7 reasons your portfolio is not getting the traction you want

Intro

When I started in UX years ago, fresh after finishing a BootCamp, I had my portfolio ready and my bag full of hopes to get a job in the industry. I applied to jobs and I kept on getting rejections over and over again. I started tweaking my portfolio till I got it right after months of trying. Now, after some years in the industry coaching students and reviewing portfolios myself, I decided to share some tips and some of the most common issues junior designers or beginners face when crafting their portfolios.

The 7 most common issues with portfolios

1- Too long, too boring

HR professionals, recruiters, hiring managers, clients, these are the people reading your portfolio. But they also read dozens of others. Why would you think they will spend more than 2 mins taking a look at yours? I've seen countless portfolios including large, unnecessarily long sections and details that add very little value to the story.

You have to catch the reader's attention. Fast. Your portfolio should be scannable, concise and straight to the point. The goal of a portfolio is to get yourself that conversation or that interview. There you can go wide and deep and explain every little thingie you did. But if you want to land that talk, please don't put the reader to sleep or make them run away from that avalanche of words you put there.

2- It looks like everybody else's

A short intro, the design thinking process, a round of interviews, then personas, wireframes, bla bla bla. I've seen this structure over and over and over again. BORING.

Don't get me wrong, I do think there should be some structure to it, but work on setting yourself apart. Improve your storytelling, make it impactful, make it stand out. If your portfolio looks like everybody else's, it doesn't mean you are "industry standard", it means you have nothing special to offer. And I firmly believe everybody has something special to offer. Find that trait. Are you good at presenting? Include a short video of yourself doing a demo. Do you have a background in architecture? Why not splatter bits about that previous job on your portfolio too?

3- Too few visuals

Lately, there's been this strange trend of neglecting visual design. I heard many beginners say "I want to do UX but with no visuals". Is that even a thing? What would that be? A UX Researcher who also does wireframing? There's usually no such role. If you want to be a designer, well... you most likely have to do visuals. If you prefer other type of work, you can always go for other roles like UX Researcher, UX Writer or even Strategist, but a Designer who wants to design a little bit? Hmmmm. Maybe in some years, UX roles will start becoming specialized and you will have the chance of picking just a small part of the process. But we're far from there yet.

So what happens with this trend is that it leads to including just wireframes or only 2 or 3 hi-fi screenshots. Include more visuals of the thing you designed. Stand behind your work. If you think your visual skills are not good enough, time to sit and double down the effort on improving them.

4- Too many visuals

The opposite of the previous point is going over the top with visuals. A portfolio that mostly includes visuals makes me think more of a graphic designer rather than a product designer. Be careful when including too many and "hiding" behind your visual work because there's much more to your job than visuals. Don't be a dribble junkie.

5- Empty goals and no business value

I read countless portfolios that state goals such as "make X easier to use" or "create a more intuitive experience" or similar. We've all read those at some point (and even wrote those, guilty as charged) but what do they even mean? They are just empty goals.

In the real world, challenges will normally come from stakeholders (whether a PM at your company, a client, etc) and there will be some specific product/business goal involved. What were you trying to achieve? Increase time on the app? Increase the number of purchases per month? Get more customers? Think of product metrics and how your design might affect them. And if you launch your work, measure its performance. There's nothing sexier in a portfolio than things like "after implementing this solution, conversion rate increased by 12%". Even if it's only an estimation, believe me, it makes a huge difference.

6- Too many projects

Keep it simple. Pick a couple of projects and nail them to the ground. But be especially picky, no need to include 7 projects there because nobody will read them. And also, how do you know how many and which do people read? Maybe projects 1 and 3 were super cool but people only read 4, 5 and 6. Feature only a few projects and make them count.

7- All projects are from courses

I know, this is a pretty unpopular one. It's a harsh truth, but it's something we all know and we're all aware of. How many rejections come along with feedback like "no real work experience" or "no real-world projects"? When I was starting out, I faced SO many, till I realised I had to do something. This doesn't mean you have to discard all your course projects, but make a good mix.

Join communities, ask friends and family, local businesses in your area. Improve your LinkedIn game and reach out to small companies who might need a revamp of their app or their website. Even though these may not be paid gigs, the fact they are with existing, live products, matters. It matters because it means you were able to gather product requirements, identify goals, opportunities, you also had to deal with stakeholders, estimate time & effort and also, take care of the technical implementation.

So...

Whether you want to break into you UX, move your career forward or get new clients, better work on your portfolio and avoid these common pitfalls.

Setting yourself apart and making your portfolio easy to ready, easy to scan and impactful can take you a looong way.

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