How to position a boring job
While I am grateful to be employed at a company where I am valued, compensated, and given a nice title (Staff or Lead), the work is far beneath what my peers at this level are doing. Most of my work has been:
- Summative research on Salesforce products (usability testing)
- Integrating UX Design and Research into the product development lifecycle (getting them to build and test prototypes instead of testing on fully baked dev work)
- Improving formative research and requirements gathering (mostly for BAs)
- One complex formative study focused on fraud and security with recommendations that did not make it into the product due to context collapse
I feel like, vs my other roles in fortune 500 companies, this new job (which is a small consulting company in the public health space) has actually set me back. I am not working on anything of material value besides Design & Research management & ops. In the interim, I have decided to pursue a Masters degree, which I'm grateful for as it has helped me to do more challenging work and learn design (edited) skills I have applied to projects where I oversee both UXR and UXD but, again, this is really just inching teams toward a more mature product design model.
As I apply for jobs at the senior IC roles, I am not sure if it makes sense to omit or minimize my current role, which I have been in for just over a year. Would it be better to have a gap but more immediately relevant work experience? Is this just a growing pain of moving into more management work making me uncomfortable?
I have also considered roles at the management level but have no direct reports. I have led work for UXR & UXD but those were 1-6 people at most.
I'm just so depressed and anxious about this weird space I'm in. I also am facing a lot of imposter syndrome due to a previous manager and toxic workplace where I received high ratings from engineering, product, and design but absolutely berated by my manager.
Sorry this is a bit rambling. I know we all look for professional and concise summaries in these questions because of our professional training but I just need to let it all out.
Thanks for any practical advice, tips, or encouragement.