How to prepare for your next hiring experience as a product designer

“Whoever performs, must act”

Whenever you are up for a new challenge, you may recognize it’s time to update your portfolio, especially when you are working in a permanent position for a couple of years. My personal portfolio website normally lasts for about 3–5 years before I feel the need for updating it.

Never the less there are more challenges than just the presentation of your work and sometimes you may struggle to identify the problem when not succeeding with a recruitment process. After conducting a couple of interviews with product designers I thought it might help others to get the essential findings of those interviews.

The main objective is to promote yourself. There is a famous german book of music producer and conductor Christian Gansch about leadership called “Whoever performs, must act”. When you start promoting yourself it is crucial to align things and let your digital self speak one language but also understand the different platforms and possibilities you have during hiring processes.

Present yourself

When applying for a job it is also super important to show yourself. Not through work not through fancy titles, but you. A lot of portfolios I have seen focus only 100% on work professionals have created. We are super digital today but still, the first thing we want to do is to bond with the person in front of the screen. It can be simple, quirky and fun or even odd: show yourself in a way that people get your vibe.

It can be strange for you to see yourself on the website, but that’s normal. I recommend getting a good photographer for this as I recommend you to use that image everywhere. Yes, we are all individuals with lots of different sides but what you want is that you get recognized and you increase that chance by 1000% if you only communicate this one “you”.

Recruiters

Recruiters can be divided basically into 2 categories: good and the others.

A good recruiter a) understands your capabilities from view resumé slides, b) understands the needs of the product team, c) gives you feedback on the process in time and d) is honest to you.

For a job seeker, all of the 4 points are highly important, so if the recruiter misses one of these points the whole process gets useless.

What does that mean for you? Make sure the recruiter understands who you are and what you are capable of, or even what you don’t want. Dig as deep as you can to make sure the recruiter understands the need of the product team and push for a clear timeline. The hones part you have to figure out by yourself, but you will feel it.

Portfolio

There are many options getting your wok out there:

• Self-hosted websites (eg. WordPress, node-based applications, etc.)
• Portfolio platforms (eg. Cargo collective, Wix, etc.)
• Design specific platforms (eg. dribbble, Behance, etc.)

I recommend getting a private website with your name as the domain. We try to bring our name out there so it is super important keeping that streamlined too. Also, get your private email with your name as the domain or if you use a mail service stick to one name too. Recruiters have to check so many things that each new piece of variation will cause a brain overload and natural rejection.

Work experience

A big entry point for your next job will be your professional history. Recruiters mostly will first check your LinkedIn profile or Resume/CV (which should match) and decide based on that if they gonna continuing reviewing your portfolio. Try to avoid complicated position titles that create unnecessary question-marks. Some companies use really specific terms that no one else in the industry will understand. Keep it simple and streamlined. If you worked both in permanent positions and on freelance gigs make it easy for the recruiter to see that right away, rather letting them wondering why you only worked 3 months in a company.

Things like cultural fit will also play a huge role nowadays, but you can’t prepare for that one. You just need to fit, or the company needs to fit you! So don’t give up if things won’t happen right away: get your hands dirty and take the time to learn something new while waiting for progress to happen. Maybe start to learn how to bake bread, or how to code? The right job will come!