What is the difference between a UX portfolio and a UX resume?

I see it as sharing your story – who you are, How you might potentially fit into a company's culture, a crucial aspect in hiring. This storytelling extends to how you tackle projects and solve problems, demonstrated in your case studies. It's like narrating a tale to an audience, guiding them through engaging moments that pique their interest in what you do.

A portfolio should also be honest. Some projects or ideas failed and that is completely normal. But you should always show that you have learned something from this situation too. Do you now know what the problem was and/or what would you do differently in the future?

A UX portfolio showcases a designer's work, emphasizing projects, process, and outcomes. In contrast, a UX resume provides a concise overview of skills and experiences. It's like a menu (portfolio) showcasing dishes (projects) versus a recipe list (resume) summarizing cooking expertise without the visual feast.

A UX portfolio focuses on storytelling, using case studies, process descriptions, and design decisions to demonstrate your problem-solving skills, creativity, and design thinking process. UX portfolio tells the story of your design process and the impact of your work.

In essence, a UX portfolio is a collection of UI/UX case studies gathered on a single platform to showcase our best work to hiring recruiters. It is better to explain the process flow when designing a product or solving problems in the UX portfolio. We can also customize our portfolio by applying some personal branding practices so that the portfolio becomes more unique, reflects our personal identity, and stands out in terms of both visuals and consistency. Show 3-6 of the best works in the portfolio to HR.

The key difference with a UX portfolio lies in format – a resume is a structured overview, while a portfolio is like a well-curated museum, showcasing a designer's work in an interactive and detailed manner, akin to a living exhibit.

A UX resume focuses on highlighting relevant skills, experience, and accomplishments, using keywords and quantifiable achievements to demonstrate your suitability for a role. It presents a clear and concise overview of your professional profile.

A resume is an introduction to entice someone to book a conversation with you. You tailor your experience to match the job description's keywords and cherry-pick what is relevant to keep it to one page. An executive summary starts with calling yourself by the job's title. For example, for a job description seeking a UX UI Designer, the executive summary would start, "I am a UX UI Designer with a proven track record for increasing user retention rates and decreasing drop-offs at checkout." Remember, your resume is not a place to educate hiring managers. You want to assimilate, showing how you fit in by using their language, understanding their procedures, and having a record of success, they can take to the bank!

UX Resume is like the formal resume with the details of your education, projects you've worked on, etc as usual with a more creative way of projecting these details.

UX portfolio is a visual and storytelling-driven showcase of your design process, while a UX resume is a concise and keyword-optimized summary of your professional qualifications.

Hello there! A UX Resume is a professional summary that brings together your qualifications and experience. Simply, it's a summary showcase of your career path. On the other hand, a UX Portfolio is a showcase of who you are as a designer. This portfolio allows you to show not only what you know how to do, but how you do it. It can include your design process, the most representative works that make you proud, and even something more about you, who you are as a designer. Tip, for your portfolio, be creative, show your personal brand, show the world who you are as a designer and what you can give. For your UX summary, focus your experience on the one related to your present professional, quantify data and express what you have achieved.

- UX Resume is chronologically based. UX Portfolio need not be, but is a list of your best projects. - UX Resume is a list of progressive growth path you’ve taken in your career. UX Portfolio doesn’t show progressive path but variety of work you’ve done. - UX Resume says what opportunities you got and what you contributed to make the projects successful. UX Portfolio shows how you made your contribution and what & how the project was impacted because of your contribution. - UX Resume *lists and talks* about projects and experiences. UX Portfolio *shows* projects and process you followed during those projects.

UX portfolios showcase your work with examples, while a resume shares your stats, links, and contact information. A portfolio can be a PDF, presentation, website, or story. A resume is typically exported as a PDF and scanned by Automatic Tracking Systems.

A portfolio is a visual representation of portions of projects, case studies from your career, etc. The resume serves to show your skill sets and work experience at a glance.

When you tailor your portfolio and resume to match, it shows your attention to detail. Treating your resume and portfolio like a product and applying UX best practices demonstrates your keen awareness, sense of design and skill level.

The combination of a UX portfolio and a UX resume allows for a more comprehensive storytelling approach. Together they allow you to paint a picture of how you approach design problems.

Everyone writes the same stuff. 2 to 3 case studies, formatted the same way, with the same kind of learnings. A critical part of your portfolio that people fail to emphasize is to simply make it look good. We tend to think that our "thinking" and "UX" perspective is enough to convince whoever is on the other end to hire us or see us as legitimate candidates, but at the end of the day, you're creating a product that represents you. If you can't properly design a portfolio that gets your target audience's attention, are you really a good designer? Think about how much time your reviewer has, what they would be interested in, and (I cannot stress this enough) highlight the visuals. That's the stuff that will keep someone engaged.

One thing my mentor told me is to have noting less than 3 case studies across different industries where one would like to work. Some have less than 3, and they get jobs, and I'd advise playing it safe. Secondly, there are different ways to craft a portfolio. I'd suggest taking a course first before making use of YouTube tutorials. Lastly, in creating your portfolio, I'd advise having making use of a personal website. This can be easily done using Framer, Webflow, Wix etc.

Some platforms that I think are good in terms of ease of use, price, and efficiency are Behance for visual portfolios. Here, we can display a portfolio in the form of visuals that display the design process of the case study. For the second platform, Notion is for storytelling portfolios and explains the detailed design process flow. Notion is easy to use, fast, and has a lot of customization options without having to spend more time designing or redesigning a website as usual.

Like most UX writing, a UX resume should be brief (1 page), scannable, with concise points and frontloaded with the most important information. If you've worked for well-known companies, lead your work experience with those names and follow with your role (i.e. Microsoft - Content Designer). Don't droll on about your duties without purpose; instead, describe your experience in terms of quantifiable impacts using numbers. Add bullet points that weave in skills and keywords from job descriptions you're aiming for.

In my 25 years of experience in UX and 15 as a Certified Career Coach, resume and portfolio are just pieces of a puzzle. Unless all of the puzzle pieces fit together, the picture of you will not be promoted in the right way. Your brand across resume, portfolio and LinkedIn should match and promote yourself, your skills, and you work in a way that matches your desired career path.

Ironically, recruiters and employers tell me they were warned not to click links they are not familiar with. Therefore, this was their excuse as to why they never visited my portfolio. Post your work where people are looking, such as LinkedIn.