the haystack.

A company out there is looking for their needle in the haystack too. Niche down, and help them find you.