Insights from reviewing my readers’ one hundred and thirty-eight UX portfolios

Insights, takeaways and a resource of why some portfolios are objectively better than others.

Last month, I asked my readers to submit their portfolio for a screening done by me. I’ve gotten a whooping amount of portfolios, so it took a lot more time than expected.

Out of the 138 portfolios submitted, 125 was screened. If you’re part of the 13 that I didn’t review, it’s because you’re a UX writer, UX engineer or a UX consultancy business. I do not have the expertise to review portfolios for writers and engineers, and reviewing UX businesses is something I would not do for free (sorry).

If you’re a designer but I didn’t review your work, it’s because you didn’t follow my submission guidelines, so I couldn’t open your files. This is critical if you’re job hunting, so you better fix that.

The general statistics

Out of one hundred and twenty-five portfolios, I’ve said yes to fifty-six. That’s a 44.8% passing rate, and it is way higher than the usual ~10% when I do screening for actual job positions.

So we have a great sample of what works and what doesn’t. This article will dive into the common issues I see, how to fix those, and a special feature of amazing portfolios I am very impressed by.

It is important to note that I have some portfolios from people who aren’t actually junior. So this is a great reference for mid to senior level professionals as well.

Disclaimer: In any hiring role, resumes will be screened first before portfolios, and usually a maximum of 30 portfolios a week will be added into the candidate screening pipeline. This initiative is not simulating real portfolio screening processes in hiring practices, it is merely borrowing the same principles so I can conduct this experiment efficiently and give you the insights to why certain portfolios are better than others.

The first common pitfalls of portfolios I said ‘No’ to: Only UI work was shown

There are many talented UI designers that submitted their portfolios to me, and I genuinely like their work. However, I am screening for overall UX capabilities, so if I don’t see the artefacts like personas, userflows, research or anything that…