As a UX design mentor who has mentored 90+ UX design students to date, I have come across countless portfolios, both brilliant and lackluster. Students that come from UX boot camps tend to be more vulnerable to making these mistakes that I’ve seen again and again and these mistakes are what cost them job opportunities. Here’s why.

As someone who mentors students from UX boot camps, the portfolios that I’ve seen many UX students and junior designers instructed to craft just don’t cut it today. The same formula is reused and recycled over and over — showcasing their end-products, and their deliverables such as user stories, wireframes, and high-fidelities in a laundry-list-like format with no knack for storytelling and depth.

To clarify, this method alone isn’t necessarily ineffective, but it can only get you so far. Not every bootcamp follows this exact formula, and not every junior designer follows this format, but I’ve witnessed many that do and fall victim to some variation of it. Then they seek mentorship wondering why they haven’t been able to land any interviews or jobs despite all their hard work.

I was a self-taught design student several years ago and I too, have made my fair share of portfolio faults and learned the hard way.

In fact, in the first-ever iteration of my portfolio as a junior designer, I received some brutal honesty from a recruiter over the phone,

“Your portfolio feels very high-school”

As much as it stung, it was the truth I had to face and the truth I needed to hear. The first set of case studies I’ve ever worked on was lackluster with no substance.

A cold realization that despite all the hard work I put into my UX projects, I sold myself short all because of the way I presented my work.

“Every great design begins with an even better story.”

— Lorinda Mamo, Designer / Creative Director

Fast forward years to today, I currently work as a mid-level UX designer in tech. I’m going to be sharing with you 5 of the most common mistakes that I’ve seen junior designers make in their portfolios that costed them job opportunities and what you can do about them.

1. Only listing your role and not who you worked with

I commonly see in more junior portfolios, “I worked with 6 other designers” or something even vaguer, “I worked with 4 other stakeholders”.

• Who were they?
• What were their roles?
• Why did you work with them?
• What was the outcome?
• What were the challenges?

UX designers are constantly collaborating with other designers and stakeholders. Cross-functional collaboration is one of a designer's most important soft skills. Hiring managers are looking for candidates that can showcase who they worked with, what they did, and how they worked with those people.

Depending on the role, the company structure, and other factors, UX designers can work with external clients, engineers, product managers, QA engineers, content writers, researchers, data analysts, and so many more. Show off who you worked with whether it’s very many people or very few. Hiring managers want to know you have collaboration experience and especially cross-functionally.

2. Not diving into the problem space

The problem space is the core of your design. It defines the entire project’s existence and purpose. I frequently see a lot of junior designers who introduce the problem of their case study by stating something along the lines of,

“…the client needed a redesign of their app”

or, “…there was no screen for xyz”.

This is not the core problem. These are merely bi-products of a problem.

Needless to say, not every junior designer writes verbatim like that and the level of problem space identification has varied across the board. The point I’m trying to make is that too often than not, these core questions surrounding the problem space are not answered in the case studies.

• Why does the app need a redesign?
• What are the current pain points that you’re solving for?
• Why are you solving this problem?

These are the important problem-space questions to answer that will separate your portfolio from others.

Hiring managers are looking for designers that can solve a variety of complex problems. A stronger designer may even challenge the premise of the problem.

“Even the best designers produce successful products only if their designs solve the right problems. A wonderful interface to the wrong features will fail.”

— Jakob Nielsen

Include those three questions when storytelling your problem space and I guarantee your case studies will have more depth and hiring managers will get a better gauge of how you view problems and solve them.

3. Not including the “why” behind your designs

If you don’t explain it in your case study, you’ll have to explain it in your case study presentation interview (if you manage to get that far).

As UX designers, we are constantly having to explain the rationale behind our design decisions. Explaining our designs is arguably the majority of the job quite frankly.

Why? Designers are working with stakeholders that have their own set of motives and needs that are contingent on your design work. Presenting your rationale is a huge communication muscle that will be exercised almost daily.

I’ve come across numerous case studies where designers will simply narrate their designs, “here is my design for [xyz] screen. I did [this] and [this]”. “Here is the About Page and here is the Home Page”. In case you think I’m joking or over-exaggerating, I’m not. If you find yourself guilty of this bland narration, worry not, there’s a fix for this.

When you’re doing design critique with your fellow designers, your colleagues may ask “why did you decide to do it this way?” if you were thoughtful enough in your design, you would have a sound rationale for it.

Do just exactly that in your case studies. Write your case studies as if you’re presenting this for design review to your fellow design peers and to your stakeholders.

For example, instead of “I designed the About Page”, write about what design decisions you considered when designing the About Page and why you ultimately landed on the ones that you did.

Hiring managers and recruiters are seeking to understand your critical thinking and design process. Your design rationale alone is arguably the biggest factor that sets apart an experienced designer from a novice designer. It’s a strong indication of design maturity and problem-space comprehension. If you can’t showcase that in your case studies, you’ll likely get tossed into the “no” pile.

4. Only showing your “best” work and not the scraps.

Yup, you read right. If you’re only showing the finished and final product in your portfolio, you’re doing yourself a disservice. By not showing your draft work, your mess-ups, and the ones that didn’t make the cut, you’re not giving hiring managers and recruiters the chance to see your process.

I never understood why many design students are often under the impression that their case study needs to show their “best” work and only their best. Sure, you want your end result to be good and pixel-perfect, but showing the “best” work isn’t what’s going to get you the job.

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep.”

— Scott Adams

Your design process, the mistakes you made, and the learnings you got from them, are what is truly telling of you as a designer, not your end product. Your design process helps hiring managers get a gauge on your design approach, design decision-making, and ultimately, to determine whether or not you are qualified for the role.

When I was a design student myself, I sought out mentor feedback on my portfolio and the most recurring advice I received was to showcase all of my design work, including the ones that didn’t make the final cut.

During my fair share of case study presentations for UX design roles at different tech companies, the most common follow-up questions I was asked by the design team and hiring managers were,

“What was the iteration process like?”

“How did you get from that first design to this one?”

“Why did you decide to make those changes?”

“What other options did you explore and consider before landing on this design?”

The reality is, as a UX designer, you’re going to be making countless iterations. Your first iteration will never be your last and likely, your last iteration will look drastically different from the first. The beauty of it is the evolution of the design. That’s the storytelling part that hiring managers seek.

Mistakes are inevitable and iteration is a natural part of design.

The goal is not to sell that you don’t make mistakes, the goal is to sell that you can learn from mistakes.

5. Only elaborating on the successes and not the challenges

Hiring managers care more about the types of challenges you encountered and how you resolved them than about all the things that went well. In reality, UX design isn’t always “smooth sailing”. In fact, it’s never that way. UX designers are tackling challenges 10x more than just sitting back and watching their designs go to market. (I mean, we can all dream of that right?) It’s important to showcase the challenges you encountered during your projects. There’s no challenge too small to share.

• Were there blockers you faced from other stakeholders?
• Did you encounter communication issues between designers?
• Were there last-minute changes in the scope?
• Did you have to navigate ambiguity? What kind?
• How did you overcome them?

Everyone has a unique way of dealing with challenges and resolving them. Hiring managers want to know what your unique way is. Be transparent, be open, and highlight how you overcame them.

Thanks for reading!

🤝🏼You can learn more about my UX work here and connect with me on LinkedIn.

💬 Always welcome your thoughts or a conversation below!