Design Portfolios are still the way to go, but it's time we rethink the format.
What hiring managers actually look for and what AI ubiquity has changed about the evidence.
The first decision I had to make when refreshing my portfolio was what to leave out.
In years past, my old version had logos, identity systems, websites, design systems, event experience, and boastful slide decks. For its intended purpose it worked a trick. More than a few headhunters landed in my LinkedIn inbox on the strength of it. But upon reflection it just wasn’t representative of the kind of work I do now. And frankly, it hadn’t been for a while.
I’ve been a product design manager for seven years. The conversation I want to have with a hiring VP isn’t “what can my current team produce”, it’s “what kind of team can I build, and how do I help that team deliver against goals that change every quarter.” Those are vastly different conversations and they warrant different evidence.
So I had to start from scratch.
The hiring team isn’t just your audience,
they’re your primary users.
Setting a baseline
Most portfolios miss the concept entirely. They read like a firehose: about me, here’s everything I’ve made, I’m awesome, hire me. Which, while certainly the point, is still a lot. It’s also a huge missed opportunity for someone whose discipline is supposed to be user-centered design.
The reviewer is your user. What does their day look like? What are they trying to accomplish when they open your portfolio? What decision are they trying to make, and what evidence do they actually need to make it?
A portfolio that doesn’t answer these questions has flubbed the audition before the second click.
What I’m actually looking for in your work
I hire designers into a B2B enterprise SaaS environment with an established visual identity and a mature design system. If a candidate is showing me a portfolio full of beautifully crafted brand work, my read isn’t this person is talented. My read is this person is going to feel unfulfilled here. Those skills will languish. The work I have to offer isn’t the work they want.
I’ve also been burned more than once by inflated claims on team output. A gorgeous case study lands in front of me, I get the candidate on a call, and within twenty minutes it becomes awkwardly clear that someone else was carrying the visual weight.
What I need to see is a bit different. I’m looking for processes, outcomes, and reasoning. The connective threads that a designer has woven between the request, the problem, the solution, and the outcome. I’m hoping to find the decisions made vs the decisions avoided and the logic and strategy behind them. I need to know who you chose the pain point you deprioritized because it tells me how you might handle our team’s challenges. None of this requires beautiful screen work.
AI has shifted the floor, not the ceiling
AI is replacing craft, and that’s fine. I no longer need designers to spend their days in Photoshop or Illustrator or in a code editor to produce an artifact. The craft of an individual artifact matters less than it used to, especially as the next person to pick up that artifact is also using AI.
What AI hasn’t replaced, however, is taste. Every designer is essentially their own art director now. The decisions about what to make, when to stop making it, and which problem was worth solving in the first place — those are the same decisions they always were. They’re just more visible because the craft layer no longer hides them.
These days, I’m coming to expect candidates to use AI and I would expect VPs and headhunters to expect the same of me. A senior people manager in design has to know how to use these tools, how to train teams to use them, and most importantly, how to teach a team when not to.
A management portfolio is a different kind of thing
Portfolios are still the right artifact but the shape and contents have certainly evolved.
I’m still showing case studies. I’m still highlighting decisions, processes, tradeoffs. The skeleton is the same basic structure that designers have used since we put down printed leave-behinds. But the artifact at the center of each case study is different. It’s the team structure, the navigation of reorganization, or a decision that ran against the loudest voice in the room.
Showing my team’s recent outputs would certainly show what we delivered, but provides very little context about how we got there, and precisely zero insight to what might be accomplished without this full team behind me. Therefore, the conversation I’m having with a reviewer cant be about the deliverable my team just shipped, but rather the conditions I built around them so they could ship it.
So what?
Frankly, what was made matters much less than how how we get there with others.
That’s the version of the portfolio I’m interested in writing for myself, and the version I want to read from candidates. The evidence may be different, but the bones are still the same and thankfully, the work is still the work.