I have reviewed about 100 product designer portfolios in the last couple of weeks for 2 open midweight product designer roles we have at Faculty. I want to help product designers get jobs.
These 100 portfolios are after we have filtered out people who have applied who do not fit the criteria, i.e. the criteria on the application.
90% of the portfolios are Framer sites, and of those maybe 25% use the same template. Other common portfolios are slightly glitchy Figma prototypes/sites. I have seen a few Notion pages, which are fine – fine, nice, ok. Far too few are actually uniquely designed portfolios on custom domains.
Maybe we are looking for something too unique, but I want to see product (UX/UI) designers who empathise with a hiring manager and look at their own portfolio. So I will spell it out:
- As a hiring manager, I want to see 3-5 case studies of your latest and best work.
- If you are applying to a company like Faculty, then ideally your work should be roughly in the same space i.e. B2B. Try and keep the portfolio focussed on UX/UI – as a hiring manager for a UX/UI role, I don’t need to see your photography or packaging or branding work.
- I want to see high resolution UI outputs of your screens. You might want to put this in a laptop mockup (if you really have to) but if you do I want to see the details up close, so make it big.
- TEST your portfolio. It’s amazing how many broken links I find
- I want to see your attention to detail, typographical detail in both your work and in the way your work is laid out. This is design 101: typography, hierarchy, layout. If you cannot get this right then keep practising. Make sure there are no spelling or grammar mistakes.
- I want a well designed portfolio site that ideally uses a custom domain as it shows just a tiny bit of effort and technical knowledge beyond smashing a publish button on Framer.
- I want to see how you got to your high quality UI outputs through any sort of process.
- I also want to see a well-designed CV. If it looks like a default Word template, then you are not thinking about every angle of presentation. I want to see your information design & hierarchy skills.
- It is 2025 – I am also interested in seeing any GenAI prototyping skills. Having a go with them shows you are interested in the tools used and interested in keeping up with the changing landscape. It also goes some way in showing you understand the bricks and concrete that go into the building interfaces you are designing (to be clear: I am not expecting you to code, but an understanding of how web apps and websites are built)
- If you work in private, secret, or high confidentiality environments, then show off your personal or freelance projects, or find another way to show off your skills and what you do without breaching your professional responsibilities. Having zero portfolio available puts you at a massive disadvantage.
A huge part of design is communicating your designs and your portfolio is the easiest way to show how well you do that. Doing these steps shows you have the attitude we are looking for. If you don’t do this in your portfolio, then someone else will. That someone being the one who will get the job.
What do you think?