178: Stop Mass Applying: How Carlos Got Hired in UX and Promoted to Senior Product Designer

About this episode

Carlos shares his journey from mass applying for UX jobs to successfully landing a role and getting promoted within a year.

If you're sending dozens of applications per day and you aren't hearing back, this podcast is for you. Carlos was applying to dozens of UX jobs a day, swiping through listings like a job board version of a dating app, and hearing almost nothing back. Out of hundreds of applications, he got two responses and both were rejections, but he knew he was a good designer. In this episode, Carlos shares how he went from mass applying with no traction to landing a product designer role at Covenant Eyes and then getting promoted to senior product designer within the same year. He talks about what changed when he stopped treating the job search like a numbers game, how he used the same frameworks he learned in Career Strategy Lab to make his case for a promotion once he got there. Topics Discussed: ✅ Why mass applying isn't productive and what to do instead ✅ How to use the skills from your job search to land a promotion ✅ Why confidence in interviews matters more than having a perfect portfolio ✅ A portfolio website vs a portfolio presentation ✅ How research a hiring manager before your interview helps you stand out ✅ How the skills you learn during your job search transfer directly into…

People in this episode

Host: Sarah Doody

Guest: Carlos

Topics covered

• job search strategies
• UX design
• career advancement
• interview confidence
• portfolio presentation
• promotion tactics

Keywords

• UX jobs
• job applications
• career strategy
• product design
• interview skills
• portfolio
• promotion

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Covenant Eyes, Career Strategy Lab

More episodes of Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX, Product Design, UX Research

• 177: Getting ghosted in your UX job search? You're not invisible — you're unpositioned · June 1, 2026 · 23 min
• 176: Stuck at the Final Round of UX Interviews? Andrew Re-Did His UX Portfolio and Got 3 Offers (Including Blue Origin) · May 25, 2026 · 59 min
• 175: How to Deal with NDAs When Creating Your UX Portfolio · May 18, 2026 · 14 min
• 174: The Bar to Stand Out As A UX Candidate is Lower Than You Think · May 11, 2026 · 18 min
• 173: UX Hiring Insights: Jeni Bible, UX Manager at Home Depot, on How She Got Hired, What She Looks for in Candidates, & Presenting UX Case Studies · May 4, 2026 · 1h 2m
• 172: UX Hiring Insights: Alexander Zeh, Head of Product Design at ManyChat, on Building Diverse UX Teams, Scaling Design Teams, and What Makes a Portfolio Stand Out · April 27, 2026 · 55 min