UX portfolio: What hiring managers look for
After attending live portfolio review sessions, speaking to recruiters, recruiting UX designers, researching and learning from rejection mails this is a comprehensive look into portfolios for UX designers. This is going to be a long ride ..it’s your portfolio we are talking about here, this is not another 5 minute read, so grab a popcorn and maybe your notes.
Note: For Entry or Junior level candidates, Hiring managers are looking for potential and not keen on every detail stated below but on your thought process but these are important pointers that many designers miss.
First off I think it’s important to mention that you can put whatever you want in your portfolio and nobody is going to stop you. I’ve seen portfolio sites with everything from fan sites to figurative drawings of ponies (and everything in between). All tell a story that’s meaningful to you. However, if we agree that the goal of a professional portfolio is to land work rather than be a source of personal self expression. Here’s what you should keep.
1. Structure of your case study.
2. Creating an Experience
3. Portfolio information architecture
1. Structure of your case study
The major goal here is to frame the problem, document your process, and tell a good story. In all your doings never forget to talk about the following pieces below. From research hiring managers would desperately like to see them too.
A sense of timeline — When did each project happen and how long did each one take? Hiring managers need to know when in your career each project takes place. Was it your first project out of school? Is it your most recent work? They shouldn’t be left to wonder.
Also, inside each case study, what order did each step happen in? Was it strictly linear, or did you iterate (research, prototype, test, learn some stuff, researched some more, prototyped again, tested again, learned more…)? Why not use some sort of calendar to help?
How long was each step? When you say you did user research, was that in an afternoon? Or was it throughout the project? How long did you spend talking or observing participants? How did the research change each time you talked to users? So highly I recommendations a project timeline.
More so, don’t forget to explain why you are utilizing a particular method. If everyone’s process is somewhat the same, what is your unique angle to the way you work? And to why a method best fits the way your want to solve the problems at hand?
Because of the route nature of major case study formats, often the different steps of the design process shown in the timeline fail to connect to one another. Insights gathered from one step are rarely applied to the next one. As a result, most case studies feel complete, but few feel smart.
A sense of contribution or collaborative efforts
Design is a team sport. Were you part of a team? If so, what role did you play? Did that role change during the project? Who else was on the project? We don’t need names, but roles and quantity would help.
Which pieces were you solely responsible for? Which did you work in pairs or small groups? What was it like to work in those for you? Who did you need approval from? How did you present your work for approval? Did you work with devs? PMs? Other non-designers?
Hiring managers are looking for how well you work in a team environment. They want to know how well you’ll work on their team. Are you a solo gunslinger that repels any notion of collaboration? Or do you thrive in a collaborative environment, helping support the team effort?
A sense of your leadership skills
If you played any sort of leadership role in any project, what was that role? How did it come about? How did you do? Who did you lead? How did you support them? How did they thrive under your leadership?
What made that leadership challenging? How did you overcome those challenges? Designers often find themselves in a leadership position, even if it’s only for a meeting where they are leading a workshop to make a decision or review research data. Describe times you led your team.
Hiring managers need to know what kind of leadership skills you have. Without knowing this, they won’t know how quickly you’ll grow into a more senior role on their team. They want to know if they can send you off with a client, or if you’ll always need someone senior with you.
A Sense of challenge and learning
In many portfolios, every case study is presented as if it didn’t have any hitch or speed bumps. Every project went perfectly. There were no problems to overcome and no challenges to learn from. We all know that never happens.
Yet, I rarely see any case study even hint at what the candidate learned from all that hard work. It seems they didn’t learn a thing. How has your previous work informed how you would tackle this project? How did this project inform your future work?
What was challenging about the work? What process did you use to learn what you needed to overcome that challenge? What resources did you turn to? Where did you make wrong turns?
How did you finally assail your unassailable challenge? Hiring managers want to see how truly resourceful you’ve been. They want to see that you didn’t give up when you ran into something tricky. They know your case study will have a happy ending. They want to see the journey.
2. Creating an experience
A portfolio is not a form of self-expression. A portfolio is not an art piece. A portfolio is not a representation of you. A design portfolio exists to help you get a job. “You’re the product. Your portfolio is just packaging. ”A packaging that should appeal to your target audience the Hiring managers( could be recruiters and product design managers) and Clients.
Writing:
The Hero title is important to set the tone, an amazing copy will make you memorable, it makes recruiters want to keep going, Like a fascinating pick up lines that start conversations.
Talk about yourself as a first-person; in your case studies and in the “About Me” page. Remember a story of who you are represents more than what you do, we are humans not just someone who designs things. Make things readable, minimal and brief. Always look for the shortest ways to describe scenarios and methods used. Recruiters only spend minutes on your portfolio, so make reading major case study highlights as seamless as possible for them.
Once your portfolio is created, spell check it. Then consider having a friend that doesn’t know your work read it. Ensure they understand what you did and why.
Visuals:
Visual are so important, recruiters are not “design people” but they still want to see something nice (we all want to 😍) However don't overdo it, not too many visual but enough to keep them scrolling…even better if you can include gifs ,animations and embedded prototypes.
In any large company, hiring managers often have very limited time to review hundreds of applications. The first 6 seconds make or break an opportunity. Make sure you grab someone’s attention by hitting them with visual awesomeness right from the start.
Navigations:
Make moving from one case study to another just a click away for a better experience. So include navigations at the bottom of each case study to find the next. Also include your resume in your about us page.
Avoid linking pages that carry recruiters/clients out of your portfolio site unless in the case of your socials because sometimes they never comeback but if you have to, the links should open a new tab. A UX portfolio website should have simple navigation so potential clients and employers can quickly find what they need.
You can put any other links including your blog or social media in the footer. Remember, your UX portfolio is for busy clients and hiring managers (the users). Prioritize navigation to meet their needs. These primary users are not interested in your blog or social media. And if they are, they can find them in the footer navigation.
3. Information architecture of your portfolio
By convention a UX portfolio should include the following:
- Intro/homepage introducing yourself
- Simple navigation
- High-quality case studies — from initial concept to final results
- About me page
- Contact page
- Link to download your resume in PDF format
- Links to design-relevant social media — LinkedIn, Behance, Dribbble.
You don't have to follow convention but decide how you will organize the information in your portfolio and make use of a consistent structure through out.
Conclusion
Navigating the realm of UX portfolio’s can be tricky and be a time consuming
endeavor but putting proper thought into your portfolio will help you
on the part to your next UX job. A reminder that what matters in a job posting is often not the years of experience or skills you have, but the problem space that the hiring teams are in, and whether you’re capable of solving that problem.
I feel dirty doing this (actually, no I don’t) but I teach UX job search strategy online through Adplist. And if you feel like this is an area you can use a lot of help on, you can book a session.
Thank you for reading till the end! 😃 Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter for any questions, collaborations or just to say Hi!. If you like this article, do 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 for it.
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