My learnings after 3 paid UI/UX design internships in my college
I recently gave exams for my final semester in college. And during my 3 years of graduation, I have tried to make the best out of those 3 years. I see college time as a golden opportunity for your network and growth as an individual.
And with the Covid-19 spread everywhere, quarantine helped me in a way for that. I had more time to give to my side hustles, learning new skills, networking, and so on. Let’s discuss more of that in detail.
Those of you who know me can tell what I am going to cover in this Article. I proudly tell my story to others, that way it keeps me motivated, and who knows someone else might get a motivation boost for themselves as well.
What to expect in this article?
- How I got into UI/UX Design
- My Sauce to getting internships
- Conclusion
How I got into UI/UX Design
My journey started with blogging back in 2019. I built a blog website using WordPress named ajaydigital.com (expired now). As I continued working on that website, I learned a lot about Elementor and how styling work.
That got me curious and I started watching Youtube videos for Elementor. It landed me on a Youtube video by Livingwithpixels. There I got to know about Adobe XD and how it is used to design websites and apps. I slowly tried my hands on Adobe XD. it felt really fascinating to be able to design interfaces that others might use.
I had no idea about UI/UX before getting to know about Adobe XD. That’s when the real story begins.
My Sauce to getting internships
Thankfully, there is a plethora of resources available online to learn UI/UX Design. Both free and paid options are there. I took as many courses as possible and applied my learnings in the real-time. That’s what is important.
Just watching the tutorial might make you feel like you are making progress, but the real learning happens when you try it hands-on. You’ll find that you forgot some shortcuts or steps that were supposed to be there.
But even after all those materials and practice, I remember how hard it was to get my first ever paid internship. I had applied to dozens of applications on Linkedin and Internshala. But none of them reverted.
It really frustrated me a lot. Then, I decided to create an action plan on how I wanted to go about it. I sat for 5 hours straight reading articles and watching Youtube videos on how to set myself apart from the crowd.
I got 3 learnings out of that:
- Add some basic knowledge of coding to your toolbox. This advice helped me a lot in setting myself apart from the crowd. I learned the basics of HTML and CSS to understanding how layouts and styling worked behind the scenes. It helps you a lot in communicating easily with your Developers when you are working on real projects.
- Create a shareable portfolio. Your portfolio should be easily shareable with the recruiters. Those days are gone when you had to carry a physical file or send a PDF document to your recruiter. It is really tedious for them to access those documents. First, they have to click on the link, then download it, and then scroll by themselves to find what they need. Do them and yourself a favor and create an online portfolio for yourself. You can use Behance, Notion, Dribbble, and Instagram as a portfolio.
- Include concept projects in your portfolio if you don’t have the real ones. Never got a project before to work on? No worries, you can work on a conceptual project. No recruiter is ever gonna reject an applicant because he/she has a conceptual project. Everybody starts like this. You can visit websites like GoodBrief.io to get some dummy project briefs.
Conclusion
After completing my graduation now, I have got multiple offers for Full-time UX designer role. Having 3 internships in your resume right after your graduation gives immense strength to your portfolio as well as your resume.
Apart from my full-time job, I also plan to share my learnings with everyone on the web. For that, I am planning to put out more content on My Instagram page, Medium, and start a newsletter as well where I will share Top tools, Top articles, Project briefs and much more.
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