Category: community     Posted by: cornelius     Discuss: view comments     Views: 409

A lot of young people (either still in university or recently graduated) ask me about the prospect of getting a UX job in Ottawa, especially in the current state of the economy and the rising number of unemployed technology workers competing for jobs. While I don't monitor the job sites frequently, my answer to them is that I personally never really had a problem being employed, either as an independent or as a full-time employee, so as long as you put in the time to acquire the necessary technical/business/artistic skills required, I don't really see why you wouldn't be in good shape.

However, when i do do a quick scan on the typical job sites (Workopolis, Monster, JobBoom etc.) dealing with the National Capital Region market, the most I've seen is a couple of postings at a time. Traditionally, cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal tend to have the bulk of the Canadian UX market, but I still wondered whether I was doing a real search or I was just scratching the surface. Another quick look in the careers sections within the websites of two well known Ottawa interactive agencies (Fuel Industries and Teknision) reveals at least about 10 other UX related jobs, but they are typically high end (Flash/Flex, UX Architect) requiring at least 3-5 years experience. The jobs catering to junior resources still seemed a bit more scarce.

Which begs the question, if you are like one of these guys, starting out with basic UX knowledge and have a relatively skinny portfolio, while reading some books on design, marketing, usability, user experience, etc., and slowly rebranding yourself into a UX type, what should you do ? I would almost venture to say, if you can't make it into an established company like the two above, start out with a couple of contracts (dare I say within the government :O), get some exposure to usability, accessibility, CLF 2, etc., network within the local CapCHI/Meetup/Social media scene and work your way from there. And keep reading and experimenting on your laptop, sooner or later your time will come.

Anyone else out there have other suggestions ?

Tags: community, marketplace, ottawa

steven (06.05.2009 11:50:23) wrote:
I think the job market for entry level UX jobs has been up and down in Ottawa for the past couple of years. Most jobs do involve contracts with the federal government, and sometimes are advertised by headhunters more so than government or private job sites like Monster.
I've seen many jobs related to CLF 2.0 content migration which are essentially entry level UX jobs if they involve not just moving content, but also reformatting visuals and reworking content workflows.
I also believe it's unfair to compare the Ottawa UX job market to the one in Toronto, given the size and number of large corporations that are based in the largest economic center in the country.

cornelius (21.04.2010 00:28:21) wrote:
Well, here we are roughly a year later, and the situation has changed dramatically since I wrote that post... There are no senior or junior UX jobs in Ottawa, and I find myself for the first time looking for something to do locally. Those senior jobs I was talking about a year ago are all gone. Hopefully there is light at the end of the tunnel.

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