By Sarah Brekelmans, Toronto Marketing Recruiter
In today’s industry, the best UX/UI designers are those who have a strong portfolio. What does that mean? How do you go about creating one that attracts today’s hiring managers?
We’ve put together 7 highly effective tips to create a UX portfolio that will help you get the job:
1. Your UX Portfolio Needs to Tell a Story
A UX portfolio is similar to a visual design portfolio, but there are some differences. The best way to do this is to approach each of your work samples as a case study. Talk about the task you were given, the steps you took to tackle it, barriers faced, and the end result. Employers want to hear about your journey.
2. Show Your BEST Work – Not All of It
Your portfolio website should not be a storage space where you put all of your work. When a hiring manager is reviewing a portfolio, they are looking to see samples of your best work. This can be 3-4 samples that show different ways of how you tackled different problems. 3 quality case studies are better than 15 low-quality ones.
3. Show Detail and Process
Each work sample in your portfolio should outline the process you took. Employers want to see the process and the steps you took to get to the end goal. It’s also important to show the impact the design had on the business and the overall results. What problem did the design solution solve? The more you can explain your process visually, the better. Including screenshots of wireframes, prototypes and storyboards are excellent ways to illustrate your process to a potential employer.
4. Your Portfolio Must Be User Friendly
Being user friendly is what UX is all about, right? Your portfolio website must be user friendly. How you design your website is a reflection of how you design in your everyday job. Your samples can be great – but if your site isn’t user friendly and it’s a challenge to get to them/understand them – that’s a problem.
5. Keep All of Your Portfolio Pieces Accessible in the Same Place
When a potential employer has to go on a treasure hunt to find all of your UX work, it shows that you haven’t put in the effort to make your portfolio user-friendly (see tip 4!). Combine multiple sites into one. They don’t have the time to hunt for all your portfolio websites. Directing a potential employer to multiple websites may work against you – not for you!
6. Getting Around NDA Work
NDA work is common. But it also poses a problem when trying to show your work to potential employers. If you aren’t able to showcase the actual work you’ve done, provide a client list and high-level overview of the project you worked on. If possible, provide details on the overall problem at hand and the steps you took to tackle it and the final results (see tip 1!). This provides employers a sense of the companies/industries you’ve worked with, and the types of projects you’ve been involved in.
7. Keep Your Portfolio Up to Date
Whether you are actively seeking a new opportunity or not, it’s important to keep your portfolio updated with your strongest work. The last thing you want is your dream opportunity to come around and you don’t have a portfolio to properly represent your work. We see strong candidates every day lose out because of this. As discussed, potential employers want to see detailed processes – so the sooner you update it, the easier it will be to remember and recap projects you have recently completed.
You never know, the next person scanning your profile could be your dream employer, so make sure you don’t miss it out!
Learn More About UX Careers
How to Keep Your UX Team When Everyone’s Trying to Steal Them
6 Tips for a Flawless UX Portfolio
IQ PARTNERS is an Executive Search & Recruitment firm supporting clients across the country. We help companies hire better, hire less & retain more. We have specialist teams of recruiters in Technology (IT), Accounting and Finance, Consumer Goods, eCommerce and Retail, Financial Services and Insurance, Startup, Cannabis, Big Data, B2B and Industrial, Operations and HR, Professional Services and Legal, Media, Digital and Marketing, Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences, Emerging Technology and Telecom, and Sales. IQ PARTNERS has its head office in Toronto and operates internationally via Aravati Global Search Network. Click here to view current job openings and to register with us.
