Design a portfolio which secures you interviews
Companies of all sizes are being squeezed from their industries, causing layoffs, tighter budgets and leaders expected to do with less.
This means there are more people going for the same jobs so having a portfolio is of even more importance.
If you don’t have a portfolio of some sort even as a leader, you will be at a disadvantage.
Table of contents of this article:
What do the best portfolios have in common?
Why portfolios are important
How to lay out case studies
Tools to use
What (a few) hiring managers care about
What do the best portfolios have in common?
They are visually appealing.
A lot of hiring managers these days are not designers. They don’t think in service blueprints or IA (all very important, of course); they think in visuals, business outcomes, and whether person can help us solve a business problem. Make it look nice. Focus on visuals because the majority of us think visually. For example, we process images thousands of times faster than text.
They tell a story through the work
People want to see what your outcomes and to see live work or the impact your work had on the business.
Easy to digest, not chapter and verse
I know as a recruiter I do not read masses of text on portfolios, I want to see live work, some data and options to see more understanding of the process later. I can’t see many busy hiring managers taking the time to read every case study in detail.
Why is having a portfolio important?
Your work does the talking - The design job market is competitive. Companies have the pick of the market right now as I write this so they can be selective in who they hire and from where i.e “no one from agency” or “only SaaS experience”. But the portfolio gives you an opportunity to show through the work what you are capable of to show what you could bring to a company.
Some companies just want to hire from FAANG - so if you’re a designer from a lesser known company, you need to put even more emphasis on your portfolio. Sometimes designers are bound by ugly design systems and topics which are out of your control and shouldn’t reflect what you can do as a designer so your portfolio is an opportunity to showcase what you can do. Some designers get a break in a company which have high craft, so if you are not one of them, your portfolio is even more important.
It's not just to find a job. Designers are making £100,000 selling templates, courses, Youtube videos, coaching etc. A portfolio of work is your chance to validate yourself through what matters, the work.
Helps you structure your thoughts - The more I hear how certain C-Suite executives overlook design, I'm starting to understand why they do. The problem some designers have is they cannot articulate what exactly their value is. When challenged to provide strategic guidance, they fall back on the comfortable tactical aspects of design or process vagueness. A lot designers can hardly justify the existence of a proper design practice beyond the idea that engineering needs design support to build the right products. We need to understand how design links into business goals to get the attention of other disciplines in companies. By taking the time to write your work out, understand what went wrong, what went right, it will help you when talking about your work to companies.
How to lay out case studies
Please don’t think too much into this. Every article you read will tell you something different.
Key things I would think about:
Focus on crafting a story. Rather than detailing how you did wireframes etc. This is all stuff I would expect a designer to be doing. This is literally your job. What recruiters care about is results, so we can sell
Simple information hierarchy. Make a first impression in as few clicks as possible. Make it easy to read and scan.
Put your best work in there. Not many companies care about what you did 10 years ago.
Show end results and business impact. Hiring managers want to see how your skills are relevant to the kind of work they're going to assign to you, if you join. Metrics that impact the business are always a nice addition!
Show breadth of craft i.e not just across one type of product.
Product sense (Critical thinking, product craft, how you work with teams etc)
Focus on visual craft AKA attention to detail
Storytelling. A lot of companies are looking for full-stack designers these are people who can take something from 0 through to a deliverable on the product roadmap. This requires people who can think strategically but also understand the steps and detailed needed to hit that goal, as well as who they need to collaborate with to get things done.
For each case study you put on your portfolio you should be able to do a 20-30 minute presentation comfortably, covering your skills, approach and outcomes for customers and the business:
How did your team collaborate, and what was your specific role in the project?
Can you walk through your process for addressing the problem?
How did you approach understanding the system and constraints you were working within? Showing systems thinking is key.
Did you consider multiple solutions? What approaches worked well, and which didn’t?
How did you arrive at the final solution?
How did you measure the outcomes of your work?
What insights did you gain from this experience, and what would you do differently next time?
How did you incorporate these learnings into future iterations and improvements of the solution?
For leaders:
“Portfolios” for design leaders is a little different. As you are naturally not hands-on in Figma, your portfolio will be designed for non-design leaders to understand the value you can bring to the organisation in the top design role.
A “portfolio” for a leader will likely not be public. It will be a document that can be sent over alongside an application and will be able to present to a board or leadership team.
Things to think about when designing a leadership deck/portfolio:
What makes you effective as a design executive?
How involved are you in strategic business decisions alongside the exec co?
How/when have you got design on the map from a business POV, can you break this down?
Breaking down your experience in integrating design across an organisation linking it to business goals and driving successful outcomes.
How effective you are with working with wider board members (could you get testimonials?)
What kind of leader you are. Are you someone who likes to be involved in the C-Suite, or are you someone who prefers to focus on the team and get in the weeds?
Where have you identified gaps for innovation and acheieved successful outcome? Are you someone who can run with something ambiguous and deliver? When/where have you done this?
What products or services have you been part of that exceeded expectations
Experience in building teams, retaining talent, hiring
Experience with budgets of 0-100m, dealing with companies questioning the value you bring to an organisation?
How do you define the standard for design?
How you shape and advocate for a strong design culture
Remember this, no portfolio will show everything you do. We have bigger problems to solve in design than portfolios.
Hiring is a skill. Great hiring managers look beyond the portfolio. There is only one of you. Own it. Stop trying to narrow yourself to fit into a made-up box companies make for you when hiring.
First and foremost, this is YOUR work, so don’t let anyone tell you there is one right way. Newsflash, there is not. Including this article, feel free to ignore it.
Tools to use
Website, PDF, Figma. It doesn’t matter.
As long as the fundamentals are there.
You need to have more than just pure screens.
There is a great article from Sera Tajima on this here
What hiring managers care about:
(Some of these answers were taken from a recent LinkedIn post I did)
“The first question I ask myself is:
Does the portfolio visually align with the company?
There are countless design styles out there. As a design recruiter, my eyes are trained to assess the visual match immediately. Does the portfolio feel desirable for the company? Is it appealing, intriguing, or refreshing compared to what we’re building?
The second thing I evaluate is attention to detail and craft—the padding, shadows, font choices, or colour pairings. Years of experience have sharpened my ability to spot unpolished elements in an instant.
The hard truth? These two assessments happen within the first 10 seconds. If the portfolio sparks my curiosity, I’ll scroll further, interact with it, and explore the content more deeply to better understand the designer’s profile.”
Filip Gres:
The simpler, the better. I never read through the case studies. Give me a few bullet points, wins and fails, and I am good.
Martin Huber:
I had to go through nearly 200 applications by myself recently. What I can say is this:
If your resume has bad typography or layout, you’re out
Don’t make me ask for passwords for your portfolio websites, include them in the application if needed.
I appreciate a well presented case and it can set you apart but make it count. I don’t want to read about general design process over and over again.
Totally agree with all your points! I had recently adapted an amazing template for a case study to nail a new job! If anyone interested, I can share it!