Creating a Marketable Design Portfolio
There are three reasons design portfolios/applications get rejected:
Lack of visual quality
Lack of relevance to the role/ a specific skill
Lack of narrative
1) What does lack of visual quality look like?
-Screenshots of your design projects dumped onto a single page
-Screenshots uploaded to something like Behance or Dribble.
These methods show VOLUME of work but they don’t explain the purpose and work behind the images.
The best way to showcase multiple projects is to break them up and define them using an index and multiple pages. Unity can be created across different works with common elements on each page like boarders, fonts, and colors.
2.) Lack of relevance or specific skills
Recruiters are usually looking for something the hiring manager wants.
Examples:
-This person will design social media content
-This person will design banner ads
-This person will design logos
-This person will design swag
-This person will design presentations
-This person will design motion graphics
-This person will visually articulate information architecture
-This person will design the user journey through each page of the site
-This person will create both low and high fidelity designs
-This person will design a prototype that we will show to investors
-This person will design multiple interfaces that we will test with different user groups
-This person will design both the flow and interface of our checkout experience
The hiring team wants someone with as much specific experience as possible.
There are beautiful and tasteful portfolios that aren’t seriously considered because they don’t prove that the designer has addressed a specific business challenge.
The difficulty for junior designers is getting that initial experience to display.
The difficulty for senior level designers is maintaining the display of experiences as time goes on. Some senior designers stop displaying their work all together, and.start relying on the clout of companies they’ve worked at, and/or positive recommendations.
However, taking this approach isn’t advised. Companies will move faster to an offer with candidates they are confident about. The portfolio is a tool for building that confidence.
3.) Lack of Narrative
Narrative includes: the company, the team, the objective, the work a designer did individually vs as part of a team, the outcome, the learnings.
NUMBERS! Any quantitative information is useful. How many new users did this redesign draw? How much longer did users engage with this design? How many new subscriptions were purchased? These numbers show that your designs drive business success.
FINAL TIP
Recruiters who actively source design talent want to easily find your contact information. Make sure it is posted somewhere clear like: a header, a footer, or a contact page.