Is a Sense of Urgency Necessary?

How UX/UI Designers can prepare themselves and act fast in hiring processes.

Introduction

When an opportunity opens up, your starting point should be to consider the experience of being hired — understanding the reality of whoever posted the role. In most cases, decision-makers are extremely busy people who are not HR specialists. On top of evaluating candidates, they still have their own full slate of regular responsibilities to manage.

This means every action you take throughout the process needs to be practical, fast, and effective — designed to create a memorable journey for the hiring team. Unfortunately, the reality is often the opposite: evaluators have to deal with UX/UI Designers who are unprepared and unresponsive, forcing them to wait for candidates to get ready to be evaluated — and then wait even longer for a delayed reply.

See, Hear, Decide: What an Evaluator Actually Wants

Let's start with the basics. What does an evaluator want?

• To see your work — so they can give you credibility
• To hear the stories and reasoning behind it — through what you share and explain
• To decide to hire you — with confidence that your skills will be fully put to use

The faster this process flows, the better for everyone involved.

The Chair Analogy

Imagine you make custom chairs. Your phone rings — a customer urgently needs a new one because theirs just broke. They say: "Hi! I need a chair and I couldn't find any photos of what you make. Could you send some?"

You reply: "I don't have photos right now, but the chair I make is beautiful, comfortable, and fits any environment. Let me take some pictures and I'll send them over!"

Not being able to see an image will immediately discourage them from moving forward — because they know the most critical part is still ahead: actually using the chair. The last thing they want is to receive it, not like it, and have to return it. And the first warning sign of that risk? Not even being able to see the product.

Hiring works exactly the same way. Candidates without updated work to show ask for more time to put something together, making claims without proof and expecting evaluators to take them on faith.

But unlike a retail purchase, if a hiring manager regrets their decision, they can't simply call customer service, return the product, and order another. A bad hire is expensive, stressful, slow to undo, and sometimes genuinely traumatic — for both sides. Before offering your chair, show it — so the desire to buy is already there.

Preparation: The Fundamental Requirement

For UX/UI Designers, being prepared means far more than simply being available to answer a call, reply to an email, or respond to a direct message. It means you've already completed a set of actions that recruiters expect to find when they first look at your profile.

What Do Recruiters Ask for Immediately?

Their expectations at first contact are straightforward: an updated portfolio (to evaluate your technical work) and a LinkedIn profile (to understand your trajectory and experience).

Anything beyond that is a bonus that puts you ahead of the competition. A great example of that kind of over-delivery: having a personal website — original, beautiful, functional, and up to date — that brings the most relevant information from both places together in one, sparing the recruiter from visiting multiple links.

Having these things working for you is what being prepared looks like. Asking an evaluator to give you more time to update your portfolio is simply not appropriate.

Presence: Urgency in Action

Assuming you're ready to be evaluated, the next phase begins — and now your behavior is immediately being assessed. From this point on, everything you do is being "recorded." Candidates without a profile have already been eliminated.

Because you made it past the first wave, expectations are higher — and they'll keep rising. This is exactly where urgency takes over: every minute invested in you needs to pay off. You're still competing with other professionals who are now your equals or better.

Make Time Work for You

The speed of your responses carries real weight. Beyond signaling genuine interest in the role, it communicates respect for the evaluator's time. When everything asked of you gets a ready answer, you gain points — consistently.

5 Critical Phases Where Urgency Is Decisive

Phase 1 — Be Ready to Apply

If your portfolio isn't ready, the recruiter will notice. In the era of shareable links and digital portfolios, not having a strategic presentation is a serious mistake.

What makes a portfolio effective today?

• Be selective: lead with your best work, prioritizing current UX/UI cases
• Remove work from unrelated areas or content that doesn't serve your positioning
• No more "I'll update it later, I've been too busy" or using seniority as an excuse

A disorganized portfolio is the new "arriving late" of the digital era — it signals carelessness before a word is spoken.

Practical tip: Tailor your portfolio to the role. If you have experience across multiple industries and you're applying to a position at a bank, presenting projects from that sector visibly strengthens your profile. This should be quick, simple, and easy to do.

Phase 2 — Evaluate Your Fit With the Role

Applying indiscriminately to every opening is one of the oldest and least effective strategies around. Companies write job descriptions with intention. Ignore them and your credibility takes the hit.

Ask yourself:

• What competencies are truly essential for this role?
• Does my profile genuinely align with the challenge being proposed?
• If the role asks for a UX Researcher and your portfolio only shows visual deliverables, revisit your filter

Being honest about your fit is a sign of respect — for the company's time and your own.

Phase 3 — Make Contact the Right Way

Your presentation says a great deal about who you are — before and beyond the portfolio. Impersonal messages ("CV and portfolio attached") don't generate interest. They signal indifference, or a fully automated approach.

Good practices:

• Write a brief, personalized email or message
• Introduce yourself by name, the role you're interested in, and explain why you're applying
• Communicate clearly and directly — no filler, no unnecessary jargon
• In digital environments, professional written communication carries significant weight

Strategic move: If you genuinely want to work at a specific company, invest time in a high-impact introduction — but move fast so you don't miss the timing. Research the evaluators and think about how to make an impression. Learn everything about the company, express your personal relationship with their product, and explain directly how your presence can drive results.

Phase 4 — Stay Present and Available

Committed to the process? Stay present. Reply quickly, confirm interviews promptly, and address questions without delay. Remember: silence is read as disinterest.

Essential actions:

Respond quickly to emails. In an era of instant messaging, people often underestimate email — but that's a mistake. What matters most about email is the documentation it creates: your presence (or absence) in a company's inbox will be referenced and discussed with other people involved in the process.

Answer direct contacts. Pick up your phone. Respond to messages. Since evaluators typically don't call without having exchanged emails or messages first, a direct call is almost always expected. Being unreachable sends a clear message of disengagement.

Be transparent. If you're in other processes simultaneously, say so. Share your availability and priorities, openly and without hesitation. Respecting the recruiter's time is a signal of professional maturity.

Phase 5 — Be Accountable and On Time

The interview remains the most decisive moment in the process. Not showing up — or arriving late, whether in person or virtually — is an undeniable statement of unprofessionalism.

Prepare accordingly:

• Anticipate potential problems: an unstable connection, noise in the house, traffic delays
• Treat every interview as if you're walking into that office for the very first time
• Show respect for the other person's time in how you show up

Many opportunities are lost to entirely avoidable oversights.

Behavioral Details That Eliminate Candidates

The Collision of Poor Behavior

Think of the iceberg theory, widely used in sales and behavioral science: what's visible on the surface is only a fraction of what lies beneath. In the UX/UI world, your image has already surfaced to the recruiter before they even open your portfolio.

One slip — and the iceberg of poor behavior collides with the selection process long before you ever get the chance to show what you know. Impersonal messages, delayed responses, or an unpolished presentation all function as silent alarms.

Poor Positioning in the Interview

After years in this market, we've consistently observed — across established companies and startups alike — that when a candidate reaches the interview stage, their verbal and non-verbal communication is decisive in 90% of cases.

Two main indicators to consider:

What you say — The words you choose, the way your sentences land, whether or not you're actually answering the question being asked. Through this, evaluators assess whether you genuinely understand the subject, have real experience, know your tools, and can explain your thinking. Wordplay alone doesn't convince anyone.

How you say it — Your tone of voice, how you carry yourself, your facial expressions. Evaluators quickly pick up on pride, disrespect, lack of motivation, and disinterest — all of which are disqualifying factors in any hiring process.

Giving the Wrong Impression of Yourself

Once you've been selected for an interview, your portfolio and experience are no longer the main variables — those have already been reviewed. What matters now is who you come across as in that conversation.

Recruiters look for profiles that show:

• Potential to be developed
• Humility to keep learning
• Commitment and professionalism
• Interpersonal intelligence
• A team-oriented mindset
• Capacity for self-management
• Adaptability
• Genuine interest in the work
• Proactivity
• Being someone people actually enjoy working with

A point we always make: A UX/UI Designer needs to genuinely like people. Assuming this kind of professional should be locked in a room alone, in pure production mode for all their working hours, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the role.

Not everyone needs to be a natural leader or the person who energizes the room. But your soft skills must add something to the team. Every team member should bring complementary qualities — there should always be addition, never subtraction.

The secret to successfully entering a group of people is quickly identifying something they don't have — and bringing (or being) that thing. There is always room for something that adds value.

Lacking Ownership Over Your Projects

During the interview, the recruiter will ask about the cases in your portfolio. The expectation is that you own them — even if the projects weren't entirely yours. Not being able to tell the story of a project, or failing to answer questions about it with confidence, is fatal. It makes clear that you either did very little or never cared enough to be engaged. This is why it's essential to clarify your specific role in every portfolio case — no matter how small that role was.

When Does the Evaluation Actually Begin?

It's an illusion to think the evaluation starts at the Zoom interview. The real selection process begins much earlier — in every email sent, every message shared, and in how you organize (or fail to organize) your portfolio.

The signals — conscious or not — speak louder than any rehearsed pitch. Nobody wants to waste time on someone who has already shown, from the very first interaction, that they're not ready.

For us, the interview never truly ends: you are being evaluated at every step.

Conclusion

Most of these behavioral "details" are entirely correctable — and they depend only on you. A truly relevant professional aligns what they say with what they do, from the portfolio all the way through to the final message in the process.

Being ready to move fast in a hiring process is fundamental to success. To make that possible, ensure that everything within your control is up to date and easy to edit — so the entire process flows smoothly for everyone involved.

Every stage of an application demands commitment and dedication, regardless of your experience level. Each role deserves to be taken seriously. Small, intentional actions transform your image and exponentially improve your chances of moving forward in your UX/UI career.

And have the maturity not to direct your frustration at the recruiter. The only person responsible for your expectations is you. Entering a selection process can genuinely create anxiety — we're all human, and we understand that. But that anxiety belongs to you, and how you manage it says a great deal too.

Remember: a sense of urgency isn't just about speed — it's about respect, preparation, and professionalism. It's about making time work in your favor, and showing that you value the opportunity as much as the company values finding the right person.