Setting yourself up for success
Elevating your portfolio, networking, and interviews
People say that interviewing has become significantly more competitive than it was before. While I think this is partially true due to large layoffs and shrinkage in 2023, many of the challenges I see today were ones I saw when I first started my career in product design.
I’ve done a lot of mentoring and coaching for people starting in product design and those looking to level up. Common themes emerge, so I figured I’d write them down and hopefully, they will help you in your endeavors, whatever those might be.
This article aims to help designers of all skill levels elevate their portfolios, networking skills, and interviewing abilities.
How to present your website
One of the most important tools to showcase your skillset is your website. I often get asked, “How much detail should I show in my case studies?” To answer this question, we must consider your users. Who is viewing your site and why are they there?
Most of the time it will be a recruiter, hiring manager, or hiring team member. They are either looking at your site for the first time to vet you or a second time to brush up on your work before the interview. In both cases, time will be a limiting factor. With this in mind, how would this impact your site? What would you show or not show? How much detail would you provide?
It all boils down to intention and purpose. When writing a paragraph or inserting an image, ask yourself, "Does this really need to be here?”
When writing a paragraph, can you make it shorter and more succinct? If you had to distill a paragraph into one sentence, what would it read? And if your user only saw two words in that sentence, which ones would you bold? Carefully select every word you choose. Design for the time-crunched user that has their attention pulled in multiple directions. Be clear and concise.
The same goes for your site’s layout. I treat my website like a movie trailer. I want to be respectful of my user’s time. I like to give them just enough information to understand my skillset while keeping them interested in learning more.
Ask yourself, if they only read the title, would they have enough information to understand what the project would be about? If they then only saw the first image plus the title, would that be a little better? What if they read only the first sentence past that?
When designing your case study and your content, place the most important content at the top and assume that is all they will read. This will not always be the case, but you should design for the worst possible scenario. Add more detail to the page as you progress, but make sure to keep it short and succinct. Your portfolio is a movie trailer, your slide deck is the movie.
Below is a screenshot of one of my case studies on my portfolio website.
Let’s break this down:
At the top, I display in a large font the project's name. “Workbench Design System” is a very clear title. If the user only read that, they’d know I did some type of work on a design system called Workbench.
Below the title, I have a large image with a handful of components displayed in a tasteful arrangement. This gives a little bit more context about the design system. The user might then think to themselves, “Ok, this design system looks pretty mature and cohesive.”
Below that image, I have a subtle date stating when the project was updated. This gives the user a little more context about when this project was worked on.
Next, I have a very simple statement, “I designed and built components for the Workbench Design System.” Now the user knows that I played a key role in this design system. There are even a few contextual links that they can click on to learn more and see my actual work. All of these bits of information could be consumed in 60 seconds or less. I created a trail of breadcrumbs to entice the reader to keep reading.
Below all this are two quotes from a designer and engineer I worked with at Gusto. These provide social proof and evidence of my skillset and collaborative nature.
If the user has seen this case study, they know that I get straight to the point, possess solid design system experience, and collaborate well with team members. All of this is usually enough for them to want to get on a call with me, where I can go into as much detail as needed.
It is also worth mentioning the largest my text spans is 1000px with a font size of 1.25rem (20px) to optimize legibility.
How to network
LinkedIn is a powerful tool. I’ve successfully leveraged it to land interviews at Google, Meta, Netflix, Microsoft, Amazon, Gusto, and many others. But it took a lot of time and effort to build my network. Don’t worry, you can too!
Mindset is one of the most important things to consider and manage when networking on LinkedIn. It can be easy to feel rejected if someone doesn’t reply to your message or connection request. Being a culprit of this myself, I can say that it is largely due to one or more of the following: being very busy, forgetting to reply, or unclear why the person messaged me in the first place.
If we use me as an avatar for hiring managers or hiring team members, how would this change how you network on LinkedIn?
Put yourself on the other side of the screen receiving your message. Then answer these questions:
What is the intent and goal of my message?
What value am I bringing to this interaction?
Why would they respond to me?
At the end of the day, you need to present a value exchange. This will become easier as time and your experience progresses, as your “value” to this company will be more apparent with a longer resume.
For those of you with little to no experience, it is harder to get replies from DMs on LinkedIn. This simply means you need to leverage tools like ADPList, meetups, and introductions from friends or other connections.
Networking is a numbers game. Do your best to make every interaction a positive one. Tech is a small community and design is an even smaller one. You will most likely run into a person you DM’d years prior, so make sure to think of that before you hit send.
How to present a portfolio review
The portfolio review is separate from your website. Your website is akin to a movie trailer, and your portfolio review is the movie. Even though you will have 45-60 minutes to present your portfolio, you should still be ruthless in determining what you show and don’t show.
The method I like to use is the STAR method, or situation, task, actions, and results. I also like to add a slide at the end reflecting on what I could have done better. This helps to preemptively answer the question you will most certainly get, “What would you have done differently?”
While time is a constraint in your presentation, attention is a more important constraint to consider. When coaching designers, I often notice the tendency for them to include an excessive amount of text on each slide. Sometimes they will even mirror their script verbatim.
If you put an entire paragraph displayed on a slide, you are working against yourself. How would your audience be able to listen to you and read the paragraph simultaneously? They wouldn’t.
Instead, use most of your slide’s real estate to display large images or mock-ups of screens and limit your text to a few words.
You should rehearse and time your story multiple times. Consider recording yourself and playing it back to hear how you sound. Your work might be phenomenal, but if you don’t understand how to story tell, you are dramatically decreasing your odds of landing the job.
How to ask great questions
You have been probably asked at the end of an interview, “What questions do you have for us?” The worst thing you can say in this scenario is, “No.” Imagine going on a date, they ask you a bunch of questions about yourself, but you ask them none. Do you think they would feel you are interested in them? Probably not.
The best mindset to be in is to be thinking about qualifying the company and team, not the other way around. You should know you are qualified to do the job, otherwise you would not be being interviewed. Focus on determining if they are a good fit for you. With that mindset, what types of questions would you ask? Consider writing down what you are looking for in a team, your must-haves, and your dealbreakers.
Be prepared before the interview. Research the company, but even better, research the interviewing team. Look at their portfolios, read their blogs, look at their LinkedIn profiles. This will help you to currate more intelligent conversations and build a connection.
Tying it all together
Ultimatly forcus on what you can control. Optimize your website, make connections wherever you go, reherse your portfolio, and research your interviewers.
Thanks for taking the time to read this article. If you are a designer or engineer looking to level up your portfolio or get general career advise, I offer personal coaching on a first-come first-serve basis. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn to set a call up.