The reason you didn’t get that job is you didn’t think about your user

You’ve spent time building up your portfolio, you’ve prepared an amazing CV with the most creative grid … now, it’s time for the job-hunt to begin. Your portfolio is a product — but have you ever wondered about the end-user of your product? A common mistake is to assume that you are the user of your portfolio — this is not quite accurate.

When it comes to the task of finding a job, the user of your portfolio is the person who is looking at it, using it as a tool to learn about you and your projects, and evaluating whether you are a good fit for the position. This user is called the recruiter - or more precisely: the professional recruiter.

This is your target audience.

Getting familiar with the recruitment stages can help you to avoid pitfalls along the way. Let’s take a moment to understand the different phases of the recruiting process in most product companies:

1. The head of the department advises the HR manager that there is a need for another team member, and provides of list of requirements tailored for the position.
2. HR publishes the job description, with a link to send the application to.
3. You enter the application link, fill in your details and upload your CV.
4. Your details are processed in an outdated and unfriendly recruitment system, and presented to the head of the department (the professional recruiter).
5. The professional recruiter reviews the knowledge and abilities of each candidate and decides which candidates to reject, and which to invite to an interview.
6. During the interview, the head of the department evaluates whether you and your professional skills are a fit for the team.
7. Next, a member of HR personnel interviews you and decides whether you would be a suitable addition to the company, based on your background and recommendations.
8. If things go well with HR, you might be invited to an interview with a company executive. You might also be given an assignment to complete at home and send in for further evaluation.
9. And … congratulations, you hired!

The fact is that most candidates find themselves rejected by the professional recruiter, in phases 4 and 5 of the process listed above.

Disclaimer: The above list is a generalized assessment of the recruiting process in companies with more than 50 employees. Not all companies use outdated and unfriendly recruitment systems, and of course, there are various evaluation stages that HR performs; however, that isn’t our focus in this article.

The professional recruiter is usually the head of a department (design, dev, product…). This recruiter receives a pile of CVs and is responsible for deciding who might fit the position, and who won’t. The recruiter evaluates the professional standing of each candidate, assesses whether the candidate’s experience and background are relevant, calculates how long it will take to train the candidate for the job, and how the new hire will work with other team members.

In short, the person to keep in mind when building your portfolio is the professional recruiter; this is your user.

So let’s start with him - let’s call him Benny.

Meet Benny

Benny has a lot of tasks that he’s responsible for, a lot of tasks to manage and supervise to make sure they’re delivered on time, and a huge backlog of tasks in different statuses. One of those tasks is to find another team member - and he better find him ASAP.

As far as Benny is concerned, searching for candidates takes his attention from other, more important tasks … but what can he do? It’s part of his role. This means that from the get-go, Benny is not exactly enthusiastic about dealing with the recruitment process. Benny has to take time off from his regular projects for an hour or two, access the annoying and unfriendly recruitment system, and review the details of 15-30 candidates - every day.

Here is Benny. Get to know him, learn about him, think about how to engage him and make him feel comfortable.

Although there are many Bennys, there is no single definition of the recruiter persona. However, by asking the right questions, you can get a clearer picture of the recruiter - questions like: What is the recruiter looking for? How much attention does the recruiter really give to the information in front of them? What expertise does the recruiter bring to the process of evaluating potential candidates?

Benny will likely spend between 3–20 minutes getting to know you and your skills - depending on how much you trigger his curiosity. Here are the main steps of Benny’s journey with you.

Cover letter

A cover letter is not a must, but a well-written letter can make a good impression, and inspire Benny to look more closely at your portfolio. The letter should demonstrate your familiarity with the company, an affinity to the product, and an overview of why you are interested in this particular role. Again: it’s not a must, but if you do choose to include a cover letter, just make sure it doesn’t look like generic copy-pasted text.

CV

In some cases, the CV and portfolio that you send when applying for a certain position are automatically fed into a recruitment system. This system extracts information from the CV (details like your name, phone, age, mail, link to portfolio) and presents you as one of many candidate ‘cards’ in the system. Such systems sometimes have problems reading PDF files, resulting in the candidate ‘card’ appearing as unknown. You don’t want to be unknown; you want to be visible, and to ensure that recruiters remember your name.

Given the difficulty that some systems have in reading certain formats, it doesn’t really matter which format you use for your CV — PDF, Word, or other formats. What does matter is that any important links (to the portfolio, email address, phone number) are saved as hyperlinks: everything needs to be clickable and copyable.

Think about it - do you really want Benny to have to manually type the URL of your portfolio into his browser? Neither does Benny.

Your CV is actually the first place that Benny has enough information to start evaluating your design level and skills. He examines your typography, the colors you used, the layout, and assesses how your CV is presented in terms of clarity and readability. There are millions of templates for CVs; don’t use them. You’ll be better off if you get some inspiration from ready-made templates, and then create your own unique concept for your own unique CV.

Titles (senior, expert and such…)

Several factors contribute to the maturity of a professional expert. These factors are the time that the designer has worked in the industry, the variety of fields the designer has experience with, and the designer’s professional depth, or expertise, in one of those fields.

In order to be called Senior or Expert, a designer needs time to mature, to gain experience in different types of projects, and to specialize in a certain field. All of this should also be presented in the designer’s portfolio.

When Benny is looking after a candidate for a senior position, he is looking for a candidate who can take a design process and lead it independently from A to Z - whether the process is to build a feature, develop a concept, or to work with the product and dev teams. Benny is looking for someone experienced enough to not require supervision, who will conduct work in a time-efficient, professional way.

When Benny sees a candidate with the title of Product designer he says to himself: “OK, I’m looking at a product designer”. But when he sees Senior product designer, he starts asking more interesting questions:

• “What kind of a designer am I looking at?”
• “Where has this person worked before?”
• “Does this candidate have experience in the fields I’m looking for?”

Don’t leave Benny wondering about these questions alone - show him the answers by presenting the projects that reflect your experience and expertise.

Portfolio

How does Benny look at your portfolio?

Benny starts from the homepage, and opens the projects that interest him in additional tabs. He looks briefly at your projects, and might have another look at your CV. Finally, he visits the homepage again, and from there checks the ‘about’ page.

Benny is now undecided, but he has to make a decision. He evaluates the candidate’s professional level, considers whether the candidate interests him on both a personal and professional level, whether the candidate is creative enough, will fit into the team, and how much training time the candidate will need.

Next, Benny will dive a little deeper into each of the projects, and try to understand them more deeply, and get to know the candidate’s mindset and style.

Think carefully about how Benny will be navigating your portfolio, how to make his task easier, and how to stand out while emphasizing your creative strengths.

What is Benny looking for?

If Benny is looking for a mobile designer, he will look for projects that he can relate to in candidates’ portfolios — apps, and mobile projects. If Benny is looking for a designer with expertise in complex platforms, and he receives a portfolio with only landing pages, Benny will immediately conclude that the candidate doesn’t have the relevant experience in the field. Benny won’t waste time searching for deeper value in the content provided; he’ll just move on to the next candidate. Even a highly-qualified candidate could be rejected on the basis of a portfolio that doesn’t present the candidate’s skills.

Put Benny in the picture

For every project shown in your portfolio, provide details - whether it is an actual project, a concept, or a home assignment. Also explain what your part was in project - UX, UI, or product. All of this information will enable Benny to evaluate each project, and to gain a clear picture of your output and abilities.

Keep in mind that images and screenshots without explanation are useless, even if they look awesome. Write a brief explanation relating to your involvement in the project, the challenges you faced, a description of what you solved — give Benny a story, but don’t make it too long.

Be honest with Benny

There are certain kinds of projects that are clearly not created by one single designer. If you add a huge project to your portfolio, Benny will try to identify your part in it; if you don’t make any reference to other team members, he might think that you’re lacking in honesty, or not a team player.

The best approach when presenting a team project is to give credit to the other team members who were involved. In this way, Benny will see that you play nicely with others, and will also be able to understand your unique contribution.

What happens when a candidate is rejected

Even after a candidate is rejected, their details are kept in the system. The system will recognize a candidate who sends another application, and will flag the profile as having been rejected in the past - including the reasons why.

Benny is likely to approach any candidate who was previously rejected with a certain level of suspicion.

An appropriate initial letter might soften Benny up a bit - something along the lines of: “Hi, I sent an application for this position in the past and was rejected. I have since updated my portfolio, and I believe that it presents me, my skills, and my level of experience better than the previous submission. I would very much appreciate it if you would have another look.”

With these tools and tips, you can gain both confidence as an applicant, and desirability as a candidate.

Now there are two possible scenarios:

Scenario A

You got rejected, but hey - it’s no biggie. Politely ask why your application wasn’t successful, learn from the experience, and improve your pitch (your CV and portfolio) for the next time.

Scenario B

Successfully reached the next recruitment stage? Got invited to an interview? Great job! Now you’ll need to figure out …

• What to bring to the interview;
• What to ask Benny;
• What NOT to ask Benny;
• How to talk and what to explain; and
• How to maneuver the conversation into your comfort zone.

For tips on all these, and how to pass the professional interview, see the next installment in the ‘Get the Job’ series of articles.

Thank you for reading, and good luck with your job hunt.