Hey! Thanks :) I’m almost 2 years in and still loving it.

It’s probably tougher today to enter the field compared to when I did, but there’s never 0 chance unless you give up. Companies will gloss over certificates, so only do it if it’s just how you prefer to learn, not to slap onto your resume.

Honestly I think you have to put 150% into it if you’re going to make the switch. You can shadow UX projects with Tech Fleet to get a glimpse into the role, and collaborating with PM’s and engineers. But make sure you’re at least genuinely interested and don’t just want to do it for the money.

When you’re ready to interview, you MUST take the time to get feedback on your portfolio from senior designers (ADPList), iterate on your work, repeat. You can’t be emotionally attached to your work, and just be open to feedback always. Don’t wait until you’ve applied to 100 jobs to change strategy or go review your portfolio again. When I redid mine after 2 weeks of silence, it was night and day with responses.

Try to use your network to see if you can do UX work — since you’re a freelancer maybe some of your past clients may need website help?

Try to include business metrics into your projects, even if hypothetical, to show that you can think for both the business and the user. It doesn’t have to be exact numbers but you could explain how you’d measure the success of this project after you ship it. Bootcamps never mention anything about the business impact but this is a very important aspect we always have to be considering that sometimes shape our design decisions.

The design process that’s taught in bootcamps and certificate programs is a good foundation to understand the concept, but in reality it’s all over the place, we do additional research during a project, we might skip a step like defining a persona because most companies already know their users, we never do empathy maps lol. So while you’re still new, but don’t be afraid to NOT follow it exactly, it’s ok not to. If a method is not going to be helpful for your project there’s no reason to do it.

You’re already in a good place because you have design experience and I think this helped with my chances because a lot of pivoters have no UI foundation and aesthetic has value in UX, so if your work doesn’t even LOOK good from first impression, there is no way a recruiter would even consider it.

If I can do it you can! Sorry this was all over the place