Own Your Future

You’re reading an excerpt of Land Your Dream Design Job, a book by Dan Shilov. Filled with hard-won, personal insights, it is a comprehensive guide to landing a product design role in a startup, agency, or tech company, and covers the entire design interview process from beginning to end, for experienced and aspriring designers. Purchase the book to support the author and the ad-free Holloway reading experience. You get instant digital access, commentary and future updates, and a high-quality PDF download.

If your job search is over and you’ve signed an offer, you might wonder, “What’s next?” First of all, congrats, landing a role can be a challenging process and you’ve proven yourself to be a top candidate. And don’t let that imposter syndrome get in the way—the decision to hire you has been made. Now it’s important to concentrate on the work at hand, to accelerate and grow.

When some time has passed, I always encourage folks to revisit their ideal role template. Take a pulse check about every six months or so. Are the things that brought you to this job still there, or have things changed? Depending on the company and market, the rate of change may be drastic. Or maybe there were no changes to the company at all but perhaps your own needs have changed. Revisiting your original dream role North Star will help you continue steering your career in the right place with new information.

Landing a dream job with a great salary is just the beginning. It’s what you do afterwards that will set you up for success, whether it’s in your current job or the next one. Take another look at your skills and traits. If you’re interested in getting promoted, make sure you bring that up with your manager so that you can work on a development plan together.

Design is a changing discipline. While fundamental principles of human behavior remain the same, technology is changing rapidly. Stay up to date, continue learning. These core skills will help you perform well on the job and will also make you a strong candidate so that you can write your own ticket and define your future.

Bon voyage! You got this!