Your Portfolio is Boring. To get you a job, it needs some special sauce.

It’s rough out there. With the latest round of callously drawn-out layoffs from Meta dropping just this week, the number of amazing and talented humans looking for jobs is large and growing.

Early career professionals have it just as hard. Setting out from school with maybe an internship under your belt, well… as I said, it’s rough out there. That’s the main message I hear from students at the moment. At least once they’ve stopped hyperventilating in a bag.

Early or later career, though, I have the same advice for anyone looking for a job:

Figure out what makes you distinct. Your special sauce. Use your CV and portfolio to serve it up on a silver platter, and you’ll get a better job, faster.

Your Portfolio is Boring

I’ve done a lot of hiring — from researchers, writers, and designers to product, engineering, and data science folks. From interns and new grads to SVP-level. I’ve advised many folks on their materials and I’ve looked at thousands of CVs and portfolios.

Almost all of them were boring. Or, maybe more accurately, generic.

See if any of these people sound familiar:

• A user-focused UX designer, passionate about design thinking and solving real-world problems.
• A multi-method researcher focused on empathy and actionable insights.
• An operationally-oriented product manager with 5 years of experience in the SaaS space.
• A data-scientist with deep expertise in A/B testing and statistical inference.

Professional. Precise. Hitting all the keywords. And exactly like 1000 other profiles the recruiter or hiring manager has seen this week.

You should know, those recruiters and hiring managers have zero time and one all-important question:

If you don’t tell them, they’re not going to figure it out for themselves.

You can’t expect them to do the work to figure it out. They won’t go digging underneath your generic CV & portfolio to discover what makes you distinct. You need to bring it right to the surface.

Some Special Sauce, Please

As a people manager in growth conversations with my team, I often said something like this:

We can talk about where you want to be in 1, 5, or 10 years. But I’d rather talk about who you want to be (professionally) by then. The next person to hire you will be getting an outstanding all-around {researcher/designer/writer/human}. But that’s not enough. You also want to be one of the few people in the world best equipped to do X. What is X? That’s your special sauce. Let’s work together to develop the recipe and manufacture it by the tankerful.

Ok, I don’t actually talk like that in real life. But you get the point.

Slather yourself in that amazing special sauce.

The best special sauce is mostly real and a bit aspirational. It’s based on themes — probably 1 to 3 of them — that reflect your experiences, particular areas/industries/methods/approaches, and/or your passions and interests.

The key is to avoid things that are too generic. If you can imagine many folks in your position saying something similar, then your themes are probably still too generic.

Your special sauce should reflect what you want to be known for. Ask yourself the question: what’s the specific set of things that makes you, you? No one else has the particular history and interests that you have. No one else can put them together with passion for this specific thing, in this specific way.

A few examples abstracted from conversations over the years:

• A mid-career professional pivoting away from architectural drafting is a UX designer with a unique insight on how physical space and digital tools work together.
• A life-long guitarist, a devotee of swing jazz is also a researcher with a unique ability to help you design apps for digital creativity.
• A researcher just finishing their undergrad has spent their HS and college years volunteering for youth empowerment organizations, and knows how to engage youth in under-served communities to develop better technology and better programs.
• A former medical-device salesperson went back to grad school to learn UX, and has a unique ability to design interfaces in complex, privacy-first domains.

If recruiters had the time, they might discover these things from a generic CV and portfolio. Maybe. But why take the chance? Tell them right up front what makes you distinct.

Terror

For many senior folks with 15 years under their belts, it can be easier to identify that sauce. For less senior folks (or career switchers), I have been told in many a career conversation, it can be terrifying. I hear three major reasons why, but each is based on a misconception.

I don’t have much experience yet! True, and it’s good to be aware of it. But that’s no excuse. Identifying your unique value proposition, with whatever experience you do have, makes you more marketable, and also helps you take deliberate career actions in service of what you want.

What if I change my mind? You will definitely change your mind! Special sauce evolves with your career, your life, and your perspective. Saying it out loud doesn’t swear you to a freaking blood oath and a life-long commitment. In fact, make it a point to check in every year and re-state your sauce.

What if companies don’t want my specific sauce? They probably won’t. But you’re not saying — this is who I am and I will do this and only this! You’re giving a company an anchor to understand you. You probably won’t get a gig that exactly matches your special sauce, but if you express it confidently you’ll find a much closer match.

The recipe for your sauce will change for the rest of your life. That’s success!

Slathering the Sauce on Your Portfolio

Developing your special sauce is valuable for career development, full stop. But we’re talking about getting a job here, and the main thing your sauce can do for you is get you a (better) job (quicker).

So your task is to make sure that your special sauce is immediately obvious to any sourcer, recruiter, or hiring manager who comes across your materials.

Make your special sauce the organizing principle for your portfolio. Most portfolios are just a list of projects. Avoid this at all costs. There’s no way recruiters and hiring managers are wading through your case studies to find out what they say about you. You need to tell them.

You can nest your portfolio projects (or pieces of them) under your saucy themes. Tell us who you are, tell us about your sauce. Tell us briefly what each theme means, but then… we don’t have to just take your word for it! You’re going to show us with those amazing projects.

Your portfolio projects are the evidence that your special sauce isn’t just mayo and ketchup, it’s got real flavor.

As you customize your materials for specific jobs, make it head-smackingly simple and obvious not only what your sauce is, but why a particular employer should give a crap. Don’t leave them to work that out for themselves either.

You can even work the sauce into your CV. Obviously the template is a bit stiffer there. I don’t recommend switching that up too much. But there’s a lot you can do with just the two sentences at the top and the way you describe your work experience.

This works. It works for at least three reasons:

1. You stand out. You made it really easy for them to answer the key questions. Who is this? What would I be buying if I hire them? Why is it distinct? Why do I care?
2. Specific appeal. If you do this, you might be somewhat less generically attractive. But you’ll be much more specifically attractive for the roles that are related to your sauce. Those are the roles that you want, trust me.
3. Confident presentation. Hiring mangers want people who know how to sell ideas. When you start by simply and effectively selling the idea of what you have to offer, you’re already making a mark.

Too Much Spice

You can definitely go wrong with this. But the pitfalls are easy to avoid.

Don’t over-state your experience. Build a unique picture of your expertise without claiming you’re the world’s foremost expert at something you’re not. Be humble. Especially if you’re early career or switching careers, pitch your expertise specifically but without claiming anything you can’t back up.

Don’t box yourself in. Identify a special sauce that’s quintessentially you, but not so specific it’s a turn off. Focus on distinct themes which are transferrable outside the specific domain you’re identifying.

Don’t abandon the template. Getting a job is often still a numbers game. Optimize the keywords, use the templates. You don’t need to re-invent the CV or the portfolio to heed this advice.

Keep Going

I’ve seen people completely ignore this advice, others who dive into it face first, and everything in between. You probably don’t have to completely scrap your materials to show your special sauce. Find the balance that works for you.

But whatever you do, keep going. You will get a job!

If you liked this, there’s more where that came from. Check out my newsletter One Big Thought. Sign up to get email updates here. Send me an email at judd@onebigthought.com.