6 Figure Job Out of College as a Writer & Designer
Transcript of this video: https://youtu.be/-w9w6mkVqTw
[INTRO]
Hi, I’m Michelle Cen. I got a six figure job, straight out of undergrad, as a writer and designer.
My salary was double what similar roles offered, even to people with years in the field. I worked in the tech industry and not as a programmer. I also got this job at the end of 2020, during a global job crisis and recession.
Watch this video to find out how I did this and how you can too. I'll be sharing real numbers. To get notified about more videos like this, hit subscribe.
For people not in traditionally lucrative fields like engineering or finance, making over six figures straight out of undergrad can seem unattainable. I want to prove that you can leverage many skills, including non-technical ones, to make six figures right after college.
Here's my background: I graduated from Stanford University at the end of 2020 with a liberal arts bachelor's degree called “Science, Technology, and Society.” I made another video describing my education - the link to it is right here and in the video description.
My degree name never mattered to employers. My employers always cared about the experiences on my resume. For a content strategist and designer, a portfolio is also critical.
I'll get into the details of how I found and got the job. For now, here's the result of my job search:
In December 2020, Walmart's Global Tech division hired me as a Content Strategist in the California Bay Area. Walmart is and has been rank 1 in the Fortune 500 for years, above competitors like Amazon, meaning it's the largest company in the world by revenue.
Walmart gave me a 3-month contract role, which I wanted instead of a permanent role.
I was paid $80/hour and worked 40 hours a week. Converted to an annual salary this is about $160,000.
Walmart said if I converted to being a permanent employee, which they were open to, my compensation would be commensurate with what I got as a contractor. As a contractor I still had typical job benefits: health insurance, sick leave, and paid time off for holidays.
My $160,000 salary was high for a content strategist/UX writer, even in the Bay Area where I worked.
In my job search, I saw that many content strategy jobs in the Bay Area paid about $80,000 annually. I made double what most roles offered, even to people with over 5 years of post-college working experience.
How did I get this job?
I have 2 primary tips I'll highlight while recounting my story.
First, if you're job searching, join groups and attend events related to your field.
You'll have 3 job search advantages. First, you can find jobs that aren't posted publicly. These jobs tend to be more specialized and thus, high-paying. Second, since you're in a preselected group or in a conference, hirers will be more likely to take you seriously. You're not an average candidate. Third, it's more likely that the person hiring you will be the one advertising the job. So you can get your resume to them faster and more reliably than having to go through a recruiter.
When I was job searching near the end of 2020 while finishing my last quarter at Stanford, I attended a content design conference called Button. I discovered Button through my involvement with online UX writing groups. I applied for and received a Button Scholarship scholarship worth about $1,000. It fully funded my attendance so I got to go for free. Thank you, Button!
The conference had a Slack channel with job postings. On that channel my future manager at Walmart, who was also the hirer, posted about the Content Strategy position. She didn't share the job rate. I found out about the rate when she offered me the job.
What I did when responding to my future manager's job posting brings me to my second tip:
Highlight how your experience fits the role. People will pay more for specialists than generalists. I sent my future manager my resume, which I'd tailored toward my content design experience. My resume included my portfolio. My future manager said she'd follow up with me, since my experience interning as a UX Writer at Uber Eats immediately caught her attention.
So, while she didn't ask for it, I sent her a detailed slide deck of the work I did at Uber. She liked it so much that she asked me to present it to her and another team member.
In my following interviews, I focused on explaining my work at Uber. I had plenty of other content design experience, but didn't talk about it during my interviews. It was already in my portfolio and resume.
They said they were impressed by my work at Uber. They wanted me to do what I did at Uber, at Walmart.
They hired me because of my skills and proven success in a specific problem space they needed solutions for.
I was one of 2 people chosen for the same role. I was a new college graduate. The other person hired had decades of experience as a professor and writer.
I tried to negotiate up the $160,000 salary. My manager told me the role's rate was set by higher-ups and she had no way to change it. Regardless of the fact that I couldn’t negotiate my rate, it always helps to try negotiating a job offer. It will make others respect you more for knowing your value and advocating for yourself.
You may be wondering, what is a content strategist? The specific functions of this role vary. In general, a content strategist develops primarily written content - the words that people like customers read, not necessarily the back-end code. At Walmart I contributed to a new design system the company was building. I wrote and designed for web and app experiences. I also helped compose emails and texts sent to millions of customers daily.
In my role I collaborated with product teams and design leadership. Again, being a content strategist is not an engineering role. I did work with engineers to implement my contributions. This is where having an interdisciplinary background is useful.
What am I doing now? Walmart offered to extend my contract. One of the reasons I didn’t continue working there was that I decided to train to become a counselor and mental health therapist.
While I’m not working full-time as a content strategist right now, I’m very grateful I got this job straight out of college. Beyond the $160,000 salary, it provided me with a wonderful work experience.
My takeaways for you
What has always worked for me is focusing on what makes me in particular valuable. I wouldn’t have landed this $160,000 job without taking my various experiences and turning them into a powerful resume and portfolio. I also got this job by being proactive in attending a conference. And when interviewing, I focused on discussing exactly what the company was interested in me for.
Author and computer science professor Cal Newport wrote my favorite career advice book of all time, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, which can help you think about how you want to design your career. By offering employers rare and valuable skills, you can have greater autonomy and career earnings.
The Roman philosopher Seneca said “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” If you prepare now, you’ll be ready for opportunities. Good luck! I have full faith in you, and am always here to help in any way I can. Just visit my website MichelleCen.com and contact me.
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Thanks for watching!