There's two answers to this question.

1 - You work in an agency for years, probably around 10-15 and slowly get promoted as your gain more experience

2 - You hop around different jobs. As you've got 3 years experience now, I'd classify you as a junior, maybe intermediate. So just keep going for intermediate and senior jobs. Eventually you'll get one, especially if you live in a city.

This is kind of related, but personally I think titles are meaningless. I am technically a senior designer, but there are hundreds of designers who are 'intermediate designers' who could run circles around me.

Also, the fact that you've only been designing for three years and you're trying to get senior roles kinda backs me up on this. People will judge you far more on your portfolio than your job title. When I'm hiring people and they say they're a creative/design director or a senior designer but their work looks like a juniors, ill probably ignore them because if they're lying to me when they're applying for a job, there is already no trust there, and I wouldn't hire someone I don't trust.

So my advice to you is: If you want to be a senior designer, start designing like one, but you've gotta realize there is more to it than just design - managing people, teams and stakeholders, buying fonts, hiring devs or other designers also come into the equation and for things like that the only way to get better is by doing your 10,000 hours of work.

I'm a Senior Designer. At least that's one of my roles.

It just sort of happened after like, a decade doing this stuff. But it's just a title. Titles are not a true indicator of your skills or performance, you should focus on those things and titles sort of just flow from it.

I've been working in design industry (client side) for around 10 years - Started as an intern fresh out of university and within 4 years I has hiring interns for my own team. My personal understanding of being senior is less about time in a role, and more about skills you demonstrate in that role.

I'm sure it totally depends based on your roles and the kind of companies you've been at, but developing skills allowed me to initiate projects really helped me get to senior level, for me the most important skills for me to pick up were probably the following;

• Being able to understand, measure and quantify the impact my projects - I found if could do I was able to influence the priority of projects. It also meant I could bring objectivity to often very subjective conversations, this helped me communicate with product/tech/execs and getting their buy in to initiatives.

• Being comfortable/confident about up-skilling others - albeit hands on direct management, or hands off sharing knowledge and asking the right questions, understanding how to get the best out of others really helps with that progression towards senior design roles.

• Evangelising user centred design - Interacting with wider business and others that may not have any real understanding about why design is important, and really championing users and the difficulties they face. Replaying feedback and user testing videos to show the progress we could make with solving problems from a users perspective has a massive impact on execs, and seems to add more value to the projects you're trying to initiate.

Sure it differs for everyone, but in short my emphasis was always on trying to initiate projects that add tangible value and spread the word about benefits of UCD.

I think Todd got the direction right; put in the hours.

Try to do as many different types of jobs/projects as possible.

Compare it to a musician. When is someone a master of their craft? Generally, it's the 10,000 hours rule. There are some people that do it in less, but it still shows the general idea.

A senior is just someone that has done a job often enough to have the answer to pretty much every situation.

Note: THE answer, not AN answer.

Here in Norway, having the title "Senior designer" only symbolises how long you've been working as a designer + your company can also bill you clients a higher hourly rate for the work you do. A certain experience and level of quality is to be expected, but there is no requirement of you training other designers, managing people and stuff like that.

Perfect timing for this article: What it takes to be a Product Designer

https://uxdesign.cc/what-it-takes-to-be-a-product-designer-424a4151261e

Please don't rush, you'll know when you're ready.

Honestly, there's no rush to management and seniority, take your time, learn your craft and new avenues of opportunity will open up.

Last thing you want it the title and not being able to live up to it (or handle the stress).

You'll get there.

It used to be 5-8 years in the 00's, these days less, there are many variables but loosely based on..

1. Design skills
2. Communication
3. Responsibility
4. Being able to talk to clients and challenge them
5. Delivering

Expectations for senior roles depends on where you work. You should ask your lead to support you through understanding the expectations from where you stand to getting the senior title.

IMO I don't think the "senior" role should be given after X years since the expectations from what a senior vs. a junior are very different.

As your lead to describe you what it is to be expected, then write yourself some OKRs that aim to help you grow in this direction. The document with OKRs should be a collaborative document with you and your lead.

Hi Jennifer, I think you've already been given a lot of great advice. I think to be truly senior you need to be able to lead, and leading doesn't mean asking the PO or the client what they want. You need to be able to see what they want and need and be able to stand in the fire to make that happen. That doesn't mean you need to be a design lead or march a team into battle. It just means you need to hone your skills to think like a leader and be able to own a project should the need arise.

In the end, it's about confidence. When you can defend your work and back it with research and best practices and stand up to all detractors then you'll know you're Senior. Then you can start working on Principal.

If you rephrase the question to “how do I become a better designer,” and reflect on that, you will find your answer.

You can grab your seniority (at a new workplace) with one thing. Your portfolio. If you've achieved amazing stuff on your works they'd be obvious. I'm tempted to say you have to sell yourself on interviews as well but the thing is, if you actually did a decent job, you don't have to come up with a 'story'. You'd be just explaining the process you've been through. The process itself is already a 'story' not a made up thing.

Senior means experienced. I also felt the same when I worked 2-3 yrs. It's been more than 10 years since I've started this work. Tbh, I was a joke when I thought I was a senior when I had 3 yrs of experience. I admit I've pitched my senior role after 3 years and started working with them. Did add nothing. I thought it would be a great experience but it was the same job. Same work. Heck, even same responsibilities. Did paid a bit much though.

Most important thing is, do not focus on titles. It's just bs. Your portfolio literally tells if you're senior or not. Right now, there have been times that I've been hired without being interviewed -well, just a brief phone call after sending my portfolio- Like I've said, seniority means being experienced. You might feel like you're the best but let me be honest with you, you're not. Neither of anyone on DN or rest of the world. Work your ass off to be a proper sr. Don't rush things. Deliver great projects, solve the most soul-crushing problems beautifully. Then what you're looking after will eventually arrive by itself.

alternative method: dress sharp, steal ppls works, talk bs and only buzzwords. grab your colleagues works and don't give credits. That's another way to being a senior. Just being sarcastic, don't be a dick. Maybe even just for once, you'll have the honors to work with such asshole like just I've described through your work experience. THAT's also experience.

Anyway, I feel like drifting a bit off topic. I'm just glad that you're aware of some stuff but you have to keep it in mind that if you want to be a senior, that's just a title. You'd be growing into a senior if you keep working. No need rushing things. If you're actually looking for raise, that's more than okay. Ask your boss for a raise. If they can't offer it, go change jobs. Grab some extra freelance works. We're all adults and this is professional life. No one's going to hold a grudge -unless if you leave leave out of nowhere and let your colleagues down. You need to pay your taxes and have a decent living standards after all. After all, this is not a charity work. This job seeking is also going to help you become more senior/experienced.

ps. oh, i believe there are no metrics what hr people are checking. I wish they had. I never understood their way of thinking nor their opinions on such stuff. Most of the time it feels like they're just eyeballing and picking random CV's from the pile. An effective hr always brings a appropriate colleague during the interview. After all your’re not professional on Human Resources not the hr is pro on design.

I think people here have pretty much already nailed it. I've been working as an employed designer for about 15 years. I started as a Junior Designer at a print agency and today am Head of Design at a UK digital design agency. (tall.agency). This process has involved switching agencies three times (Junior > Designer > Senior > Head of Design). Two of these were to more senior positions and one was a 'side-step' to a similar role in an agency that had better prospects for my development. There's no secret strategy to climbing the ladder - just stick at it, continue to look to improve your craft & skillset. Stay hungry, stay curious, try new things. Learn what you're good at and refine those skills to have areas where you know you're in the top 10% of people who can do that task/skill.

The following may be slightly controversial, but I've worked alongside many designers and many different attitudes and can say that (from my experience) the folks who get the promotions and end up 'going far' are the ones who aren't work-shy. They'll be the ones coming into work an hour early and leave a little late, doing stuff on weekends to make a project better and generally just being focused.

Last piece of advice. I would say that without a doubt my strongest ability that I've worked hard to develop over time is GIVING A SHIT ABOUT MY PROJECT. Unless you're very lucky (or exceptionally gifted) you won't be designing campaigns for Nike or RedBull. Typically it'll be a company in an industry that doesn't really excite you - this is when you really need to dig in to show levels of enthusiasm, work rate and care for the company's cause as though it was that Red Bull project.

Don't get me wrong. I'm by no means the perfect example to follow. I too have watched others go on to much greater positions than myself, but to be fair, in nearly every one of those cases, it's been someone that bit more dedicated, that bit more hungrier than me.

Be those guys. I've never met you but I know you can do it.