Portfolio Mistakes to Avoid If You Want Hired

I have reviewed a few hundred portfolios in the last decade, most of them from people who are clearly better at the work than their site suggests. The gap is almost never talent. It is presentation.

1. Screenshots without a story

A grid of beautiful screens tells me you can make beautiful screens. It does not tell me whether you can be trusted with a problem. Every project needs four sentences: what was wrong, what you did, why you did that rather than something else, and what changed.

2. Burying the work

If I have to scroll past an animated hero, a manifesto and a photograph of your desk to reach a project, I will not reach the project. Put three pieces of work in the first screen.

3. Showing everything

Six strong projects read better than fifteen mixed ones, because the weakest thing on the page sets the floor for how the rest is read.

• Cut anything you would apologize for in person.
• Cut anything you cannot explain your role in.
• Cut anything more than four years old unless it is genuinely your best.

4. Writing for other designers

The person hiring you is often not a designer. Say “the checkout lost fewer people” rather than “improved conversion through friction reduction in the funnel”.

Write the case study for the person who will forward it to the person who decides.

5. No obvious way to start a conversation

An email address in the footer is not a call to action. Put one line and one link at the end of every project: here is what I am looking for, here is how to reach me.

Fix those five and the same work does noticeably more for you.