Let’s face it. This space can be pretty overwhelming. You see so many people doing incredible things, with an endless feed of new tools and new techniques. How can you make a career change? Is it too late?

All these questions can be nerve-wracking. As someone who moved from finance to design myself, hired other career switchers, and also mentors students through similar changes, I’m well familiar with the challenges that come with navigating new career paths.

How do we make it work? What are the common success strategies? In this article, I’ll share 3 successful career transition stories that I witnessed (or lived!) along with the insights and lessonswe can learn from them.

Escaping the rabbit-hole: Grace’s Story

Grace was a bootcamp student from San Diego, CA who initially studied digital marketing and wanted to move to UX/UI design. As the course progressed, I noticed that she was struggling to keep pace. Grace was undeniably motivated, but falling behind a little bit more every week.

Half-way through the course however her pace changed. She managed to catch up with all the delay she accumulated, completed the curriculum and today she is a UX UI designer at a healthcare company, after doing a design internship and a bit of freelancing. So what happened?

As we reflected with Grace on her journey, I asked her one thing she wished she would have done differently. She said: spend less time trying to understand everything straight from the start. From one article to the other, she would end up spending entire afternoons going down internet rabbit holes, then feeling guilty and frustrated for not moving fast enough.

We know that it gets harder to change and learn new skills as we age… but I feel that we’re a lot less aware of the emotional consequences of this, and what it’s like to experience the discomfort of feeling out of depth.

But all hope is not lost, as we are still able to change! Some people may also need to keep learning throughout their lives as they have the curiosity to explore multiple interests at once.

This is why I much prefer this way of seeing things:

💡 What’s the lesson from Grace’s story?

The discomfort of learning something is a universal experience, and it’s part of the journey. To force yourself to move on, you can also time-box yourself, especially if you’re following a structured curriculum — it’s been made this way for a reason. And if you’re tempted by yet another article on user flows, just bookmark it: you can always come back to this resource later when you need it.

Getting your foot-in-the-door: Onsi’s story

Onsi is a dedicated father of 4 from Paris, having worked many years in my company as a product owner. He decided to move to UX design after working with a designer from my team. I rejected him twice before finally hiring him, and today he is one of the best designer of the team! What changed my mind?

The first time I said no, I wasn’t convinced by his motivation: switching career can be difficult in terms of ego. You won’t be recognized for your past expertise anymore. I told him to discuss and spend some time with my designer, to see what the job is really like, goods and bads. After a while he came back, and I still said no. This time it was because we did not have the bandwidth to train him on technical skills. So he trained himself: he would replicate screens from his projects in his free time to practice, think about how a UX designer would approach the new features in his backlog, etc. His commitment won us over.

Without realizing it, Onsi was gradually climbing up the pyramid of knowledge. First, he wasn’t aware of which skills he lacked initially, then after chatting with me he worked on them to demonstrate that he can persevere and learn them. He became what we call “consciously competent”:

Reaching the “unconscious competence” level can be amusing as you start to see the world differently. For example, I sometimes find myself analyzing the composition or visual misalignments of a website… even when nobody has asked me to and I was only browsing as a regular user!

Another key moment in this journey is when we first become conscious of how much we don’t know: the “conscious incompetence” stage, which happened to me recently in a different field:

As you can see with this horribly painted wall, we climb multiple pyramids of knowledge in life. This is why I like to tell people who transition careers that they actually don’t start from scratch. A lot of competencies can be transferred over from past experiences, even if it does not sound obvious at first. For example, I have a former chef on the team and I’ve never seen him stressed or late on any task!

💡 What’s the lesson from Onsi’s story?

Don’t fake it until you make it. This approach doesn’t work with experts as they will notice: it’s their field of expertise. Instead, practice. Do the hard work. Get someone from the field (maybe a mentor) to help you understand where you stand in the knowledge pyramid and advice on where to progress next. They can also brainstorm with you on how to best talk about your past experiences.

Embracing the non-linear: Morgane’s story

The last story is mine, Morgane from France and living in London for the past 11 years. I started as a trainee in finance and ended up being the first managing director in design of my company. I usually explain that I’ve always been interested in digital design in life, that it was a natural evolution.

In truth though, I remember having no clue in my first professional years about my “career”. I was so used to following paths paved for me by the education system (go to school, find an internship, get a full-time job), that for the first time in my life, I was treading uncharted territory.

The best advice I got in my early career years came from my manager Pascal who had been with the company for a long time: take the time to take time, and you’ll find a way along the way. In mentoring sessions, I’ve been repeating his advice to worried graduates: sometimes we can be impatient and we end up putting too much pressure on ourselves.

It’s also worth noting that we sometimes also get fixated on what the next step should be, and this prevents us from seeing other paths. This survey from Interaction Design Foundation is fascinating:

Some moves may seem more natural than others: from graphic design, development, or marketing. But people also switched from mathematics, air traffic control, and sports. In my own team, I hired designers who previously studies foreign affairs or biology. Yes, they may have taken more time to be exposed to UX, but that just means that they successfully managed to ‘unfix’ themselves.

💡 What’s the lesson from my story?

Reframe your thinking: you are not stuck, you just haven’t been exposed to other paths yet. You can be intentional in being exposed to new opportunities: engage with people outside your professional bubble, get an external view of where you are in your career with a career coach or a mentor. Network, network, network.

Yes, career changes are challenging.

However, if you consider that hiring managers often look beyond technical skills, your willingness to change your own path speaks to your ability to solve problems, your passion for the field, capacity to learn and adapt.

Stay committed: legitimacy comes along the way 🗝️.

Resources to go further

This article is based on a masterclass I created for Interaction Design Foundation (the recording can be watched on demand). The following resources can also help you further on your journey:

• Onsi’s article on his expectation VS reality of moving into UX design
• Wiki page on the four stages of competence
• Excellent book on managing Big Feelings to understand we are not the only ones struggling
• Podcasts to get exposed to design conversations: UI Breakfast, User Defender, 97 Things (each episode features a new guest who discusses their career trajectories)
• Practice design: Daily UI, UXtools, UXChallenge
• Finding mentors or design people to chat with: ADPList, MentorCruise, Meetup, LunchClub