Are you in the job search process? Do you need to know how to write and format a UX writer resume to get your dream UX writer job?
If you want your dream UX writing job, your UX writer resume must show your ability to improve the user experience for products and services to achieve business goals. Moreover, if you can focus on tangible improvements tied to metrics that you made, whether for a login modal, signup modal onboarding flow, or even conversation design for a chatbot, then you’ll have a head start.
Even if you do that, you may not receive any answer when you apply to UX writing positions.
Why?
Because the process of creating a resume is complex.
You need to take all your experience and boil it down to one page. If it’s two pages? Most recruiting and hiring managers will throw it out immediately. Not even a second look.
Moreover, you may have a lot of experience because you’ve worked in many jobs. Or, you may have too little experience because you haven’t had enough jobs. In both scenarios, how do you become resourceful enough to ensure you get what’s needed across to the potential hiring manager? It’s not easy, but there are best practices that can help guide you. That’s where this ultimate UX writing resume guide might come in to assist you with your application.
This comprehensive article contains the best professional UX writer resume examples and practices to assist you in landing a job. Here is a list of the subjects we will be studying in-depth:
- Great examples of UX writer skills on a resume
- What abilities and skills that you need to include on your resume
- What you can do to set yourself apart from other candidates
- Resume tips for UX writers, including what to include and what not to include
How to Write a UX Writer Resume
The process of writing a resume is similar to the process of writing UX copy. As a UX writer, you develop content that is relevant, concise, helpful, and clear to assist users in completing their objectives. In this case, the content is your resume, and your user is the hiring manager. However, that’s only the last step. The first step is you, as a UX writer, need to understand the product(s) in question (e.g., the company that you want to work at), and you are required to undertake user research (who’s looking at your resume).
Keep in mind that when you’re preparing your resume, the hiring manager will evaluate your abilities as a problem-solver.
Many UX writers waste their time by referring to the following from a bird’s eye view:
- Writing blog articles
- Writing press releases
- Working on multiple projects
- Working with stakeholders
- Collaborating with team members
- Working in a high-paced environment
This is boring because it’s either irrelevant or expected. For the last three points, these are the terms that everyone is using. If you’re like everyone, then you’re no one. Just another discarded resume.
So, where do you make a point of differentiating yourself? Do you know what information hiring managers and recruiters appreciate seeing on a resume?
- Understanding of design principles
- Know-how of creating conversational chatbots
- Website creation experience
- Ability to lead UX projects
- Ability to push large UX projects over the goal line
- Managing, editing, and creating content style guides
- Designing product information architecture
- Writing copy for error messages and empty states
- Using UX design skills to create low-fidelity prototypes
Be specific and talk about how your work has helped users.
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Understanding the Basics
Before we dive into the specifics, it’s important to understand the foundational concepts. Let’s start by exploring what UX writing is.
What is UX Writing?
UX writing is the process of creating user-centered content to help users interact with products, services, and experiences. It involves crafting clear, concise, and intuitive text that guides users through a product or service, making it easy for them to understand and use. UX writers work closely with designers, product managers, and researchers to create content that is both functional and engaging.
As a UX writer, your primary goal is to create content that is relevant, concise, helpful, and clear to assist users in achieving their goals. This requires a deep understanding of the product, its users, and the user’s needs. UX writing is a critical component of user experience design, and a well-crafted UX writer’s resume can help you stand out in the job market.
What is the Best UX Writer Resume Format?
There are three good ways to write a resume for a UX writing role.
- Reverse Chronological (Most recent work experience first)
- Combination (ATS compliant)
- Functional (Non-ATS compliant)
If you want to hire a UX writer, you need to make their resume compatible with the ATS (Applicant Tracking Software). Do you know that 98 percent of Fortune 500 companies use an ATS to find out which resumes aren’t worth reading?
All resumes are scanned by an ATS, which only accepts those with the right keywords in them, but not all of them. There is no need for hiring managers to go through all UX writer resumes. This saves them time and effort.
If you want to make your resume look good to an ATS, read the job description. Include words and phrases like “writing microcopy, developing content, updating style guide, or UX design.” This will pop up your resume when the hiring manager filters using an ATS.
Now, go ahead and add these types of phrases to your skills and work history.
An organized UX writer resume format with the right keywords is a good way to make your resume stand out.
What sections should you put on your UX Writing resume?
Here’s a list of things you need to include in your resume:
UX Writer Professional Header
This includes your full name, title (UX Writer), phone number, LinkedIn profile link, city, and email address, as well as your full profile. Ideally, you’ll also link to your online portfolio here.
Do not mention your whole address. However, the city and state are fine.
Now is your time to shine. List your professional work history in descending date order. Here are a few things to think about while you do so.
There is a good chance that some of your experience won’t help you. There are some parts that aren’t relevant to your job. Even if some of that experience is directly related to UX writing.
For example, you may have a lot of knowledge of writing UX copy for conversational chatbots and setting them up. However, if the company you want to work for doesn’t need that experience, then don’t dedicate too much to it. It will only serve as a distraction.
Make it easy for hiring managers to understand you by being specific and being clear about what you want to do in the future. And again, remember the principles of making your work experience relevant, concise, helpful, and clear to the job you’re applying for.
In reverse chronological order, write down your experiences. Your employer needs to know about your most recent job so that they can call you for an interview. Now, not every job needs to go on your resume.
Only include your most recent and relevant job experience, followed by your previous relevant roles. Here are some things to think about:
- What was your designation?
- Is what you did important to the job you want?
- How many years did you work in that role?
- Do you have previous experience in the role you’re applying for?
The last one is a big one. Even if you have ten years of technical writing experience and only one year of UX writing experience, dedicate a significant amount of resume space to the UX experience. It’s the most relevant.
Now, let’s take a look at some position resume examples along the career path.
Junior UX Writer Resume Experience Examples
You began your job as a junior UX writer 10 months ago. By now, you’ve worked on many different projects, reported to a senior UX writer or manager about them, and helped push over the line a couple of big projects.
Still, you’re asking, “Is having worked as a UX writer for 10 months enough to put on my resume?”
Yes.
So, how do you make this into a story that makes the hiring manager want to hire you?
This is what you need to add:
- The problems that you solved
- The impact that they had
- The benchmarks that the team set for you
- Tools that you used (e.g. Figma, Miro, Google Sheets, Airtable, Hotjar)
- Certifications and community contributions
If you solved problems that led to more revenue and exceeded benchmark expectations, then your experience is always valid. A UX writer who can make a difference in a short amount of time may even be seen as more valuable. It will also play to the story that you’re looking for a position that offers more growth opportunities because you’re clearly a winner.
Senior UX Writer Resume Experience Example
Senior UX writers often have more than five years of experience writing everything from simple experiences to high-level UX writing. They work with product designers, UX designers, product managers, engineers, and other stakeholders. A senior UX writer has a team of entry-level and junior UX writers in their UX team, each with a different job or task. They all work together.
But before you write your senior UX writer resume, there are a few things you need to think about first:
- Don’t list all your responsibilities and accomplishments.
- Keep your experience relevant to the job that you are applying for.
- Make your resume ATS-compliant so you can stand out from the crowd
- Keep your title consistent (e.g. don’t put Senior UX writer, if it says Senior Content Design on your LinkedIn profile).
People who work in the UX field at a high level write about many things on their resumes. Again, relevancy is the key here, so make sure what you say is important. Make small changes and tweak your cover letter and resume for each job role. You must have these things on your resume as a senior UX writer:
- The number of people who reported to you
- Your methodology for delegation and in what setting (e.g. Agile, Scrum)
- Impact your work had on revenue
- Collaboration tools that you use (e.g. Miro, Figma, Airtable, Hotjar)
- Relevant certifications and contributions to the community
- How you keep the content style guide relevant
- Your experience with conversational chatbots
- Your ability to properly scope projects and meet or exceed timeline expectations
- How do you advocate for the UX writer role
- How you conducted UX research to get qualitative and quantitative data
Listing UX Writer Resume Skills
When you list your UX writer’s resume skills, they need to go under the bullet points of each role. Don’t include it as a separate section. When you Google for resume examples, they’ll have skills often listed separately. This doesn’t mean it’s right. In fact, it’s wrong.
Hiring managers want to see the impact of the skills you have. Reading the word “Figma”, “Content strategy”, or “Interaction design” under skills gives the hiring manager zero context to how you used those skills. It’s wasted white space on your resume. And again, you only have one page to convince them that you’re the ideal persona for their UX writer opening.
Here are some of the skills you can add with context – that means showing impact – underneath your relevant roles.
- Content strategy
- Hiring and onboarding new team members
- Understanding of user research and UX design
- Empathy
- Stakeholder management
Listing UX Writer Resume Education
Only list degrees that are relevant to UX writing. If your educational background doesn’t match the job, don’t tell them about it at all.
Putting a Bachelor’s Degree on your job application won’t help you get the job. Be clear. What did you do for your thesis project? Or another big school project that’s relevant?
For example, the following isn’t helpful:
“Bachelors in English, California State University.”
Instead, talk about your academic achievements and subjects that show that you know about UI and UX.
Like this:
“Bachelors in Computer Science, California State University and Certified UX Writer”
The computer science degree tells the hiring manager that you’re familiar with web interfaces and love technology. The Certified UX Writer implies that you like to continuously learn and have taken a credible step to specialize in the role you’re applying for.
Listing UX Writing Certifications
In the same way that certifications help you stand out from the rest of the candidates, they also help you to get hired.
Certifications show that you’re always improving your skills and staying one step ahead in a competitive job market, which is why they’re important. Employers see a UX Writer certification or course as reliable right away, which increases your chances of getting the job.
Here are some of the most well-known certifications in UX writing that help you stand out from your competing candidates.
- UX Writing Fundamentals by UX Content
- UX Writing Fundamentals by UX Content Collective
- Learn the essentials of UX writing by UX Writing Hub
- Build a rewarding career in UX Writing by UX Design Institute
- FOUNDATIONS OF UX WRITING by Professional and Continuing Education
The big thing here is to link to your capstone project from your certification course. This shows that you applied your knowledge. If your certification course doesn’t provide a capstone project or help you create a portfolio, then it’s lost most of its value.
Listing UX Writing Achievements
As a UX writer, what makes you different from other people?
Only if your skills, qualifications, and certifications have led to great results for previous employers do they matter. You may have had the same job responsibilities as another UX writer in the same resume stack, but if you got better results, then you’ll get hired over them.
For every good thing you do, you need to show a standard measure, which is a real number.
When you worked at the previous company, how did your job generate revenue? Increase retention? Reduce support requests? Can you show it?
There are many resumes for UX writers that say things like:
“Worked in a cross-functional team to write UX microcopy to improve user experience”
The hiring manager just rolled their eyes at that one.
It’s true that these things are important, but what did the user experience say about it in measurable numbers?
Hiring managers and recruiters care less about what tools you use and more about how your work makes a difference.
You also need to explain why you put those numbers down on your resume, so make sure you do that, too. There are many numbers that may impress your potential employer, but which ones make the difference? Again, think of what’s relevant.
Here are some great examples:
- Rewrote onboarding experience copy, leading to a 20 percent increase in new signups, resulting in over $500,000 in additional yearly revenue.
- Updated support chatbot conversations, resulting in a 40 percent decrease in live agent responses, saving the company millions of dollars in revenue.
- Wrote empty state copy for the editor feature, leading to a 20 percent increase in product usage time during an average user session.
Listing Interests
We haven’t yet found a UX writer’s resume that lists their interests as a separate section of their resume. In fact, employers don’t even bother to look at it at all. They care about how well they do, how many people see them, and how good they are at what they do.
Leave this part out.
Listing Languages
Many jobs require you to speak and write in English. And if you know another language, you immediately stand out. Many companies want to make their product more accessible globally and they need UX writers who understand and can write in multiple languages. It’s a huge advantage if you can do this. It can make up for a significant lack of other experience. You can even get hired over someone with several more years of experience than you.
Just make sure that if you do list that you know another language, you can write competently in it. Too many people list languages that they can’t perform job functions in. It’s deceiving and leaves a bad impression on your potential employer.
Also, many European countries, like France, Spain, and Germany, prefer to hire people who can speak their native language well.
UX Writer Resume Example
UX writer resumes can be hard to write. This is an example of a good one that I found and like. Granted, the resume should only be one page. If you reduced this resume to one page, then it’s even better.
Every line says how the candidate can help. In addition, they don’t waste resume space by including an objective, a separate skills section, or any other information that isn’t relevant. The only thing I’d change here is to break up the paragraphs into shorter bullet points.
They also put their skills, knowledge of software, and other relevant experience into their work job details. Kudos.
UX Writing Job Application Experience
Now, you may already have applied to UX writing jobs, and so far, you have not heard anything back. It doesn’t matter how many degrees or certifications you have if you can’t format your resume correctly, or you’re mass applying with the shotgun method. If you’re using a shotgun method, you may even get results like this when applying for your first UX writer job:
- Applied for more than 100 jobs in the last few months.
- 50 people turn you down.
- No one asked for an interview.
“Something isn’t right. ‘Why aren’t I getting a response from them?’” you ask yourself.
Change your plan. You need to spend time looking at the company’s job roles and making your resume and cover letter unique for each one. Then you’ll see results like this:
- 50 resumes were sent out
- 15 people turn you down
- Interviews for the first round took place with 5 people.
- 2 interviews in the second round
- One last-round interview
- One job offer
One job offer for every 50 applications doesn’t sound like a lot. This might look like a low conversion rate. But it’s not. Compare it to the numbers from the shotgun approach. Moreover, you’ll finally get your foot in the door for the UX writer position which makes your resume much more attractive the next time you apply for similar roles.
How many pages should your UX writer’s resume be?
We already covered this but it’s important to reiterate here. You should apply the KISS rule. Keep It Short and Simple. This means your UX writer resume needs to be NO longer than 1 page.
Why?
10 seconds
That’s all many hiring managers use when looking at your resume and deciding if you are the right UX writer at that moment.
Five UX Writer Resume Tips
Here are five writing tips that will help you write a great resume for a UX person:
1. Make a unique cover letter for each job
Make your cover letter for a UX writer unique to the job you want. It should show how good you are at working with people and how you can help your new employer.
2. Make sure your UX Writer resume is up to date for each new job
If you have many jobs, you’ll have different job descriptions and job roles. A good rule of thumb is to make changes to your resume based on the job you want. Suppose the job is for a senior UX writer at a fintech consumer app. If that’s the case, you should make changes to your resume accordingly. Applicants who tailor their cover letters and resumes to the job roles they are applying for get more attention from hiring managers.
3. Link to your UX Writing content portfolio
You can’t undervalue the benefit of keeping your own website or even a simple portfolio hosted in Google Drive using Google Slides. Think about it for a while. Many UX writers don’t have their own websites. The one who does will stand out from the rest. Creating a content portfolio will help you get the job you want, even if there is a lot of competition. This is a list of some links to portfolio websites of writers who can charge high prices in their field.
4. List the relevant work history
Take care not to write anything on your resume that you won’t be able to back up later on. These are jobs that are related to your work history. Make sure that you don’t talk about UX experience for health tech if you don’t have enough experience there, You should know a lot about the job you want to do.
5. Before submitting, proofread
Are you serious? Despite your UX writing abilities, your resume contained lengthy phrases and spelling errors? However, you are applying as a user experience writer, correct? You cannot afford to have any errors on your resume as a UX writer. Yes, your resume’s UX writing should undoubtedly be engaging. Regardless of your ability level, a single grammatical or spelling error is sufficient to cause rejection.
UX Writer Resume Don’ts
A few other don’ts for your UX writer resume include the following:
Resume objective and summary
Why would you add a resume summary? This occurs frequently with a few lines stated at the top of a résumé. Your resume already contains an overview of your work experience related to UX writing. There is no need for a summary of a summary.
Headshot
What information does a headshot provide about your experience? Nothing. There is no reason to include a photo if you are applying for a job that is not related to acting or modeling. Also, if they want to, they can locate your headshot by visiting your LinkedIn profile or conducting a Google search for your name.
Old experience
If you’re anything like me, you’ve accumulated more than 6 to 7 years of experience in UX writing. The reality is that nobody cares about what you did seven years ago. What matters most is what you did recently. Make a point of highlighting who you are today, not that you worked at a restaurant during college.
Where Can You Apply with Your UX Writer Resume?
Your resume is now your most powerful marketing tool for securing high-paying jobs.
This is your opportunity to apply for UX writing positions listed on the following job boards and foreign freelancing marketplaces, including:
Key Takeaways
We’ve talked a lot about how to write a UX writer’s resume.
Let’s look at the big picture. Here’s a quick summary of the whole guide:
- Be relevant and use a reverse timeline when it makes sense.
- Personalize and customize your resume to each job opportunity
- So that an ATS doesn’t throw your resume away, you need to use the right keywords.
- Proofread your resume before you apply.
- Use a sniper technique.
Writing a resume for a UX writer position is both tough and rewarding. Writing the perfect résumé might take anywhere from an entire day to many weeks.
You cannot and should not rely on a generic resume template in light of the level of competition. Hiring managers will quickly notice.
I have complete confidence in you.
Following this guide, it’s time to write your professional resume.
FAQs
Here are questions that users frequently ask about UX writers:
What are essential UX writing skills for improving user experience?
Essential UX writing skills include clarity, conciseness, empathy, and the ability to anticipate user needs. Strong grammar, attention to detail, and the ability to write in a user-centered way are also important.
How does user experience (UX) writing differ from traditional copywriting?
UX writing focuses on crafting text that guides users through digital interfaces, enhancing usability. Unlike traditional copywriting, which often persuades or sells, UX writing aims to simplify tasks and improve the overall user experience.
Why is user interface text important in UX writing?
User interface (UI) text, like buttons, tooltips, and error messages, plays a key role in helping users navigate and interact with digital products. Clear and intuitive UI text can reduce confusion, improve efficiency, and lead to a better user experience.
How can effective UX writing improve user satisfaction?
Effective UX writing enhances the user journey by providing clear instructions, reducing friction, and making digital interactions smoother. This leads to higher user satisfaction and a more positive experience with the product.
What role does empathy play in user experience writing?
Empathy in UX writing involves understanding the user’s needs, pain points, and emotions. By writing with empathy, you can create text that resonates with users, making interfaces more intuitive and user-friendly.
If you are new to UX writing and are looking to break-in, we recommend taking our UX Writing Certification Course, where you will learn the fundamentals of being a UX writer, how to dominate UX writer interviews, and how to stand out as a UX writing candidate.