#180 The state of job hunting in 2026
Honest UX Talks
This episode features a roundtable discussion with UX designers who recently navigated the job market in 2026. The participants share their
Key takeaways
- Anjali tracked 75 applications in a Notion document for her B2B sports betting role.
- Ula secured a senior position at EY by using an interactive FigJam whiteboard for her portfolio walkthrough.
Main topics
- Job search statistics
- Interview stages and processes
Notable quotes
The generalist is very important... But there has to be this final unfair advantage.
Conclusion
The episode provides practical, real-world evidence of how designers c
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) The market today says that you have to be generalist, right? But generalist can get you really far. It could get you to the very end. But then when it's like a comparison between you and another one, very often it's this final straw. That nugget of direct experience could get you actually to the finish line and get you an offer. And so the generalist is very important. The skill set we have today is very important. We have to work on all those skills. We have to always improve them. But there has to be this final unfair advantage, something that will... send you out from the crowd and make people want to actually hire you for this particular skill. Hello, hello, and welcome back to Honest UX Talks. My name is Anfisa, and today I'm not going to be joined by Ioana because today we have quite an unusual episode. And it is unusual because I'm actually going to streamline the recording or a session we had in the community with the members of the community discussing the current state of job hunting in 2026. So a little bit of the context. We did a session with the people who recently landed a job, mostly in Europe, and how this whole experience felt. What process they went through, what questions they have been asked from the hiring managers, when did they felt like they're actually landing this job. And also nuances on the mindset, application tracking systems, and whatnot. Really the details on how people are landing jobs today in 2026, what stands out, how portfolios work, and so on. So hopefully this kind of intro to our community sessions will give you a good idea about what to expect from the hiring process today and how to actually land a job from people who just did that. Thank you everybody who participated in the roundtable and hope that their insights will be helpful to you, dear listener too. Without any further ado, let's go and check out the intros from the community members and then discuss the questions. Hey everyone. Hey, good to have you. Let's talk about job hunting stages and process and all the messy middle in between. Great. So for those of you who is not familiar or who missed the description, the plan for today is to host a quick like a round table where with people who recently land a job, we will reflect on what stages people went through, what questions hire managers asked them, what was working, what was harder, et cetera. We'll go into... ups and downs of the whole process in 2026. I mean, most of the people who land a job in this roundtable will be from basically end of 2025. Alessia, she just landed a job like last week. Slightly more fresh perspective, but I don't think it changed dramatically in the last month or two. But that's the plan for today. So let's start very high level. Maybe... Each one of you girls can basically just quickly mention where they land jobs, like what type of a company it is, maybe what size, what level it is, like junior, middle, senior, etc. And just two words about the company that you landed the role in. So we know approximately like the weight of your experiences that you went Speaker 4 (3:00) through. So Speaker 2 (3:00) I'm gonna just kick it off. I don't know, let's start with Yaroslava. Maybe just a couple of words about the company. Okay, Speaker 5 (3:06) so just I landed in the end of 2025 and the company is basically like a travel agency. If you know what Kiwi does, so it's kind of similar, but they are popular mostly like in Spain market. And I landed as a mid-life product designer. Regarding the company, I think they're not a startup anymore. They've been like on the market 12 years maybe. So it's kind of like a B2C business like to customer. Currently, I'm working Speaker 2 (3:34) more with like travel. Perfect. Thank you. So we have middleweight role. B2C and definitely scale up, not corporate yet. Nice. How about you Anjali? Speaker 1 (3:46) My role, it's again a mid-level role. It's again called a product designer. So not a senior level role. Yeah, it's a publicly traded company and it is again a B2B solution in the sports betting industry. Amazing. Thank you for sharing. Speaker 4 (4:01) Hi everyone. I started my new job just one week ago. It's... Not very small, original Czech company, product company. They produce software since 1990. It seems like it's quite a known company here in Czech Republic. But there was no UX designer before. And I'm the only one and the first one jumping on the very legacy project. And Speaker 2 (4:28) the role is mid-weight or junior? Because I remember you could kind of be somewhere in the middle as well. Hard Speaker 4 (4:33) to say, being the only one designer in a team. Could be lead, if Speaker 2 (4:37) you will. Speaker 4 (4:38) Yeah, yeah, yeah. But actually, I have some help over there. There is an external designer, very senior, and he gives me a lot of help. Amazing. Speaker 2 (4:47) Thanks a lot. I think it gives a good idea around different UX maturities organization, as well as sizes and nature of business, B2B or B2C. Great. Speaker 3 (4:57) Okay, so I ended up working in enterprise and right now I'm working at EY. I don't know if you guys have heard of it. We are kind of a corporate, you know, enterprise, but... There are technicalities that made me unable to call us like, you know, official big corporate, but we have about 80,000 people hired around the world. So this is pretty big organization, right? But, you know, in terms of like legalities, there is some stuff. I don't know. Let's not dwell, you know, into that. But in general, this is an enterprise model. Like the department that I work in is called consulting. This works a little bit like a software house, you know, like a software house inside enterprise, right? So we're having this design department in this consulting department that consists of 22 people in Poland because I'm located in Poland. I didn't say that before. Each and every one of us of those 25 design people We are fetched and we can say borrowed, you know, into different projects, right? We are like assigned to different projects and we work on them separately. And the teams we're working with on our projects, the teams are very much international. So we're working a lot with Europe, but also with India, with United States. So this is very like international type of work. Yeah. So this is the general bit. Amazing. Thanks Speaker 2 (6:20) a lot. And your role is middleweight, right? Not senior? Speaker 3 (6:24) Yes. My title says senior. I was employed as a senior, but this is due to like salary ranges that are incorporated in this company because simply they do not have like anyone between junior and senior. Like this is junior, you know, you can be junior and then you can be senior. There is no like mid-weight role. Speaker 2 (6:46) Wow. Okay. Speaker 3 (6:47) So because, yeah, it's a bit weird, but this is how they have it, you know, around there. So, you know, I wasn't a junior much, but, you know, I'm also not a very much experienced senior. So I am a senior, but like a, you know, young one. That's how Speaker 2 (7:02) I can call it. Do you guys also have this levels, like level one, two, three, four? Speaker 3 (7:06) Yes. Yes. Okay. So Speaker 2 (7:08) you should be having level three, no? Speaker 3 (7:09) Or four? No, it's like you can be junior one to three and you can be senior one to three. Got it. Got it. Right. It's been different. Speaker 2 (7:18) Senior one. Speaker 3 (7:19) So this is the lowest possible grade for senior. This is mine. And this is basically translated as a midway designer. Right. But I wanted to clarify it. Speaker 2 (7:28) Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Very interesting. I haven't heard about skipping the sort of role. It Speaker 3 (7:33) is weird, right? I guess this is due to this consultancy nature. You know, that you can have junior slash staff assistants and you can have those seniors and no midway in between. This is my wild guess. You know that this is due to this nature Speaker 2 (7:48) of the company. And it's also great. They also have juniors if there is a project relevant for that. That's great. Yeah, Speaker 3 (7:55) yeah, yeah. They have juniors. A lot of juniors, actually. I'm Speaker 2 (7:58) going to actually kick it off with a little icebreaker question. If you had to describe your job search in three words, what would they be? Just three words. Speaker 5 (8:08) Chaotic, like hopeful and anxious because I had like lots of anxiety, especially between all of the stages. Thank Speaker 2 (8:18) you. Thank you a lot for sharing this. I think it's many people feel this way. Speaker 1 (8:22) Anyways, how about you Anjali? Yeah, I think I really agree with what Yaroslava said. So again, it was bittersweet and initially a lot of anxiety, but Initially, it was frustrating, but towards the end, I would say a lot of excitement as well. Oh, that's amazing. That's good Speaker 2 (8:42) to hear at least. How about you, Alicia? It's Speaker 4 (8:46) going to be one sentence, but more words, I guess. After overcoming my imposter syndrome, it was easy and fast. Speaker 2 (8:54) So climbing the wall of the imposter syndrome, that's the key word. Speaker 3 (8:58) Okay, great. Three words. I would say it was long. So definitely long one. And it required a lot of persistence. This would be the second word. And the third one would be filled with new insights, like about who we as designers really are. This is pretty broad answer, but I hope it matches. No, it's Speaker 2 (9:22) great. It's great. Perfect. Thank you. It's very interesting. Like you see how we all perceive these processes and what it teaches us. Thanks a lot for sharing. Now, let's actually talk a little bit more about like... reality that you went through? And maybe we'll start with like a statistical question. So if you did statistics, great. If you don't, roughly, how do you feel? How many companies did you apply in maybe the last round? Because I know some of you have been going through multiple rounds. For example, Yaroslava had like a roulette of applications, landing, moving on, landing, moving on. But like in the last job hunt application process, how many companies did you apply to? Speaker 5 (10:00) Actually, I wasn't looking actively, as I said to you, Anfisa, because I was thinking, okay, maybe I'll apply and I'll finish my Speaker 4 (10:09) portfolio. Speaker 5 (10:10) I'll start working on my portfolio. And every time when I saw some nice job, I was thinking, okay, maybe it's this last job which I apply and I stop doing Speaker 4 (10:20) this and I will end up with my portfolio. Speaker 5 (10:23) But honestly, I did not apply. that many vacancies, maybe 15, like 20, you know, because I was like interested only like in some specific just fields like travel, you know, like whenever I saw like some interesting like vacancy, I was like trying to give it a go, you know, just like to see what happens. Speaker 2 (10:41) That's the spirit. I had the same experience also. Sometimes I'll throw also a couple of nuggets of my experience because I also started the job last week. So maybe I'm also a part of this panel. I didn't think about it. But also I wasn't looking for a job. I was at my company previously for four years. I started having certain frustrations, which made me start thinking, but I wasn't prepared at all. And then suddenly I also saw this like, you know, jungle. I think that's like a job board that matchmates you for. your experience with similar companies. So I kind of receive those like suggestions every, I think, week. And there was one which was like very direct to my personal experience. And I was like, oh, okay, let's just see what happens. And also wasn't very intentional application and just went straight forward. Speaker 1 (11:27) All right, moving on. How about you, Anjali? Yeah, I think I do actually have a statistics because I have this whole Notion document in which I was. writing down each and every job role that I was applying for. So the last round, I had about 75 applications. Speaker 2 (11:43) Yeah, that's the reality of junior and middleweight roles these days. Got it. Thanks all for sharing. How about you, Alessia? Speaker 4 (11:50) As I have small kids, I was not looking for a job like every day that I would send my application and so on. Just from time to time, when I saw something interesting, I would send some application or... It's interesting that some recruiters contacted me. I would say the statistics were like about five applications during the last half of the year. I had one more interview in a company and a couple interviews with recruiters. And most of the recruiters, they answered me like, we were thinking that you have a high level, like you are not a junior, you are already like a middle or senior. After seeing my portfolio, my profile, all of them were saying that I'm like a more experienced designer. Speaker 2 (12:40) Amazing. I mean, that's what we also had the discussion, right? That when you already have transferable experience and then you sort of lift that portfolio level a bit higher, suddenly you're perceived also as in like next level, basically, which is also a good sign because for Alessia, practically you didn't have like in-house experience, but you had. projects here and there with clients and some outcome experiences yeah okay so Speaker 3 (13:04) I went through quite a lot processes before I landed this job like I got to about five or six of the second stages right when I applied and then I got an answer you know to be on an interview and to For example, sometimes do the take-home challenge or the live challenge. So this like five, six situations for me, it was like I applied 40 times and I got about six like replies and invitations for interviews. The job that I finally landed. What you have to know is that the process in this enterprise is a little bit weird because first they have to accept you as a designer in general, right? To become a part of this. design team, these 25 people that I said that are based in Poland. But then what has to happen is that you have to successfully go through recruitment process for a specific project that you will work on inside this enterprise, right? So this is what happened to me. I had this first round of interviews for the company itself and I passed it. And when I passed it, then I had two rounds of interviews with clients. in order to get a project. Does that make sense? Speaker 2 (14:20) Absolutely. Actually, interestingly enough, I know that Meta, I don't know how it is right now, but used to be during the COVID times, they actually, for some reason, have the same process, even though Meta is a product. But because they have so many products or so many departments, they also first just filter you as like, can you fit in? to here in the company and then can you fit into the particular product and you sometimes can go through multiple rounds of interviews with different products until you find your product so yeah it's not only in the consultancy sometimes it's also in the product yeah Speaker 3 (14:49) so this is exactly what happened in my case right and when I landed the project then I was eventually you know I got an offer but just you know it for me it happened after I secured the project itself you Speaker 2 (15:02) know Got it. Did you have already an experience or some sort of green light that we want you? We just now will start looking for the right project for you. Was it something like this? Speaker 3 (15:10) Yes. Yes, it was something like this. I knew that they liked me there. I knew that they wanted to hire me. But what they needed to do first is find the project for me. And I think it was also due to the seniority, you know, that I wasn't a junior. I was supposed to be employed as a senior. And seniors cannot sit on bench, you know, for so long. Speaker 2 (15:31) Expensive, of course. Right. Speaker 3 (15:32) Yeah. It doesn't add up, you know, for them financially. Right. So they have to find me a project to utilize me and my workforces at the very beginning. Right. And from the very start. Makes sense. Great. Speaker 2 (15:45) The last point here was actually how many stages you went through in your application process. Speaker 3 (15:50) Right. So first was sending the portfolio and the CV. Then I got an answer that they want to talk to me, you know, like the recruiter first HR type of thing. So it was that. Then I had a talk with a design lead for this Polish design team. And after that, I knew that they wanted me. So those were those stages. And after I had those stages concerning projects, for that I had two. So five, right? We could say, we could Speaker 2 (16:21) sum it up. No home takes, right? No sort of home take tasks? No. Oh, okay. Great. This time I didn't have Speaker 3 (16:28) home take, but for different applications, I did have two home takes and one live challenge. Speaker 2 (16:33) Ah, okay. Great. Out of those six interviewing processes you went through. Speaker 3 (16:37) Yes, exactly. Speaker 2 (16:38) I'm going to also quickly reflect on my process because also like, interestingly, I also went through the home take challenge. It seems to be the most dominant, the most like... popular pattern today because I don't think it was the case during the COVID times. It's not like something that was always happening. But in my process, since it was only one application and it went straight forward to the end, I went through also about five stages. One was recruiter, one was design manager, plus they invited a newly hired designer there. But this wasn't enough because I had a lot of questions. And this one hour, they interviewed me the whole hour. And I still had so many questions to ask them. So they said, like, book a time with us. Ask us the questions. Interview us. So I actually asked for another round of interviews where I interviewed them. So that would be third. Then they sent me home. From the very beginning, they mentioned there will be a home tech challenge in a specific sector. So I kind of knew what's coming. I was very surprised about how big of a home tech it was. It was very, very broad. I was not expecting so much work to be done. It was basically do the whole process in a couple of days. And there you go. Go for it. Everything needs to be there. So very big home