Ever wonder how recruiters look at your design portfolio?
5 insights from design recruiters and managers
I just finished reviewing the 100th design portfolio since early April. It all started when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and affected all sectors, including technology. Early on we heard about startups and smaller companies laying off and then suddenly the unicorns unloaded. Lyft laid off 17% while companies like Airbnb and TripAdvisor laid off 25%. As the layoffs mounted, it felt like nobody was safe. Soon my LinkedIn feed was full of posts from talented designers looking for work.
And then Austin Knight made an incredibly generous offer. He opened up his free time to host career conversations and portfolio reviews for those who have been laid off.
Like a lot of others I followed suit and together we spent hundreds of hours reviewing countless portfolios to help those affected by layoffs prepare for their job search.
Through these conversations I echoed a lot of my long-held beliefs and the standard portfolio feedback that I wrote about in “5 Ways to Improve Your Design Portfolio Today”.
But after giving the same feedback over and over I wanted to validate or revise my thoughts based on how recruiters and hiring managers actually look at and evaluate design portfolios. So I prepared a survey and received over 100 responses. The following is a synthesis of the results, some interesting insights, and my own commentary for how you can improve your portfolio.
Disclaimer: I am not a data scientist. But I can create pivot tables and this is my best attempt at gleaning insights from a very basic survey. I have shared the source data here for transparency, so others can correct my insights or search for new ones.
1. LinkedIn is how recruiters find you
66% of recruiters said LinkedIn is the primary way they source candidates, followed by Google at 11%.
This fact may seem obvious, but the takeaway is that you should keep your LinkedIn up-to-date and ensure the link to your portfolio is easy to find. Since Google is [a not-so-close] second, ensure that your online portfolio is SEO optimized. Some easy tricks are to add a keyword meta tag to the header, link off to other websites, and add alt text to your images. You can learn more about SEO from this comprehensive yet approachable tutorial by Austen Allred.
People often ask me for feedback on their resume. My response is to focus more on your LinkedIn profile than your resume. Keep it up-to-date, add descriptions of your roles, and update your job preference settings to signal to recruiters that you’re actively looking for job opportunities.
2. Recruiters only spend a few minutes on your portfolio
80% of recruiters say they spend 3 minutes or less on a candidate’s portfolio.
This is the most important takeaway with the biggest impact on your portfolio. When I review another designer’s portfolio I often share my screen and first walk through their portfolio as if I were a recruiter. I scroll past 90% of the content, focusing on a few key pieces. I do it mostly to make the point that recruiters aren’t going to spend 10 to 15 minutes reading their entire case study. I recommend creating a summary at the top that focuses on the problem, the solution, and the outcome with a prototype video. These things together give the recruiter a sense of your product thinking and design craft.
“People are scanning, so don’t bury the good stuff.” — Design Recruiter
3. Design Managers spend a bit longer
54% of Design Managers spend 5–10 minutes on a candidates portfolio, while another 11% spend more than 10 minutes.
This shows Design Managers want to get the same signal as recruiters, but they also want to understand your thought process, intentionality, and how you approached solving the problem.
When asked what sets apart a strong design portfolio, Design Managers said:
“Clearly articulated problems. Explorations around different design solutions to these problems. A final walk through of the UI or a prototype that’s big and easy to understand.” — Design Manager
The recommendation based on this insight is to have the summary at the top for the recruiter and then to link off to the full case study for the Design Manager.
4. Communication and storytelling are the top skills managers and recruiters are looking for
I asked recruiters and managers what the top three skills are that they look for in a candidate.
For design managers:
- Communication/Storytelling
- Product Thinking
- Intentionality/Rationale
For design recruiters:
- Visual Design Craft
- Communication/Storytelling
- Process
Almost every portfolio I see has the same format. They look and read like an outline, not a well-crafted story. They always have a header, followed by a paragraph and an image repeated over and over.
I’ve always said “tell a story, not an outline”. It should have a beginning, middle and end. More than anything, it should be interesting and get people excited to learn more about you.
5. Process matters
I used to say “don’t talk about your process”. This is where my thinking has evolved. To be clear, I still think people focus too much on process when there is little evidence that saying you followed the human-centered design process leads to good design outcomes.
But data is data, and it shows that recruiters and design managers do look for good process in candidates:
Design recruiters said process was among the top three skills they look for.
When asked how important showcasing process is on a scale of 0–10, almost half of recruiters and managers responded 8 or higher.
My final piece of advice is to think about your portfolio as you would a product. As a designer of products, your job is to understand your users and how they use your product. Knowing that they only spend a few minutes on your portfolio, you would make it easy for them to access the important information. Knowing that they care about communication and storytelling, you’d tell them a story of the project.
So think of these insights as user data and design your portfolio accordingly.
And if you’re currently interviewing or just getting started on your job search, check out my Product Design Interview E-Book at www.uxinterviewtraining.com. Also download my free Product Design Portfolio Template that’s compatible with Keynote and Figma.
