Before I started as a UX designer at Spire, I got a lot of great advice from seasoned designers on how to impress at a first design job.

Their most helpful pointers were not directly related to the trade, but instead about the things that surrounded it: meetings, relationships, and evangelizing design work.

I distilled these into this talk I gave to UX designers at Tradecraft San Francisco, delivered at the end of their program before they start their first design jobs.

If I were to give the talk again, I’d also talk about impostor syndrome. While it never fully goes away, there are good ways to manage it and prevent it from getting in the way of your work—and even to use it as motivation to improve.