So you’re a newly minted designer with a handful of projects to showcase. Or, you’re a seasoned designer who’s back on the search and needs to refresh they’re portfolio. You’ve probably applied to countless jobs and sent your portfolio to all your dream and not-so-dream companies, but you’ve just not gotten any takers.
This is almost a universal experience in 2024. The job market is tough, and employer expectations are high. You’ve probably noticed three, four, or even five times the applications for a job this year with all the tech layoffs, and people are doing anything they can to stand out. Here’s what you may be doing wrong with your portfolio and some actionable tips to help you get past the recruiter’s line of defense — and get to the interview to show them what you’re made of.
Yes, your portfolio is the most important artifact to showcase your skills
I imagine you’re wondering, “What’s all the fuss about? I could just use one of the free UX design portfolio templates out there.” But your cookie-cutter portfolio doesn’t make the cut nowadays. Here’s why:
Recruiters and hiring managers spend only a few minutes reviewing a design portfolio
When it comes to reviewing design portfolios, recruiters and hiring managers often have limited time due to their workload and the sheer volume of applications they receive. As a result, they typically spend around three minutes or even less skimming through a portfolio to assess its quality and relevance to the job role.
During this brief window, they look for key indicators:
- Visual appeal
- Project diversity
- Problem-solving skills
- Creativity
- Alignment with the company’s values and design principles
Therefore, it’s crucial for UX designers to make a strong first impression and ensure that their portfolios are concise, well-organized, and showcase their best work upfront to capture the attention of recruiters within this short timeframe.
As an example, recruiters should not have to struggle to find your projects within your portfolio. So while out-of-the-box visual designs will certainly wow recruiters, it’s important to adopt the expected design principles around the structure of your portfolio.
Now, why don’t recruiters have more time?
Companies get hundreds and even thousands of job applications
FAANG (or MANGA) companies have an acceptance rate between 0.6 to 5 percent of applications.
The competition for UX design positions at top companies is extremely fierce. These companies typically receive an overwhelming number of job applications for each open position, ranging from hundreds to thousands of applications depending on the company’s size and popularity.
However, their acceptance rates are notoriously low, hovering between 0.6 to 5 percent of total applications received. This means that only a tiny fraction of applicants make it through the initial screening process and secure interviews. As a result, UX designers need to not only showcase their skills effectively through their portfolios but also find ways to stand out from the crowd by highlighting unique experiences, projects, and achievements that align with the specific needs and culture of the target companies.
Recruiters and design managers are bored with the generic case studies in your portfolio
We’ve explained how recruiters and design managers have to sift through countless design portfolios, and one common frustration they encounter is the prevalence of generic UX design case studies. These uninspiring case studies often follow a predictable format: problem statement, user research, wireframes, prototypes, and final design. While these elements are crucial, presenting them in a cookie-cutter manner is a sure recipe for boredom and disinterest.
To stand out from the crowd, focus on creating case studies that tell a compelling and unique story about your design process and outcomes. To win with a portfolio now, you need to hone your storytelling skills, too!
Do NOT start designing your portfolio until you can confidently answer these 5 questions
Before you move a single pixel, here are some things you want to think about:
1. Who will be looking at your portfolio?
It’s crucial to understand who will be viewing your portfolio — i.e. your audience or “user.”
Consider the demographics, preferences, and expectations of the individuals or organizations that are likely to review your portfolio. Are they potential employers, clients, fellow designers, or industry professionals? Are you targeting companies with a more formal or informal brand?
You should tailor your portfolio’s content, style, and messaging to resonate with your specific audience. This will significantly enhance its effectiveness and impact.
For example, if you’re targeting tech startups, showcasing your ability to innovate and adapt quickly might be more relevant than if you’re targeting traditional corporate clients who value stability and reliability. A good UX designer always thinks about their user!
2. What actions do you want your “users” to take after looking at your portfolio?
Think about the actions you want your users to take after they’ve explored your portfolio. Do you want them to:
- Contact you for freelance opportunities,
- Schedule an interview,
- Explore more of your work, or
- Follow you on professional networking platforms?
Each section of your portfolio should guide users toward these desired actions through clear CTAs, intuitive navigation, and compelling content. If you strategically place CTAs and design the user flow to encourage engagement, you can influence how users interact with your portfolio and increase the likelihood of achieving your desired outcomes.
3. What impression do you want your users to have about you?
Consider the impression you want your users to have about you and your work after viewing your portfolio. Are you aiming to showcase your creativity, problem-solving skills, attention to detail, collaborative nature, or industry expertise?
Your portfolio should reflect your personal brand and professional identity in a way that resonates with your target audience’s expectations and perceptions. Pay attention to visual elements, tone of voice, storytelling techniques, and case studies that highlight your strengths and achievements.
If you haven’t figured out your personal brand, now’s the time to start. Think about the companies you want to work for and admire: are they laid back, fast-paced, ambitious, people-first, quirky, professional? This can help you to create goals for your own brand.
4. What sets you apart from other designers in your field?
Define your unique value proposition (UVP): the combination of skills, experiences, qualities, and perspectives that differentiate you from your peers. Your UVP should be prominently communicated throughout your portfolio, emphasizing what makes you valuable, memorable, and indispensable to potential employers or clients.
You could highlight key achievements, awards, client testimonials, industry certifications, specialized skills, or innovative approaches that showcase your expertise and contributions. Demonstrating your UVP not only attracts attention but also helps users understand why they should choose you over other candidates or designers.
You can learn more about becoming a T-shaped designer to understand wing skills and develop depth in your niche.
5. Where will you house your portfolio?
Deciding where to host your portfolio is another important consideration. While having a custom domain name can add a professional touch, especially as you progress in your career, it’s not always necessary, especially in the early stages. Platforms like Behance, Dribbble, Framer, and personal website builders offer various options for showcasing your work effectively.
Evaluate the pros and cons of each platform based on factors such as:
- Visibility
- Customization capabilities
- Analytics
- Ease of updating
- Accessibility across devices
Choose a platform that aligns with your goals, budget, and technical skills while ensuring that your portfolio is easily discoverable and accessible to your target audience. Not every portfolio needs the showy bells and whistles — your work can speak for itself.
Apply these 10 tips to elevate your design story
As you’ve seen, your portfolio needs to be more than just a boring collection of your projects; it should tell your design story and capture your professional identity.
Once you’ve been able to define the above 5 key elements of your portfolio, the below insights will guide you in communicating your story, presenting your work effectively, and positioning yourself as a top candidate for any design team:
1. When writing your portfolio content, aim for brevity and simplicity
Tell your story concisely without losing the essence. This means you have to focus on communicating the most crucial aspects without getting overly technical. It’s really important to ensure your narrative is engaging while maintaining clarity.
2. Emphasize the results and impact of your work
Communicate the value of your work. Did your projects lead to measurable improvements or achievements? Showcase outcomes such as improved workflows, increased stakeholder appreciation for design, positive user feedback, growth in metrics like conversion rates or user retention, and the removal of usability friction. For instance:
- Did your team develop a new or more efficient way to work?
- Did stakeholders begin to value design more?
- Did your users write some great reviews about the feature you worked on?
- Did customer support receive less tickets concerning a feature?
- Did your metrics grow — conversion, acquisition, retention?
- Did users find it easier to carry out a specific process in the product flow?
- Did your design or solution remove friction for your users?
3. Identify and communicate what makes you unique
Showcase skills, experiences, or backgrounds that set you apart from other designers. Highlight any specialized knowledge, such as UX copywriting, expertise in specific domains, or unique problem-solving abilities that align with the employer’s needs.
Oftentimes, teams are not looking to hire just another designer but really want to fill a crucial gap. Perhaps they do need a designer but they really need a designer who has experience writing UX copy or redesigning error flows or someone with knowledge of a specific domain.
4. Communicate your passion for the work
These recruiters and design managers have probably had to go through a million and one case studies all showing some lengthy (and probably monotonous) design process.
Go beyond the status quo — tell a story about your work. Your story could include why solving a particular problem was significant to you. Show (and not just tell) your genuine enthusiasm for creating impactful solutions and your dedication to your craft!
5. Prioritize quality over quantity
Focus on showcasing your most impactful and meaningful projects rather than overwhelming your audience with sheer volume. A curated selection of case studies and UI designs that best highlight your skills, creativity, problem-solving abilities, and the value you bring to the table will not only capture attention but also leave a lasting impression of your capabilities and professional caliber.
6. Leverage your portfolio to highlight your diverse skill set
For instance, building your portfolio using tools like Framer, Webflow, and other no-code solutions is a good way to highlight your proficiency. This not only adds depth to your portfolio but also positions you as a versatile and technically adept designer that’s ready to tackle complex challenges.
7. Be sure to show the finished work
Your portfolio should prominently feature the completed projects, using high-quality images that showcase your design solutions in their full glory — ’nuff said.
8. Use more images or visualizations than textual content in your portfolio.
Remember that recruiters and hiring managers often have limited time; they’ll typically skim through. You need to leverage visual hierarchy principles to direct the viewer’s attention effectively to key information. This ensures that your portfolio captures and retains the viewer’s interest while conveying your design expertise concisely and persuasively.
9. Focus on success for a full-time role
Not everyone wants to work full-time for one employer (and we’ll have tips for those that don’t in the next section!). But for those of you that do, here’s how you can demonstrate you’re ready for that responsibility:
Show that you’re a great collaborator
Humanize your profile by highlighting the individuals you collaborated with, their roles, and your specific contributions to the projects. This adds a personal touch to your portfolio and provides insights into your teamwork, communication, and leadership capabilities. It’s key to creating a compelling narrative that resonates with recruiters and hiring managers looking for candidates who thrive in team environments.
Regularly update your portfolio to reflect your most recent and relevant work
Recruiters and hiring managers should not have to wonder why you are showcasing a case study from several years ago instead of highlighting more recent projects. Keeping your portfolio up-to-date helps demonstrate your ongoing growth, skills, and relevance in the design industry.
Highlight the challenges you faced and how you overcame them
Highlighting challenges showcases your problem-solving skills and resilience. It helps recruiters get a sense of your ability to adapt and thrive in the day-to-day realities of the role.
You can show how you navigated a lack of executive buy-in, how you worked with a limited research budget, or how you managed tight deadlines. This transparency gives recruiters a glimpse into the practical skills and resourcefulness you bring to the table.
10. Or focus on success for a freelance opportunity
Finding freelance projects is different. You’ll be one part marketer to spread your work to potential clients. This is how you can get started:
Utilize SEO
Since you’re building your own brand, prioritize visibility to ensure that your portfolio and work are easily discoverable online. Use relevant keywords, tags, and descriptions that potential clients or employers might search for when looking for design services. Increasing visibility increases your chances of getting noticed by potential clients or collaborators.
Express yourself
Stand out as a designer by showcasing your creativity and unique style. No one wants to work with a bland designer. Use visually appealing designs, innovative concepts, and engaging storytelling to demonstrate your creativity and leave a lasting impression on your audience.
Leverage multiple platforms to house your portfolio
Don’t limit yourself to a single platform. Spread your portfolios across various platforms to maximize exposure and reach different audiences — Behance, Dribbble, Linkedin, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Each platform has its own community and audience, so diversifying your presence increases your chances of connecting with the right clients or collaborators.
“I learned to share about my work widely, even on my social media, and this was a major factor in landing my current role. My current line manager could see from my tweets (on X/Twitter) that I was really passionate about my craft.” — Joseph Odekunle, Product Designer at International Stable Currency
Now, here’s what you should NOT do
There are some clear don’ts for any portfolio:
- Don’t try to force your case study to follow some predesigned process or template that you think is expected. Instead, highlight the creative steps you took and the impactful results achieved.
- Don’t steal someone else’s designs! Ethical integrity is crucial in the design industry. You must never plagiarize or copy designs from others — it’s hard to rebuild your integrity after it’s been questioned. Your portfolio should showcase your originality and ability to create unique solutions that are tailored to specific challenges.
- Don’t try to come across as a “perfect” human being. Acknowledge mistakes you made during projects and share the valuable lessons you learned from them. Employers value designers who demonstrate growth, adaptability, and a willingness to learn from experiences.
- Don’t make any typos. Ensure that your case studies and portfolios are thoroughly reviewed by mentors, friends, and colleagues to catch any spelling or grammatical errors.”
Avoid low quality images and typos — this is a clear indication to the recruiter or design manager that you don’t pay attention to details.” — Ayodeji Olagbaiye, Product Designer at Kuda Bank
Additional tips for beginners
If you’re starting out, this can all be overwhelming. Here’s some more direction:
- If you don’t have much real-life design experience:
- Evaluating or reimagining an existing design or product and creating a case study on it can be an excellent way to grab attention. It showcases your analytical thinking and problem-solving skills
- Working on “fake projects” and conducting user testing with prototypes can be a great way to show your skills. Include feedback from target users and highlight the iterative process to demonstrate your ability to iterate based on user insights. Lots of sites have design challenges and prompts to flex your skills
- Experience in a specific industry or domain isn’t always essential. While valuable, it’s not always a dealbreaker. You don’t need to have experience in designing for ecommerce in order to work in Shopify. Instead, focus on showcasing your skills, creativity, and ability to solve problems rather than just industry-specific experience.
- Seek feedback from peers and mentors. Having others review your portfolio and case studies can provide valuable insights and help you improve your presentation and content.
- Highlight impact over brand names. You may have worked on a lot of valuable solutions, but if these projects are for companies that are not well known, instead of naming your projects in your portfolio using the brand name, use project titles that highlight outcomes. You can highlight the industry or product type and the impact your work had. For example:
- “Reduced onboarding friction by 10 mins in X project”
- “2x’d customer retention in Healthtech app”
- “Reduced customer checkout time from 5 minutes to 30 seconds in ecommerce app”
- While industry experience is not always essential, it can often be a tiebreaker or added bonus. So, tailor your portfolio to reflect the type of work you aspire to do. If you’re targeting a specific company or domain, you can try to center your design projects around themes and challenges relevant to that industry.
- Check out these insightful YouTube videos by Dann Petty and Ran Segall (Flux Academy), where they review design portfolios and offer valuable feedback. These videos will help bring all the tips I’ve shared into perspective. They serve as a practical guide, bringing to life the tips and strategies discussed in this article and will help you gain a clearer understanding of how to elevate your design portfolio effectively.
Essential elements for a winning design portfolio: A checklist
Here’s a checklist to help get you started. You can use this checklist to self-review your portfolio or if you are a mentor, use this to review your mentees portfolios:
Download the portfolio checklist here.
Conclusion
You’ve heard it all: how you can create a design portfolio that gets recruiters and design managers in your DMs! By incorporating these insights and approaching your design portfolio with strategic intent, you’re poised to make a lasting impression on recruiters and design managers alike. With these tips for a carefully curated presentation of your projects, you’ll be well-equipped to stand out in a competitive job market and land your dream UX design role.
A heartfelt thank you goes out to Ayodeji Olagbaiye and Joseph Odekunle for generously sharing their experiences and perspectives, enriching the content of this article and empowering designers on their career journeys.
Header image source: IconScout
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