Sarah Doody from Career Strategy Lab
188 episodes listed below
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Welcome to the Career Strategy Podcast, with Sarah Doody, a UX Researcher & Product Designer with 22 years of experience who is helping 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 seen as an in-demand UX professional. Get ready to UX your care...
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Sarah Doody makes UX hiring legible by translating recruiter and hiring-manager judgments into practical career decisions.
Sarah Doody treats a UX job search as a problem of evidence: what recruiters notice, how hiring managers scan portfolios, and which signals make a candidate worth another conversation.
A hiring manager may never reach your portfolio's buried punchline; Sarah Doody wants you to know why.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A candid UX career conversation about collaboration, conviction, and the label of being difficult.
This conversation keeps to a familiar UX career tension: how to stay collaborative without backing off when something feels off. Sarah and Melp work through the label of being difficult or a diva, and the turn in meaning is clear enough to stick.
Practical UX career advice that makes portfolio work and confidence feel usable.
Sarah Doody centers the episode on a plain but persistent problem: UX and product people may know how to design for others and still struggle to shape their own careers.
A sharper portfolio, not a total reset, keeps the search pointed.
The episode treats a UX job search as a problem of fit, not volume. The clearest advice is to trim the portfolio down to the work that matters most, drop the case study that muddies the picture, and make LinkedIn easier to find for someone searching for a profile like this one.
A practical UX job-search reset centered on feedback, trust, and the right kind of support.
The piece treats the UX job search as something that can improve through feedback, sharper portfolios, and stronger case studies, with each one used to build trust rather than decoration.
Clarity matters more than panic when a job search starts to become automatic.
Erica's search is framed less as a triumph than as a reset, with Sarah pressing the practical question of what kind of work actually fits instead of forcing a role for its own sake.
A UX job-search story about packaging a case study, landing a fast interview, and learning more along the way.
The episode tracks a UX job search that turns a long case study into something easier to use in an interview, and that is where it lands best.
A practical reset for UX professionals who need a clearer way to explain who they are now.
Career Strategy Podcast frames UX job-search confusion as a kind of identity fog: the feeling that an older version of oneself no longer fits, while the current one still feels hard to name.
A practical read on what hiring managers notice in UX candidates.
Sarah Doody frames UX hiring around the signals that matter when someone is trying to move forward: behavioral answers, collaboration, ownership, and the ability to explain both what got shipped and how the work was handled.
Unhurried FT conversations about bosses, burnout and the office.
Sarah Doody talks with a guest who turns a long audiobook case study into a tight three-minute presentation.
This episode introduces a discussion on transitioning from academia to UX, featuring Ellen's journey to becoming a content designer at TD Bank, as part of a UX career coaching program.
This podcast segment introduces an episode featuring a senior UX designer's story of overcoming confidence issues and getting hired, as part of a Q&A with career coaching participants.
This episode segment introduces the first tip for saving time in a UX job search by creating reusable scripts and templates for common communication scenarios like thank you emails and referral requests.
UX and product people can design for users all day and still freeze when the project is their own career.
Sarah Doody talks with Ben Peck about the myths that still shape UX hiring.
A guest joins Sarah to talk through a change in how a UX career gets framed.
Sarah Doody brings back a Career Strategy Lab Q&A and sits down with Heather Kassar, VP of People at NARMI.
Sarah Doody brings Patrick Neeman in to talk about UX hiring from the manager side.
Erica lays out the layoff-to-next-role arc clearly.
Sarah Doody talks with Jared Treadley, a design recruiter at Shopify, about how design hiring gets filtered in a fast review process.
Sarah and Melp talk through what it takes to find and own a UX voice that does not vanish in the wrong environment.
Sarah Doody opens Career Strategy Podcast episode 140 with Mariah, a user researcher and experience strategist who spent about 18 months job searching for Copenhagen and joined Career Strategy Lab after hitting burnout.
Sarah Doody, a user researcher and product designer with 20 years of experience, closes a three-part series on diagnosing UX job-search problems by focusing on "stranger syndrome." She defines the issue as trouble building or nurturing relationships, from cold LinkedIn messages and referral requests to interviews that feel disconnected and posts that get little engagement.
Sarah Doody says UX professionals can “accidentally replace yourself” in the age of AI if they act like a task rabbit instead of a strategic driver.
Sarah Doody opens with a plain thesis: recruiters and hiring managers stay longer when a portfolio is easier to scan.
Sarah Doody frames Career Strategy Lab around UX career strategy, then opens a Q&A with Steven, who was laid off after 17 years at the same company.
Sarah Doody talks with a guest about the move into UX and the career shift that followed.
Sarah Doody says the UX candidate who gets the most interviews is not the one applying to the most roles, but the one positioning skills correctly across LinkedIn, resume, portfolio, and screener calls.
Sarah Doody talks with a guest about the point where his UX portfolio started getting in the way instead of helping.
Sarah Doody interviews Laura in a Career Strategy Lab UX job-search Q&A, and Laura says she went from a physician background to self-taught UX designer before landing a Cisco contractor role in about one and a half months.
Dan makes the case that UX hiring should start with thinking, not tools.
Career maximalism is when your job becomes a major source of your identity and your emotional state rises and falls based on work.
Sarah Doody opens a three-part series on diagnosing UX job search problems by naming the state she calls career identity fog.
Erin takes over the show to lay out three things people should focus on if they want to get hired in Q1 2026 while still in Q4 2025.
Sarah Doody explores career minimalism, a trend where people treat jobs as tools rather than identities to avoid burnout.
Sarah Doody teaches UX professionals how to position themselves as ideal candidates by shifting from feature-focused to benefit-focused communication in resumes, portfolios, and interviews.
Sarah Doody interviews Jonathan about his UX job search journey and how Career Strategy Lab helped him land a role as Executive Director of Web Experience.
Sarah Doody introduces her podcast and a coaching call episode about career strategy for UX and product professionals.
Sarah Doody shares a LinkedIn optimization tip that led to recruiter leads, emphasizing how to stand out in the UX job search.
Sarah Doody introduces her podcast and an open house episode where listeners share their career experiences and ask questions about Career Strategy Lab.
Sarah Doody explains why resumes need to be clear and concise to pass ATS and attract recruiters, and promotes a one-week resume sprint.
Sarah Doody discusses treating your UX research career like a product, emphasizing strategic career planning over just getting any job.
Sarah Doody shares career strategy advice for UX and product professionals, focusing on job search efficiency and mindset.
Sarah Doody explains how to stand out in the UX job market by being strategic and intentional, using the job search funnel concept.
Sarah Doody hosts alumni from her Career Strategy Lab to discuss their job search experiences and how they got hired in UX/product roles.