How to write a UX writer resume

Slater Katz -

So far, we’ve learned about the purpose of the UX writer resume, what makes a bad UX writer resume, and what makes a good UX writer resume.

And I bet you’re chompin’ at the bit to start writing your resume already. We have to strip your experience down to the bare bones.

See, most of what we’re taught about resume-writing just doesn’t work in today’s job environment. And to flip the concept on its head, we need to start our resume with a fresh piece of paper.

There are 5 steps to writing a UX writer resume that lands interviews:

  1. Make a list of every job and project you’ve worked on
  2. For each job or project, write down what you accomplished
  3. Run what you accomplished through a UX writing lens
  4. Use that info to create your “template” resume
  5. Customize your template resume to every job

Let’s dive in…

1. Make a list of every job and project you’ve worked on

This is your big ‘ol brain dump. Don’t worry about if a role or project is relevant to UX writing or design in general. We need to get everything down on paper to figure out what to keep, what to edit, and what to cut.

I’m going to walk you through an example through this whole lesson using the infamous Carrie Bradshaw.

If you’re not familiar with Ms. Carrie, she’s a journalist and main character in the TV Show Sex and the City. Figured that might be a good one for all you content writers and former journalists looking to make the switch to UX writing.

Here’s Carrie's big ‘ol (partly made up) list of jobs and projects:

Jobs:

  • Freelance writer
  • Writer at VOGUE
  • Columnist at The New York Star

Projects:

  • Hinge UX writing
  • Author of Sex & the City
  • Fashionista blog design

This list is pretty simple right now. Don’t worry — in the next few steps, we’re gonna flesh it out.

2. Write down what you accomplished

The key word here is accomplished. We’re not talking about your tasks or responsibilities.

Since the hiring team only looks at your entire application for mere seconds, we need to pack a punch, and the best way to do that is to succinctly summarize the impact you made in your role. That makes it easy for someone to judge if you’re interesting and relevant to learn more about.

If you tell someone what you did (list your responsibilities,) you’re blending into the crowd of everyone else in similar roles who have similar responsibilities. Not to mention, it’s hard to pick out why you mattered in your role. What did you actually do?

Here’s the difference between listing responsibilities and showing what you accomplished:

The accomplishment-driven description is someone you want to learn more about. What an impact they had on the company! Instead of telling what they did, they’re showing the reader the result of what they did, which goes much further.

So, for all of your jobs and projects, write down what you accomplished. This doesn’t need to be all neat at tidy yet. It can be one thing, or it can be 5 things. Again, we’re in brain-dump mode right now.

And don’t worry about making it relevant to UX writing just yet — we’ll do that in the next step.

Here’s what that looks like for Carrie:

Jobs

Freelance writer

  • Wrote 50+ articles ranking on page 1 of Google
  • Reached 1M readers and accrued 3M page views
  • Articles generated 100 leads in 3 months, achieving a 21% conversion rate

Writer at VOGUE

  • Launched the New York Style section, generating 1M page views and adding 100,000 newsletter subscriber in 48 hours

Columnist at The New York Star

  • Established a beloved love & relationships column with 10,000 weekly readers, significantly helping to maintain reader retention

Projects

Hinge UX writing

  • Increased user retention by 33% by auditing and redesigning Hinge’s core product’s UX content using my 20+ years of relationship expertise

Author of Sex & the City

  • Generate $500k in yearly revenue through selling and promoting my autobiography

Fashionista blog design

  • Redesigned Fashionista’s blog, increasing weekly active users by 16%, by creating a user-centric content strategy

3. Run what you accomplished through a UX writing lens

Now, we’re going to take our list of jobs and projects and what we accomplished and pinpoint how we can make them relevant to UX writing and tell it through a UX writing lens.

You don’t need to currently be a UX writer to make your UX writer resume relevant to UX writing.

I’ve said this before, but whether you’re currently a copywriter or an astronaut, I promise you there are ways you can make your resume relevant to UX writing and the design process.

You and Carrie definitely did some UX writing or UX writing-y things in your roles. We all do, again, whether you’re a copywriter or an astronaut. It just comes down to running what you accomplish through a UX writing lens.

How do you do this? Start with one job, and think, “If I accomplished this same goal as a UX writer, how would I describe it”?

For example, you might have done UX writer-ly things, like content audits, research, and using a user-centric approach, without even realizing it. They may not have been called “design thinking” or “content strategy” in your past role, but there’s a good chance the same principles apply.

Take how we can rewrite Carrie’s past through the lens of a UX writer:

Jobs:

Freelance writer

  • Converted 21% of leads by deeply empathizing with users and utilizing a research-backed approach to design content users craved

Writer at VOGUE

  • Designed the content narrative and launched the New York Style section, converting 100k net new newsletter subscribers in 48 hours

Columnist at The New York Star

  • Developed and ran a column with 10k engaged weekly readers using an empathetic content strategy, consistency standards, & rapid iteration

Projects:

Hinge UX writing (this one is pretty good, since it’s a UX writing project)

  • Increased user retention by 33% by auditing and redesigning Hinge’s core product’s UX content using my 20+ years of relationship expertise

Author of Sex & the City

  • Wrote an autobiography generating $500k in yearly revenue, utilizing user research, strategic content design, & a user-centric content strategy in the design process

Fashionista blog design (this one is pretty good, since it’s a UX writing project)

  • Redesigned Fashionista’s blog, increasing weekly active users by 16%, by creating a user-centric content strategy

4. Use that info to create your “template” resume

I’ve mentioned the concept of a “template” resume before.

You use your template resume as the starting point for every job you apply to. Since the best applications are personalized, having a template resume enables you to quickly customize each resume.

If you need a hand, check out what makes a bad UX writer resume and a good UX writer resume.

We’re going to use Carrie’s job descriptions using the UX writer lens to create our template resume.

You should use 3-line descriptions, not bullet points in your resume.

As a refresher, when you use multiple, long-winded bullet points, the reader has no way to prioritize the most important part of each role. What should they take away? What’s the one thing they should remember from that experience of yours? Because more than one take-away isn’t realistic in the way this world works.

Here’s what Carrie’s template resume would look like:

You might have noticed I didn’t include Carrie’s book under “Projects.” There wasn’t enough space, and it was the least relevant, so I cut it.

Feel empowered to do the same — prioritize your most relevant experience, and save the rest just in case you need to whip it out later.

This is just the beginning… Now, we’re gonna make this template resume relevant to a UX writing job 👇

4. Customize your template resume to every job

Every resume and cover letter you send should be customized. It might take you 15% longer, but you’ll be 115% more relevant to every job you apply to.

To customize your template resume for a job, take the job description, and start looking for keywords. Keywords could be:

  • Tools they’re looking for you to know
  • Channels you’ll be working on
  • Traits they’re looking for in a UX writer
  • Kinds of projects you’ll be responsible for
  • Skills they’re looking for the ideal candidate to have

And just like you would with a good book, start marking it up and underlining (or making a list) of these keywords. It’ll look something like this:

Which will leave you with a keyword list like this:

  • Thoughtful, well-designed experiences through words
  • Listening to our customers
  • Diving into research
  • Writing with empathy
  • Clean, clear, and enjoyable
  • Write clear, thoughtful, and consistent copy
  • All the points on a user’s journey
  • Navigation
  • Landing pages
  • Emails
  • Notifications
  • Marketing copy
  • Transform big-picture thinking and open-ended ideas into actionable next steps
  • Communicate a complex product
  • Incorporate research and deep empathy
  • Experience writing for the web and mobile
  • Successfully improved KPIs
  • Figma

Don’t worry, you don’t need to use all of these keywords. Some can go in your resume, some can go in your cover letter, and some you can just forget about.

The idea is to make your template resume as relevant as possible, but that doesn’t mean unnecessarily keyword-stuffing.

Here’s how we can transform Carrie’s template resume to be more relevant to the job description:

That’s it! Just do this to your resume and cover letter (more on that later) for every job, and you’ll see a big, big change.

Happy UX writing 🖖