This past March, I resigned from my last agency due to that role ultimately not being the best fit. You know you've made the smart choice when the day after, you wake up feeling like a new man. The birds sing sweeter, the sun shines brighter, and you don't feel like jumping off a bridge on Sunday evening. What isn't all sunshine and rainbows, however, is the downtime between being gainfully employed.

Staying sharp at your craft not only helps ease the transition from freelancing back into full-time employment, but it also helps you avoid losing your mind from being a home body. Thankfully, my incredibly awesome friends stepped up and kept my creative plate full throughout my job hunt. One suggested I do some writing during that time, and I penned "The Usability of Résumé Design" (which also appeared on Speckyboy Design Magazine), a topic that was very near and dear to me at that point. Between doing some Wordpress template coding for a monthly zine, consulting and interactive design for translation management software company Smartling, and package design with a full UX/UI site redesign process for an iPad case maker, I was kept busy. Blissfully so. Beyond that creative work — and watching "The Price is Right" — what else was going on during that timeframe?

Interviewing. Lots of interviewing. It's the best way to figure out, in coming from a less-than-desirable scenario, where you want to ultimately be in the next stage of your journey. For my part, I spent a few months (preceding resigning) treading through where I thought the next transition might occur; namely, more standard mid-to-large-sized design agencies and straight-up tech companies (effectively, the sectors where I had safely remained in years previous). As stated above, copious amounts of interviewing is vital to sharpen that skill, and I did just that. On the design side, agencies inclusive of Energy BBDO, Digitas, and SapientNitro. In the tech sector, Google, Oracle, and GE. It would be name-dropping if I received an offer from any of them; however, I most certainly did not. What I did gain from those experiences, though, was solidifying exactly what I was not seeking.

Moving forward from there, the subsequent next few months (now, while freelancing) involved targeting opportunities that featured a unique business proposition/offering, incredible company culture, or offered a completely fresh take on an industry I was feeling burnt out on. After near double-digit interviews over this period, I was in the final stretch with 3 amazing companies, which offered 3 specialized roles. 2 of them were start-ups, the first of which was iOS-specific and founded/funded by Marc Ewing, creator of Red Hat Linux. The second start-up was the most unique opportunity of all, in that gaming was leveraged (both tangibly and digitally) for education, and overall social good. A tremendous bunch of guys doing equally tremendous creative work. The last role was with a Swedish-based technology-driven firm, who was establishing UX/UI teams internally (amongst their Stockholm, London, New York, and Chicago offices) to facilitate the UX process between them and their partner design agencies. For their Chicago office, this was an opportunity as the Creative Lead to build a team from the ground-up, establish a practice, and grow an overall creative culture.

After over 6 months of interviewing with no results, I now had 2 job offers within as many days. The opportunity which ultimately best suited my long-term goals was with Nansen, the Swedish firm. Not only did this role best utilize my full skill-set, but with an incredible pre-existing agency culture, brilliant and congenial people, insane benefits (5 weeks of vacation, anyone?), and an opportunity to work with design agencies around the world, I simply couldn't pass it up. As a side note, as the guy who wrote an article about résumé best practices, I forgot to attach mine in my email response to the Nansen's post on the 37signals job board. Thankfully, fate was forgiving of my ineptitude that day.