FWIW, I've noticed that recruiters know much more about UX than they did even 3 years ago. I think this is in no small part to the efforts of IxDA, UPA, and some of the private groups like Forrester who publish "state of the UX industry" type of reports.
I led the UPA's UX salary survey from 2005 to 2009, which was three report cycles. In the beginning, when the reports circulated it seemed that most of the questions I received from recruiters were of the "what is UX" variety. By the 2009 survey, recruiters knew the key terms and skill sets, primary job descriptions, and most importantly they knew how to interpret what employers were asking for. They weren't just parroting phrases to prospective hires. E.g., 2005 - "I need an interactive designer (sic), do you know of one?" 2010 - "I'm looking for someone who can help a product team conduct early-stage design research, create personas and conceptual designs, and iterate the designs based on further data collection." BTW, in case anybody wants the "free to all" version of the 2009 UPA salary survey, you can get it at the link below. Yes, UPA's web site needs work. And yes, they're working hard on updating it. http://bit.ly/cpCOr7 I handed off the project to current board members at the end of the year, but if you have f.b. please @ me and I'll pass it to the salary survey project team. Wow, did I just slip into tweetspeak back there? -Paul - - - - - - - Paul Sherman p...@shermanux.com www.ShermanUX.com +1.512.917.1942 - - - - - - - ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help