00:31:00 with Agatha K.
Recently, a colleague of Agatha’s explained to her the innovative way his schoolteacher had taught history, which was through roleplaying famous historical events and guessing what happened next in the situation. Students would say their hypotheses and then find out what had truly happened, and through these experiential learning activities, students could easily remember significant historical events and people. Agatha believes this creative technique should be used for teaching various subjects. Although she admits history is not her favorite subject, Agatha believes there is much to be learned from the experiences and perspectives of others as creativity, in its essence, is synthesizing seemingly unrelated ideas to make way for new ideas and ways of thinking.
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.”
- Steve Jobs
Upon earning her bachelor’s in Comparative Literary Studies and Slavic Languages and Literature from Northwestern University in 2012, Agatha taught higher education courses prior to earning her Master’s in Comparative Literary Studies in 2013. After her Master’s, Agatha contemplated attending law school or becoming a paralegal, which she received job offers for, but did not have her long-term sights set on the legal industry. Agatha looked inwards and felt an appreciation for television commercials and how they influenced her feelings and thinking, so she became curious about the advertising industry. Agatha pictured herself in copywriting and content strategy, so she was able to narrow down her job search, and put her best foot forward in job applications, and managed to land a position as a Jr. Content Strategist at SapientNitro.
The interview process for the position at SapientNitro involved working in a group to solve a problem, where she and other applicants were supervised based on their demonstration of leadership and interpersonal skills, such as innate curiosity by asking good questions to dig deeper into the underlying problem, thinking critically, and collaboration abilities. Agatha believes this hiring process is a great way to assess candidates as it puts names to faces and allows talent acquisition specialists to see applicants IRL, allowing applicants to shine their natural capabilities since résumés and paper applications are flat and tough to judge.
Once Agatha had joined the team at SapientNitro, she shadowed her teammates on the UX design team, who generously lent their time to mentor, enabling her to learn on-the-job through working in the department overtime. Agatha credits this mentorship and training from her colleagues at SapientNitro to be an instrumental factor in her gradual transition from content strategy to UX and product design.
“I don’t think anybody makes it in the world without some form of mentorship. Nobody makes it alone. Nobody has made it alone. We are all mentors to people even when we don’t know it.”
- Oprah Winfrey
Having spent five years in agencies (SapientNitro and Beyond), and more than one year in-house (Intuit and Lyft), Agatha feels it is hard for her to imagine the start of her career without the diversity of an agency, where there is a large supporting team, with every department making up a cog in the wheel. In an agency, work is decided upon and assigned to teams by senior management, there are lots of people to hold you accountable, and you typically work on projects that span several months for a single client. Working in-house, there is more autonomy and flexibility over projects and deadlines, a greater ability to develop leadership skills through spearheading initiatives, and more say on research and the direction you want to take each week. Agatha credits her success working in-house to her background working in agencies as the fast paced and highly accountable settings of agencies has enabled her to thrive managing product design in an in-house environment which gives her more control, but as we all know, with great power comes great responsibility.
In an agency, UX designers create low-fidelity wireframes from scratch for clients, and then deliver the prototype to a visual designer who will then improve upon the visual appeal. An existing toolbox of wireframe components exist in-house so prototypes do not need to be made from scratch, but custom alterations are applied to every project nonetheless. Design softwares Agatha uses regularly include Figma and Invision.
If Agatha could change her career to anything, she would choose to be a landscape architect. She is interested in the intersection of gardening and human-spatial interaction, having observed how human health and behavior is affected by the inclusion of plants in indoor and outdoor environments.
Agatha encourages high school and college students to be honest about their skills and passions, and constantly strive to become more self-aware by trying on many different hats through interviewing, shadowing, apprenticeships, internships, etc. with people in various career fields of interest. Agatha mentions that it’s harder to transition to different career fields midway in your career, so take the chance to explore diverse paths earlier on, when you’re starting out.
Thanks again, Agatha! Until next time!
01/21/21.
