Are you willing to build a trail?
A few years ago, I posted a help-wanted ad. I was recently looking at some of the application questions:
Point to your personal website
Show us some of the projects you’ve led that have shipped and made an impact
Show us work you’ve done on the clock, and how you made it work
Are you restless? What do you make or do in your spare time that leaves a trail and makes an impact?
Find a particularly lame example of UX on the web and fix it into something better than good
What’s the best lesson you’ve learned from Steve Krug or Steve McConnell?
Point to a blog post that changed the way you think about connecting with people online
Have you created anything worth watching on Vimeo or YouTube?
Where do you work now? What’s great about it?
If you saw an ad like this today, would you be ready to apply for it? Of course, not everyone posts jobs like this, but if you had a portfolio like this in hand, would it help?
If you work on creating this sort of digital trail and point of view for an hour a day, you'll be ready in six months… No matter who is running the ad.