Stop holding yourself back with your portfolio
Here are a few things I used to say to myself earlier in my career that made me lose hope when it came to my job search. The problem with losing hope is that it impacts your motivation and ability to give 100% to the task you’re trying to achieve. This means you’ll reduce your chances of success, making your thoughts a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This was the cycle I was stuck in. And almost every one of my negative beliefs was incorrect due to the misguided information I was getting.
Let me share some of them with you.
There aren’t enough design jobs anymore
I feel like every year, there is a round of news articles, blogs, and online posts that do their rounds through the design community about how the UX design industry is in decline. How there are fewer jobs than the number of designers coming into the market, and how designers are outnumbering available jobs. Basically how we will all be fighting for scraps, and we’re screwed.
This couldn’t be further from the truth.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment rate for web developers and digital designers, which includes UX designers, is expected to grow 23%* from 2021-2031. This is MUCH faster than the average industry.
The industry, in reality, is growing so much that recruiters are starting to voice their concerns. “91% of recruiters are concerned that their recruitment and hiring methods won’t be enough to fill their UX design positions in today’s labour market”*.
2. Companies only want to hire designers with lots of experience
Designers with years of experience are only motivated by certain types of projects (typically much larger projects solving more complex problems).
However, every company has smaller problems that need solving that don’t require years of experience to be solved. This means they will always need designers early in their careers to work on problems that can be solved without requiring years of experience.
Yes, they are smaller and simpler to solve, but that’s what you want early in your career! You don’t want to learn the design craft working on a challenging problem that overwhelms and stresses you.
I hired a junior designer who had no experience working as a Product Designer in my previous role. She was fantastic. She was able to learn really quickly and pick up the unwritten rules of working for a company.
I knew she had no experience, but her portfolio was much stronger than those of many designers with experience. These other designers couldn’t showcase their skills in their portfolio as effectively as the designer I had hired.
I added training in Case Study Craft that discusses how to showcase how to work and design in a real business environment with constraints. Even if you don’t have experience, I’ll discuss what you can do in those scenarios.
3. I can’t code, so I won’t get hired.
I had to add this one as I still hear it sometimes. And it just bugs me a little, maybe because it reminds me of my first manager who used to push me to take courses and read coding books, and I hated it 😂.
You do not need to code. You do not need to know how to code.
You do need to know how to work effectively with developers. You must know how to communicate your design ideas and ensure they are built to your specifications. I have a training on how to showcase that you can work well with developers in the Case Study Craft Program, so we will also cover this.
Design isn’t a solo sport in the workplace. You have to collaborate well with others in the team, such as Product Managers and Engineers. Being able to communicate this in your portfolio is very important.
4. I don’t have enough time, and case studies take weeks to create
I hear this one a lot. This was also my own excuse for many years. I would procrastinate until I couldn’t handle going to work 😅 and was forced to complete my portfolio.
The bare minimum you can do is list all the activities you have done for your project. Add a title for each of them, and then simply write 2 lines of text explaining what you did. And throw in an image for good measure. This will take you a maximum of two hours to do. Time yourself. Do not aim for perfection.
Perfection is the killer of case studies. I have lived to tell the tale.
Don’t begin from the start by trying to add all the information you can from start to finish. Your case study will start off great and will trail off towards the end as the quality drops. I see this so often when I look through applications. It does make me smile. The smile isn’t enough for me to invite them for an interview.
5. I can’t stand out amongst all the other great designers.
So this is an interesting one, as I felt exactly the same until I became a hiring manager. I could look through hundreds of portfolios for the roles I was hiring for and for the roles my colleagues were hiring for. From junior all the way to senior designers. I was genuinely surprised at the number of good portfolios we came across. There weren’t many.
I don’t know if it was during that year just after COVID or if the market was slow, but this was over a good 6 month period where we were hiring across the team.
I think there is just very little content and education on presenting your work in a way that really helps you shine as a designer. We’re taught how to become great designers but not how to promote ourselves and the benefits we can bring to a company.
So when it comes to being able to promote ourselves, even the great designers aren’t doing this as impactfully as they can. Remember the story I told on my Case Study Craft landing page about a designer I knew who didn’t have very strong design skills, but he was fantastic at selling himself and promoting his work so he would get multiple job offers? Compared to other designers I knew who were extremely talented, but they kept getting rejected!
These are all learnings I have incorporated into the Case Study Craft program modules, and I cannot wait for the launch in a few weeks!
Head over to Case Study Craft on the navigation bar to learn more!
Here are some articles about the data and statistics I mentioned if you want to explore further.
*https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/web-developers.htm
*https://ga-public-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/GA_StateOfTechTalent.pdf
