What a hiring manager looks for in product design portfolios and presentations (Part 1 of 2)

Guidance from a design manager on IC portfolios

Welcome to Part 1 where I cover essential content for effective product design portfolios and presentations. Part 2 is how to demonstrate seniority in your product design portfolio and presentation.

When you’re ready to apply, check out my tips for how to ensure your portfolio gets seen by hiring managers.

A hiring manager’s perspective

With layoffs, product designers have started (and are dreading) working on portfolios and presentations. As a hiring manager and former lead product designer, I have both made and seen my fair share of portfolios and presentations. As a candidate, I’ve experienced the disappointing feedback of “We just didn’t see enough…” “We didn’t like…” And as a hiring manager, I’ve felt the initial excitement of a promising candidate only to feel confused or disappointed during their presentation over what they chose to show and how they spoke about their work. 

I’m writing to demystify what I and other hiring managers look for in both a successful product design portfolio and portfolio presentation. 

Portfolio case studies

I’m looking for portfolios that show a balance of process, craft, and a clear understanding of the user and the business. Start by creating a portfolio website and 3–4 of case studies of the work you want to be hired to do. Specifically, if you want to be hired as a product designer, then there’s no need to share brand or print work unless your product design case studies don’t show strong visual design.

For each case study, create short sections that discuss the user problem, business goals, research, iterations on the design work, visual design, and project impact and metrics if possible. I’d also recommend noting the role, responsibilities, who else was on the team, and the project duration.

Think of a portfolio as a balance of show and tell. By “show,” have images of FigJam collaboration with stakeholders and cross-functional partners, iterations of screens, and visual design. By “tell,” have 3–5 sentences (not multiple paragraphs) describing the user problem, business goals, research, and why those led to the design decisions they made. Specifically, don’t set up a product design portfolio site via Dribbble or Behance, which show a gallery of images. I will move on to another applicant’s portfolio because I don’t know if they or someone else worked on the designs, much less the design, product, and engineering decisions behind them. It’s a delicate balance to strike so I recommend designers show their portfolio to a few experienced designers for feedback.

Portfolio presentations

The art of presentations is all about storytelling. For a product designer, it’s the story of a couple projects that best represents the type of work they want to continue to do.

Here’s what I’ve shared with past candidates: 

To make the most of our time together, we ask that you prepare a portfolio presentation of two projects that you are proud of and have recently completed. We’re looking to better understand your design process and would like to see slides covering research, remote brainstorms, prototypes, iterations, to high fidelity visual design. Demonstration of craft is important to show at all levels of product design. Please note your roles and responsibilities on each project, examples of iterations, and how certain design decisions solved specific user problems. We strongly recommend that you prepare a presentation deck, versus presenting directly from your site or design files.

Here’s a sample presentation outline to help tell the story of your product work. These work well as individual slides.

1. Who I am (1 min) — (feel free to note your preferred gender pronouns :)

2. My design process (1–2 min)

3. Case study 1 (20 min): 

• Role, responsibilities, project duration

• User problem

• Business goals

• Users

• Workflows as flow diagrams (optional) 

• Qualitative and/or quantitative research: sales feedback, competitive analysis, executive insights, anecdotal feedback

• Connection between research insights to design decisions

• Design iterations and wireframes

• Visual design

• Impact (success metrics, OKRs)

• What would you have done differently? What surprised you?

4. Case study 2 (same information as above) (20 min)

5. Visual design examples (Optional): If your case studies don’t show much visual design and craft, share examples that you personally worked on of icons, illustrations, motion, or any other ways you’ve found to show visual delight in experiences.

We also want to understand how you approach tackling design challenges, so take time during the presentation to talk about how you:

• Incorporate empathy and user pains

• Work within design constraints

• Factor in business goals into your design work

• Overcome challenges and obstacles

• Generate ideas and design directions

• Work with cross-functional team members

• Persuade others of the soundness of your decisions

• Handle complexity such as implications across other parts of a platform or cross-platform

• Measure outcomes, based on research or testing

Plan on about 45 minutes of presentation, and then 15 minutes for discussion.

Slides

Now that you have the outline, here are tips for each slide: 

• Use “I” statements versus saying “we did this” when describing the work. Be clear about what you did versus other team members’ contributions.

• Include two to three short bullet points or sentences on each slide. Avoid paragraphs as this is distracting to the interviewers if you’re speaking to content different than what is on-screen. 

• Show one to two slides that describe your design process. No need for additional slides or additional time. It’s more important for us to see how you applied the process and the designs you created. 

• Show one to two designs at most per slide. We are evaluating for craft so we need to see the UI elements on-screen. Don’t force us to squint or ask you to zoom in. 

Final thoughts

The best way to do well in portfolio presentations is practice and embracing critical feedback. I recommend finding time to present your portfolio to multiple mentors on ADPList.

Best of luck!

👉🏽 If you’re a senior designer, check out Part 2: how to demonstrate seniority in your product design portfolio and presentation.