If I wanted to land my first UX job in 2026, I'd do this.

If I had to land my first UX design job in 2026, the last thing I'd do is polish my portfolio or rewrite my resume. I'll start by understanding how design hiring has completely changed because it's no longer about who has the prettiest case studies in their portfolio or who has attended the most networking events. It's about who can prove that they deliver results. The truth is, if you're still job hunting like it's 2020, you're already behind. So in this video, I'll show you exactly how I'd approach landing a UX design role right now, what's changed, what actually works, and how to stand out even if you have zero experience. This is the same mindset that I've used after 9 years designing for startups in Lagos, Nigeria, and design-led companies in Europe like Deliveroo and Monzo Bank. The same mindset that's also helped dozens of new designers land roles in this very competitive market. By the end of this video, you'll know exactly how to position yourself and get noticed in 2026, where recruiters and clients are spoiled for choice. All of that sounds great, but you might be thinking, how do I actually stand out when there's so much competition for junior UX design roles and when no company is giving junior designers a chance to prove themselves? And that's the real problem most beginners face. It's not that you lack the talent or the will to land the role. It's that you're lost in the crowd. Your positioning is wrong and you don't understand who you're competing against. The first thing you need to do is to understand your competition. You're not competing against entry-level designers only. You're competing against people with 3 years of experience. Sharing 1 or 2 screens you designed on Twitter once a week and applying for every junior role you see on LinkedIn won't cut it. Because all the entry-level designers are doing the same thing, but no one is showing real proof of work. In 2026, design recruiters, startup founders, and potential clients that will hire you don't care much about the fancy screens you've designed. They care about how you think, how you make design decisions, and how quickly you can adapt when things change. And that's where the proof stack strategy comes in. Most entry-level designers think they're not getting hired because they don't have experience, and I think that's a limiting mindset. You need to get rid of that mindset if you think that way, because guess what? Everyone starts from the bottom, and junior designers are landing their first UX roles all over the world every day. The question you should be asking is, what are these people doing differently? You need to understand that hiring in the current job climate is based on proof. Not promises. Hiring for a full-time role, contract role, or even a freelance role is a risk that a business or hiring manager is taking. When people hire, they are betting on talent and they need to see some proof that they are making the right bet. To show that you are not a risky bet, you need 3 types of proof. Number one is proof of skill. Showing proof of skill is simply showing off your hard skills as a designer. In simple terms, it's showing your Figma skills and your UI design skills, or how well you can put design components together, how well can you you understand how to combine visual design elements like colors, typography, shapes, and spacing and layout to help a user navigate an interface. But so many designers stop here. They think that UX design starts and ends in Figma. And once they're able to design a few screens and connect them together in a Figma prototype, then they've mastered design. But that's just the beginning. You're just getting started. To build on your proof of skill, you need to also show proof of thinking. Proof of thinking is how you make design decisions. Why did you choose a particular layout over another one? Why did you choose a particular typeface or choice of color over another one? It is your ability to show everything that influenced your design decision in a clear manner. Now you're thinking beyond Figma and you understand that design starts before opening Figma and continues after you're out of Figma. But the thing is, you're not always right. Sometimes you make wrong design choices or you learn something new that you didn't know before you worked on design. And that's where the third proof comes in. It's the proof of adaptability. This shows that you can reflect on your work, explain what went wrong, what went well, what you learned, and what you would do differently next time. Great designers have always been able to show these proofs in their portfolio. In fact, there are some examples from Folio, a design portfolio website that I built, which currently has over 70 portfolios from top designers globally and is visited by more than 700 designers monthly. But there's a problem with portfolios. Portfolios are difficult to discover. The only way your portfolio gets discovered is when you submit them in a job application. And even with that, recruiters spend less than 30 seconds on them before they move on to the next one. And that's not enough time to show these 3 proofs unless your portfolio has gone viral because it is exceptional. But there's a different way to show these proofs so that you can make yourself discoverable and significantly increase your chances. In theory, this different way of showing proof is simple, but it's not easy. You have a lot of work to do, and I'm not here to sugarcoat things for you. To change your mindset from competing with entry-level designers who have more experience than you do, you really have to put in the work. But eventually it pays off because you just need one person to bet on you. Just one. That's all you need. So here's what you do. You take one design project that you've already done and turn that into a 3-proof stack using a single Loom video. For those that don't know what Loom is, Loom is a screen recorder that allows you to record your screen and share it anywhere. What you're basically doing is talking through the work you've already done using Loom. And when you show the smaller and finer design details you've worked on, like the visual design detail, like a choice of colors, spacing, typography, you're showing proof of skill. In fact, your work should naturally show proof of skill. You don't have to go into the detail because if the work is clean, if the layout is great, then you're already showing proof of skill. You're showing that you can use Figma. But when you walk through your design decisions and talk about why you chose a particular design pattern or style over another one, or something that you learned from, like research or talking to users, then you are showing proof of thinking. Then towards the end of the recording, you can share what you learned or what you'd do differently next time, and then that's proof of adaptability. To make it super clear, you're basically just laying down everything that you already have in your portfolio in a presentation format. That's it. You don't need any fancy editing. All you need is a slide deck in PowerPoint, Google Slides, or even Figma slides, and a Loom video that tells a story that people can trust. Because That single video can do what 10 portfolio updates can't because it shows that you think like a designer who solves real problems and not just someone that can make an interface or a UI look good. And it also shows your personality and communication style so that that way people are not guessing who you are. They can see it and they can start trusting you. And that makes you feel like a safer bet. It's basically frontloading your personality. And the best part about this is that it connects to your visibility strategy. One short Loom can live on your LinkedIn or on the homepage of your portfolio or your pinned tweet, helping you to build real discovery without you constantly posting. And then when you start stacking proof like this, you don't chase opportunities anymore. The opportunities will come finding you. So if I were you, I'll stop hiding behind polished case studies and start showing these 3 proofs publicly. I'll start working in public because the truth is you don't need years of experience to look like an experienced designer. You just need to act like one in public. Perception is everything in today's world and you need to move with the times. All you need is the first person that bets on you and doesn't have to be a recruiter at a company. It can be a client that's giving you a freelance role or even a total stranger online that's attracted to your work ethic and can connect you to somebody else. Personally, I've seen people that are subscribed to me on this channel work so hard in public that I had no choice but to introduce them to someone who's hiring. They never reached out to me or asked me for a referral. They just kept showing proof. Now, remember I mentioned that you need to stand out? The Loom presentation video is just one piece of the puzzle. To stand out consistently, you need to remain top of mind. And to remain top of mind, you need a visibility loop system so that you don't burn out from posting daily. It's important to remember why you're doing this. You're not a content creator, so don't get distracted. You're doing this to get people to trust you and bet on you. Now let's talk about how to remain visible without burning out. Most designers post randomly. They upload a few screenshots and then hit send and wait, hoping that somehow is going to turn into a job lead. But the algorithms reward consistency. That's why so many designers burn out before even getting any traction or before getting any opportunity. And I know this because I've been posting consistently on YouTube for 3 years now, and the only reason I'm not burnt out, even though I've been close to it so many times, is that I chose consistency over frequency. What do I mean by that? I mean, I only post when I am convinced I have something important to share, but I try to have something important to share at least once every 3 weeks. If I try to upload a video every week with my busy 9-to-5, I will be under the pressure to share something when I have nothing important to say. It can generate a lot of views for me, but I will burn out at some point and go away for months, which then breaks the consistency. So instead of chasing attention, you want to design a system for discovery, something that makes you visible even when you're not online. And this is the visibility loop. Everything you post online should lead from signal to discovery, to trust, to opportunity. Signal means that you're sending something out into the world, like the Loom walkthrough of your project. Discovery is when new people see it and engage with it. Trust is when they start believing you can deliver results. And opportunity is when someone reaches out for work or some kind of collaboration or even a role. Once you see it this way, you realize that you don't need to post constantly. You just need one strong loop that runs on its own and makes sure that you don't fall in the trap of being obsessed with like the engagements or the likes that you forget what your main goal is. Remember, you're trying to get your first role. So how do you create a visibility loop? Let's say you have 4 projects in your portfolio. You can post one long video about each project every week using the Proof of Skill, Thinking, and Adaptability framework. Each video you post does 3 jobs at once. It helps you to build discovery because new people now see your work. It builds trust because they can hear how you think, and it builds opportunity because recruiters and prospective clients can start to reach out. And this is where things start to get magical. When you run this loop consistently, your visibility starts to compound. Your old videos keep circulating and then new ones keep stacking. Suddenly you're showing up in conversations, DMs, and recommendations even without posting daily. Now, if recruiters or prospective clients are not reaching out to you for opportunities or collaboration, then that means your signal might be weak. People are not seeing your proof of thinking, skill, or adaptability. So you have to go back to your project and refine it, then post again. Now you even have more things to talk about because you've learned new things and then you've iterated your work. And this is how you create a loop. Even the most successful people at the pinnacle of their careers do the same thing. They put out their ideas into the world, see how people engage with it, learn from the engagement, then they refine those ideas and put it out again. So this is not just something that beginners do. It's the same funnel that businesses use to acquire new customers to their product. In this case, you are the product and the business, and a recruiter or prospective client is your customer. And to land your first UX role and beat the competition, you need to consistently productize yourself. When someone decides to bet on you and invite you for an interview or ask you to send your portfolio, you've moved from signal to opportunity. Now you need to convert that opportunity to a job. It doesn't matter if it's a full-time role, a part-time role, or a freelance job. You just need one foot in the door. Again, you have to treat every opportunity like a funnel and evaluate every part of the funnel to improve your chances. If people are requesting for your portfolio and they are not progressing you to an interview stage or offering you a freelance job, then that means the work in your portfolio doesn't match all the signal that you've shown before they Before they request, and they are not willing to take the risk. Remember at the beginning of this video I said that if I had to land my first UX design job in 2026, the last thing I'd do is polish my portfolio or rewrite my resume. And I actually mean that. You should only take it as a sign to polish your portfolio if recruiters are requesting to see your work and they are not inviting you to interview, or if they are ghosting you, then that means your portfolio needs to be better. If you've been invited to interview, but you are not landing an offer, then rather than focusing on your portfolio, you should be focused on your portfolio presentation skills and interviewing skills. Getting the interview is one battle, but winning it is completely different. Most designers think they failed because of their work, but that's rarely the case. You're failing because you don't know what hiring managers are actually looking for when they ask these questions, or you don't know how to present your work in a way that addresses their concerns. And I've spent 9 years going through these interviews at companies like Coinbase, Expedia, Deliveroo, and Monzo Bank, where I currently work, and I've documented every question they've asked, every mistake I've made, and every technique that I think actually works. I'm putting all of that into a self-paced course launching in February 2026, including the exact portfolio walkthrough that got me hired at Monzo. If you're getting interviews but no offers, this is the missing piece. Join the waitlist for the course using the link in the description, and I'll see you in the next video.