Finished your portfolio? Now make the most of it to get your dream job

Well done! after a lot of work and effort you’ve finally finished your portfolio. Many people will agree that this is the hardest part of the process of finding a new job in the field of product design. You can totally breathe a sigh of relief.

But, the portfolio isn't everything and doesn’t provide an automatic ticket to your dream job. This is only one of the first steps and the road to the long-awaited job isn’t over.

No need to panic, as I said, you’ve already done most of the work.

In this article, I’ll give you some tips on how to use your portfolio to increase your chances of finding a job. They will not require much more effort from you. In fact, they will be based on the effort you have already invested in the portfolio itself.

If you apply these tips well you will be able to:

1. Expose yourself and your skills to more recruiters who are just looking for talented designers like you.
2. Strengthen your presence in the various design networks and grow your personal brand.
3. Accumulating achievements that will make you and your resume stand out from the rest of the candidates.

So, how do you do that?

Assuming you have built your portfolio according to currently accepted standards, it should include at least 2–3 projects in which you describe your work process and the end result.

Now, all you have to do is translate your work into posts on any of the top design sites today. I’ll give you some important highlights for each of the platforms and some suggestions for goals that you can set for yourself, based on my experience.

We’ll take one of the projects from my portfolio, Kama, as an example, and see how I used it. Let’s start!

Dribbble

Goals:

1. Reach the New & Noteworthy page.
2. Reach the Popular page.
3. Gain more followers.

Kama’s Dribbble Shots

Why?

Despite the bad name that Dribbble sometimes gets, you’ll be surprised to find that there are quite a few recruiters who use it to find the next designer for their company. When recruiters are looking for designers on Dribbble, they probably use the Designer Search tool. This is a list of all the designers ranked according to popularity, which determined a lot by the number of likes and followers you have. Most of us probably won’t get to the top spots, but there is one thing that can help us - recruiters will usually filter by location. So, if you are lucky and you live in a relatively small country (like mine, Israel) it is completely achievable. From personal experience, I was approached by several recruiters who came through my Dribbble profile. Usually, these are companies that are looking for high UI skills.

How?

Choose the most beautiful screens of each project, arrange them in a cool way and post it. I intentionally used the word beautiful because usability is not so interesting here. There are many guides on how to succeed in Dribbble, here are two that helped me: 7 tips to get your design work seen on Dribbble, How to make 5k+ Dribbble followers.

Medium

Goals:

1. Be a writer in popular publications.
2. Feature your stories on popular publications.

Kama’s Medium Article

Why?

This can be a great thing to strengthens your personal brand. If you were able to publish an article in one of the popular publications, you can add it to your LinkedIn, portfolio and even your resume. It’s a kind of social proof. You’re basically telling recruiters — here, look, UX Planet, which has hundreds of thousands of followers, though I was a good enough designer to publish my works.

How?

Turn your portfolio case studies into Medium stories. It’s pretty simple, you already have all the texts and visuals. There isn't the full flexibility as on your portfolio but it’s not a problem to make the adjustments. If the case study on the site is very long it may be worth remove certain parts. Once you have finished your story you can submit it to any of the popular design publications: UX Planet, UX Collective, Muzli. I did just that and my article on Kama was featured on Muzli.

Behance

Goals:

1. Gain followers and appreciations.
2. Feature in UI/UX, Adobe XD or Behance.net.

Kama’s Behance Project

Why?

This is probably not the first place recruiters will look for designers, but it can totally contribute to your work exposure and lead to further accomplishments. A lot of the people in the industry do use Behance so if you manage to stand out there you will increase the chances of getting a new job offer. Aim for your project to be a Featured Project. If you succeeded, It’s definitely something to add to your achievements basket.

How?

Turn your case study into a continuous image by taking the different visuals and texts and connect them beautifully. You don't have to put every word in, here too the design is the main thing. This is how I did it. The featured projects are hand-picked so all you can do is be good enough.

Others — Bestfolios, Awwwards, CSS Design Awards, Case Study Club…

Goals:

1. Be featured.
2. Win awards.

Why?

These are achievements that can make you stand out significantly from other candidates. These sites are known for featuring only the best designs. Whether it’s your portfolio, a website you designed or a case study you wrote, if you’re there, you’re on the right path. It shows that you are good at what you do, and recruiters know that. You can easily incorporate these on LinkedIn or your resume and they will make a big impact.

How?

Just submit your work: Bestfolios, Awwwards, CSS Design Awards.

Conclusions

Today, the market is flooded with good designers and it’s hard to stand out. A lot of people recommend overcoming this by creating great content on Instagram or getting involved in Facebook communities, but not everyone is suitable for it.

In this article I’ve tried to give you another way to develop your personal brand using only your professional abilities. If your design is good enough - let it speak for itself. If you managed to achieve some of the things I talked about, don’t be afraid to show them! Share it on LinkedIn, display it in your portfolio or add an area of Awards on your resume. Show the world that you are a great designer.

That’s all for this time, thanks for reading it to the end! If you enjoyed this article please click the clap button or leave a comment below — I would love to hear your feedback (Did you know? You can give up to 50 Claps on an article! Just hold the clap button for a few seconds 😉)

Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn!