Hey, UX friends! Happy Monday.
If we haven't met yet, my name is Anfisa, senior product designer at MEWS by day. By night, I help UXers to stand out in a crowded market inside the IntoUX Community.
I’ll be honest → I’ve never been great at talking about myself.
For years, whenever someone asked me to “walk through my career,” I’d stumble. I’d ramble through freelancing, startups, and corporate roles, either over-explaining or downplaying my pivots.
Once, in an interview, I even said: “I’m not good at UI design.”
I still cringe about it. It wasn’t true, I just didn’t know how to position myself.
Yes, my path hasn’t been traditional. I didn't start my career as an in-house designer. I started as a freelancer across six countries, co-founded a startup in the wild ICO days and later joined Citrix without knowing a thing about APIs building developer tools.
My lack of confidence didn't allow me to acknowledge that this variety gave me resilience, adaptability, and perspective. It took me a long time to understand that confidence doesn’t come from having a perfect career.
It comes from knowing how to tell your story.
Here are the five lessons that changed the way I pitch myself:
1️⃣ Don’t spotlight your gaps — frame your growth
Early on, I thought honesty meant telling recruiters what I wasn’t good at. But all they heard was: risk.The truth is, knowing your gaps is a strength. But the way you talk about them matters more.
Now I say things like:
‘I’m sharpening my UI craft by pushing interaction details and testing how small visual changes improve clarity and flow, here’s what I’ve learned so far...”
🎓 The lesson:
Lead with enthusiasm about how you’re growing.
Vulnerability is good. Low confidence isn’t.
💡 Tip:
Rewrite your “I’m not good at X...” → “Here’s how I’m leveling up in X...”
2️⃣ Lead with your why, not just your moves...
When I used to explain pivots, I’d default to vague lines like, “I want to start designing in-house”
🎓 The lesson:
Problem is: that doesn’t say much.
What actually matters is the realization behind the move.
The better story to say would be:
...After my startup collapsed, I realized the future wasn’t solo work, it was teamwork. I want to grow with others instead of staying in my own bubble.
This story lands differently. It shows reflection and growth, not chronology.
💡 Tip:
When you describe a career move, finish the sentence: “I realized that…”
3️⃣ Highlight your strongest sides...
For me, it’s the autonomy and initiative.
My story is full of:
Entrepreneural projects, messy-team scenarios, solo-designer experiences… and even PM role now. Recently I jumped into a PM role after the previous one quit. I had to rebuild trust with customers and leadership while figuring it out for the first time.
Such story is a pure gold for design managers. It means they don’t have to pull it our from you. I basically pitch them: I’m able to navigate in the dark.
I own my strength.
💡 Tip:
Write down 3–4 career turning points. What did each one teach you?
Sometimes themes that repeat themselves can reveal your strength.
4️⃣ Prepare your “astonishing facts”...
We often overlook the most impressive moments in our careers because they became our “normal.”
I didn’t see my stories as unusual until others did:
• Designing in a 1:100+ ratio alongside contractor engineers.
• First agreeing, and later running a crypto startup and ICO without ever having bought Bitcoin beforehand.
• Building developer tools at Citrix without ever having touched an API before.
🎓 The lesson:
Those stories might feel like bragging to you. But you’re not the recruiter. Try wearing their hat and you’ll realize that these stories is a way to help recruiter get to know you w/o asking many questions. Do the heavy lifting for them.
💡 Tip:
Ask a peer designer to react on various facts from your career, looking for reactions like “Wait, you did what?” These would be great facts to pull!
5️⃣ Tailor your story to the role
I used to recycle the same pitch everywhere.
But different companies care about different strength
• For an AI role, emphasize how you’ve worked in ambiguous spaces and built guardrails for AI-powered systems.
• For a 0–1 role, lean on your entrepreneurial side, like rallying 12 people to build an idea and raising $100k seed money.
• For scale-ups, highlight how you thrive in fast-paced environments while staying product-led and vision-driven.
💡 Tip:
Before an interviewer ask you, ask them:
What kind of designer would thrive here? Hear them out.
Then connect your relevant stories to their needs.
↪️ Once I started pitching myself this way, everything shifted.
Confidence wasn’t about talking myself up, it's about connecting my real experiences to what the company needed. And that’s exactly what I want to help more designers practice.
On November 4th
Join community first live coaching session
We’ll unpack your pitch together. You’ll share your story, we’ll sharpen it in real-time, and you’ll leave with a version that actually lands.
33% community sale. Use the code is: 33OFF
Go from AI-curious to AI-confident
Join The AI UX Halloween Weekend,
happening October 25–26.
In just one weekend you'll learn how to build an AI-powered MVP and design for intelligent, agentic systems that think, act, and collaborate. You’ll also get a feedback on your prototype and a certificate if you deliver your spooky MVP...
Agenda:
- 🕸️ Saturday: Build Your First AI MVP
Learn smart prompting, AI-driven workflows, and how to bring an AI concept to life fast.
- 🧠 Sunday: Designing Agentic AI Experiences
Explore UX patterns for agentic systems: AI that reasons, interacts, and assists. For designers ready to lead in the next wave of intelligent products.
🗓 Saturday + Sunday (October 25 & 26), 4–6pm UK / 5–7pm GMT+2
💻 Online, taught by Micaela Dixon, AI Product Designer @uxdesignforai
🎟️ Limited spots available
🏷️ Use ANFISA20 code for a $20 discount
Stay inspired and see you online
Anfisa
🫶
