Showcasing Your CX Skills in your CV and Interviews
- Kristine Aitchison
- Apr 2
- 4 min read
Are you navigating the current job market? Have recent redundancies left you feeling uncertain about your next career move?
You're not alone. At our recent Career Club event ‘Storytelling CX in Your Resume and Interviews’ we brought together members of our CX community to discuss, connect, and learn from each other to help navigate the current job market.
The past 12 months have presented significant challenges for CX designers. This conversation highlighted the tools and insights that your peers are using to help them stand out and secure their ideal CX role.
We had many questions we wanted to ask the group, but in the end, we just let the discussion naturally flow. If you missed the event, that’s OK; we’ve summed it up below.
Optimising Your Resume for Recruitment
One attendee, who had experience in recruitment, provided valuable insight into how recruiters review CVs. She explained that agency recruiters typically spend 20–25 seconds scanning a CV to determine if a candidate is a good fit. They focus on key elements such as job titles, the initial skills summary, and overall relevance, quickly categorising applicants into groups (yes, no, or need more information).
She also noted that internal recruiters (those hiring within a company, such as HR professionals) are currently more active than agency recruiters. Additionally, she highlighted the growing use of AI in recruitment, where software scans CVs for specific keywords to streamline the selection process.
Building a Work Portfolio While Managing Confidentiality
A portfolio can enhance your resume by visually showcasing your work. However, in roles focused on customer experience (where success is often qualitative rather than quantitative), it can be challenging to create a compelling portfolio, especially when confidentiality is a concern.
One attendee highlighted the importance of maintaining connections with your professional network. These contacts can serve as valuable references or sources of insight when demonstrating your skills and experience.
Regarding managing confidentiality in a portfolio, attendees suggested the following:
Include a snippet of work as a visual aid and example, but don’t show the whole piece of work. Describe what the work was, the problem you were trying to solve, the approach you took, and share any outcomes.
Blur out private or sensitive information that you don’t want made public.
Share work that you know is available in the public domain.
Showcase a beta version of your work such as the drafts of your journey maps or blueprints.
Password protect your portfolio or ‘show’ your value by taking your laptop to the interview and providing a visual aid that you can take away with you.
The Use of AI in the Job Search
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in job search was a key topic of discussion. The attendees shared how they are using AI in their applications and to help prepare for interviews.
One attendee mentioned using AI to assess their fit for the role based on the job description and using that to tailor their CV and cover letter more effectively.Such as:
What keywords should I be including?
What do I need to amplify?
What are my top skills that I can bring to the role?
They shared that they use AI to generate interview questions and help them to be prepared with a response. AI is used to refine cover letters and make them more concise, impactful, and less generic. Additionally, AI was acting as a third party to identify any gaps in their CV or cover letter.
Others appreciated that AI helped reduce the time spent on the job search process. They found it useful for crafting compelling hooks or analogies in cover letters to engage recruiters and align with their values. However, it was noted that providing AI with enough information and feedback is crucial to ensure the final output reflects one’s personality and produces better results—an approach known as prompt engineering.
Video Interviews
In the current job market, many candidates are being asked to submit video recordings before meeting with a hiring manager. The group was asked if they had experienced virtual interviews and to share their thoughts on the process.
One attendee, who recently participated in this type of recruitment process, explained the reasoning behind it. They stated that many hiring managers were finding they were spending significant time shortlisting candidates and conducting hour-long interviews, that involved multiple staff members. They felt that they could tell within 15 minutes if a candidate was going to be a good fit and if it was worth bringing them in for a face-to-face interview.
One attendee felt it created an unlevel playing field, explaining they had a colleague who declined to apply for a role when a video interview was involved because they were not a “video person”.
Another attendee said they were given complicated questions, that were difficult to answer in a 2-minute video. They dealt with this by providing broad answers and said they could provide a more detailed answer in an interview.
Another attendee stated they were given 10 questions and one minute to answer each question, with unlimited opportunities to record those answers. They said they could see how this could be problematic, because what is stopping someone from running those questions through AI and using this to refine and articulate an answer?
Join Us for the Next Career Club
Join us for the next Career Club meetup where we'll facilitate a discussion on ‘Storytelling to gain stakeholder buy-in’.
We all know that data and insights are essential, but how do we translate them into compelling narratives that resonate with decision-makers? How do we move beyond presenting facts to crafting stories that inspire action and secure support for our experience design initiatives?
When: May 22 @ 12:00 pm
Where: Online
What is Career Club?
Career Club is a quarterly gathering, designed as themed, facilitated conversations to help surface knowledge, stories and tools from within the community to help you leverage your design practice as a competitive advantage. Intended as a safe space for learning and connecting, these sessions aren't recorded.
Want more? Join the community that is leading the way to customer transformation. Whether you're part of a small business, a large team, a CX designer, or a leader, check out our CXC membership options and access a community of like-minded professionals.
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