From software sales to a product design internship at Braze

Changing careers from software sales into product design was brutal by the numbers: 14 months, more than 200 applications, 205 rejections, 6 interviews, and in the end a single design offer, a product design internship at Braze in New York. I want to be honest about what that felt like before I get to the part where it works out. I spent the first few months convinced I just needed a better portfolio. So I enrolled in a bootcamp, rebuilt my case studies from scratch, and watched endless teardowns of apps I'd never used. I was still working a software sales job through all of it, which meant most of my design work happened after 9 PM or on weekends. I applied through job boards obsessively: LinkedIn, Wellfound, Handshake, company career pages, refreshing confirmation emails like they meant something. Most of the time they meant an automated rejection two weeks later, or nothing at all. I kept a spreadsheet. Watching it climb past 100 applications and then past 150 without a single interview response made me question everything about the pivot. My portfolio, my bootcamp, my timing, whether product design was even the right move. The six interviews I did get felt enormous, partly because they were so rare. I over-prepared for every ↓