<aside> 📝 This page is in perpetual draft. Last updated March 2024 by Erin White.

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First up: leaving and healing

• Finding your purpose after academia - amazing resource from H. Alpert Abrams
• Vocational awe: the lies we tell ourselves By Fobazi Ettarh
• Quit lit: compendium of posts from people who left academia
• What it means to leave by me

What do you want to do?

• What are you good at?
• What do you want to do more of?
• What do you require?
• Do you want a job or a career? How much heart/soul can you put into your work?

More resources: former librarian Alexis Logsdon wrote an incredibly helpful series of posts on planning your career transition.

Learn how to tell your story

Before you start applying for jobs, think about how you’d answer the question “tell us about yourself” in 1-2 minutes at the start of an interview. Tie your past work and interests to the thing that you want to do next. That is the story that you will tell your interviewers, your network on LinkedIn, and most importantly yourself as you’re moving through the job hunt process.

Resource: how to tell your story and enter the UX field from Michele L’Heureux

Gather the goods

What artifacts do you have that can help you tell your story?

Talk to people

Ask friends and friends of friends for informational interviews. People are so very generous!

Give up on the idea that your career needs to have a trajectory