Ultimately, I think the best career advancement is in your *expertise*. So, what kind of UX job is best for you? There's no one right answer. Ultimately, it's finding *your bridge* to your current job. Where is that bridge? Can you stay with your current employer and start transitioning to do UX? Do you have certain skills or certain domain knowledge? I'm pretty domain-agnostic, but you might be expert in anything;
some aspect, but not in UX. So, take your *domain knowledge* and then you can have an easy transition to UX within that domain. A most important skill that you need is your *storytelling*. You're starting somewhere; you've got a story right now, but there's no UX in it or very little UX in it. So, you've got to *put UX in your story*.
You've got to put UX, embed UX and make your "story" one of a *UX professional*, even backdating some of that stuff, in a way that's *true*. You've got to be honest – no matter what, you've got to *be honest*. A dishonest story will fall apart. But you can still perhaps frame your story in a UX background, if you're doing something now that's like UX and you can reframe it in a UX mindset: 'I was working on a product. I was increasing, improving user satisfaction, X, Y, Z,'
*put that frame on your story*. That frame will need to be in your resume. That frame will need to be in your portfolio. Your *resume* will have to reflect those UX buzzwords that we talked about: user experience, design, research, users. How are we going to embed those words in the resume in a way that says, 'Hey, you know what? I do UX; I understand UX.
It's meaningful to me.' And your *portfolio* needs to have *product* of some kind that you work on. Your *framework* needs to be: 'I do research; I do interaction design.' – for example; that's just one; that's kind of one common framework where you say, 'OK, looking at these puzzle pieces, here's the research-like things I've done.' How can you do that now? How can you do that with what you've done and say,
'How have I investigated? How have I evaluated?' What can you do? I mean, it's kind of a rhetorical question – it's something to think about. What can you do? Interaction design. 'OK, I understand what interaction design is now, so how can I frame my background that way? I've done design.' – you know – 'I wish that I could involve more users, but I've done kind of some artistic things. I've done some design things. How can I provide that frame?'