A weekly email on portfolios, job search strategy, confidence, and career growth. From a designer with 25+ years in the industry helping 500+ designers level up. Read past issues below. Get the next one in your inbox every Tuesday.
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A designer I coached just got hired. Here's what changed.
Published about 2 months ago • 3 min read
A designer I worked with got a job offer this summer.
He did it in 2026. In this market.
And I want to share what helped him get there.
Where he started
We started working together at the beginning of his job search.
Over two months, he had three interviews but none had converted into an offer. He was applying, showing up, and doing the work.
And throughout the search we kept refining things.
But something wasn't landing.
When we looked at his portfolio and resume together it became clear.
The story he was telling about himself wasn't the full story.
He was presenting as a UX designer with a few years of experience, which was true but he was leaving out years of work as a graphic designer that came before.
He didn't think it counted.
I disagreed.
That experience was transferable; solving visual communication problems, working with clients, navigating feedback. And once we included it, he was no longer presenting himself as a designer with only a few years behind him.
He was presenting the full depth of his career.
What he changed
1. He kept improving his portfolio
He updated his portfolio twice during the search.
Each interview and conversation gave him new evidence about what was missing, and what was resonating.
He treated it like a product: something to improve through feedback and user data.
Your portfolio does not need to be perfect before you apply.
It can evolve as you learn.
2. He added results.
He added results to his UX work and to the earlier roles he had discounted.
He used qualitative results where he didn't have numbers and quantitative results where he did.
One of his case studies showed how he used user data to optimize an experience and then measured the improvement. That became a centerpiece of his final interview. The hiring team kept returning to it because they wanted to understand how he thought.
If you're job hunting, look through your own work and ask:
What changed because of what I did?
That's the story hiring managers need to hear.
3. He made every touchpoint tell the same story.
His resume, LinkedIn, and portfolio began telling the same story:
The kind of designer he is
The experience he brings
The problems he can solve
Evidence of his impact
A hiring manager shouldn't have to figure out who you are by piecing together three different versions of your career.
Make the story consistent wherever someone encounters you.
4. He practiced telling his story.
We did mock interviews and worked through common questions together.
He built specific success stories from his past experiences so he wasn't searching for examples under pressure.
He walked into interviews knowing what he brought and how to communicate it clearly.
That made a difference.
What happened next
The fourth company he interviewed with took him through four rounds.
Two and a half months of applying can be exhausting and uncertain.
But things changed.
He understood his experience more clearly. He knew what he brought. And he knew how to talk about it.
When the right company finally saw it, they moved.
He got the offer.
What you can take from this
If you're in a job search right now, here's where I'd start:
Count all your experience.
Don't automatically dismiss work because it happened before your current design role.
Show your results.
Ask what changed because of your work not just what you were responsible for.
Align your story.
Your resume, LinkedIn, portfolio, and interview answers should reinforce the same positioning.
Practice saying it out loud.
Confidence is much easier when you already know the stories you want to tell.
None of this is out of reach.
If you want to work through your specific situation: the portfolio, positioning, experience, and story that's exactly what a 1:1 Career Strategy Session is for.
A weekly email on portfolios, job search strategy, confidence, and career growth. From a designer with 25+ years in the industry helping 500+ designers level up. Read past issues below. Get the next one in your inbox every Tuesday.
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