How to get your product design portfolio noticed
Design hiring at Wistia | Part 1
In this blog series Wistia’s product design manager will explain what we look for at each step of the hiring process. The goal of this series is to help you get hired. That’s really all there is to it!
In this post you’ll learn how to capture attention with your design portfolio.
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Hiring managers want you to be successful. Rejection is the thing we have to do the most often, but it’s the thing we like the least! Still, the wrong hire can be not only expensive for the company, but also detrimental to our colleagues. So we can’t take a chance or gamble on just anyone–even though our whole thing is wanting to believe in people.
We are all probably used to hearing refrains like “hiring managers spend less than a minute looking at your resume.” That’s a demoralizing place to start and then to hear “no” after you have applied to a job often spells the end of what you’ll hear as feedback. As someone who comes from an underrepresented background in tech, I know firsthand how those ‘no’s can sometimes feel even more exclusionary than a simple rejection.
Your mileage will vary depending on the design role, but from company to company there are some things most software companies are looking for in a product design portfolio.
A great portfolio isn’t just useful for getting noticed. Your portfolio will be reviewed several times, formally and informally, during your interview process.
Here I’ll talk about that first step: getting noticed through your design portfolio. And if you have heard a “no” from us — you’ll find tips to help you get to a better outcome in the future!
Clear storytelling and case studies are a must.
This means you demonstrate these three things in your portfolio:
Your role and contribution within your team
You acknowledge the specific work that you did, and highlight the contributions of your team when the design work was more collaborative. You don’t pass off the work of others as your own.
Holistic understanding of the scope of the project and its objectives
If you are able to succinctly and clearly explain your project boundaries, this helps us know the kinds of constraints you are familiar with (small teams, deadlines, etc.). This is one place where speculative or concept work is at a disadvantage since any scope and constraints would be invented or self-imposed.
High fidelity examples of final design deliverables
The full saying is, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating”, so if we don’t see any final designs in detail we don’t have much to chew on. Even if your design didn’t actually ship, we want to see samples of what you are capable of producing. High-fidelity here means pixel perfection: you can show us what you wanted to ship ideally, or screenshots of work that lives in the real world.
Now some things that you should avoid in your case studies:
Don’t show process for process’ sake.
Pictures of post-it notes and whiteboards are everywhere in design portfolios, but are generally pretty inscrutable to your hiring manager on their own.
If you didn’t lead the design workshop or the user research, don’t spend a lot of time talking about it in your portfolio as though it was your work. Talk more about what you took away from it and how it informed what you did. Focus on your contributions rather than showing every step of the sausage being made.
Don’t make broad, sweeping generalizations
This advice can apply to your process walkthroughs as well as your design decisions. Simply saying, “I conducted the user interviews and then made wireframes from user feedback” won’t help your hiring manager understand your abilities as a designer.
A case study isn’t a slideshow of your whole vacation, it’s a meditation on one seashell you dug up on the beach.
Be detailed when you talk about your choices. If everything changed through your design (e.g. a total redesign), focus on one or two very specific or important decisions that demonstrate your critical thinking skills. It also helps if you showcase how you based your decisions on external factors or data, versus only based on subjective or personal taste.
Don’t leave the designs for last
Your case study should feature your design assets very prominently. Your design work is the star of the show. Don’t simply tack on high fidelity designs at the very end. It’s nice to see different stages in your design process, but spend a good amount of time and space in the case study showcasing and explaining the final design work.
Which leads us to the next point…
Show your best looking work
Simply put, we hire product designers because they have skills that are unique to their field. One of those skills that not everybody has is: the ability to make things look beautiful, and the awareness of what does not.
Beauty is very subjective and culturally biased, so I’d like to be specific about what we mean. You don’t need a formal design degree to know these fundamentals or demonstrate them (plenty of designers I know are self-taught). And while some companies hire UX designers who might not have strong visual designs skills, the product design team here at Wistia thinks those skills are important to our daily work. What we look for:
Strong grasp of typography, color and composition
You show restraint and care in your design choices. Interfaces that are text-heavy have good hierarchy, and flow or read clearly. Your interfaces might be visually “loud” or pretty visually plain, but either way it’s done with the sum of individual parts in mind.
Expertise with modern software, tools, and technology
Doesn’t matter if it’s Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD. We just care that your portfolio shows fluency with modern design software. Hand drawn sketches are okay to start, but we’d rather see them translated on the screen.
You’ll be embedded with a few engineers, so while you don’t need to code, you’ll need to communicate clearly with people who do. Design choices that address or consider technical limitations can help you stand out here.
Self-awareness
Curate your designs well, and ensure the samples are things that you are proud of in some way today. All designers should look back at their old work and cringe a little as they grow. Demonstrate growth through how you curate your portfolio and you’ll show your hiring manager that you know good from bad — especially when it comes to the standards you set for yourself.
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Overall, your portfolio is only one part of the story — but polish and care regarding a team’s first look at you goes a long way. Much longer than a minute in fact, despite what you might have heard!
(Psst!) We’re actively hiring for multiple design roles here at Wistia®, and even when we’re not we still want to hear from you! See all our job openings.
