Quick note from me

Hiring is a risk management process.

Hiring managers want the designer closest to making the business successful, who fits the role and the team, and who won’t quit in 3 months. All of that is expensive to get wrong.

So to convince them, we build a portfolio. A set of evidence that says hire me, I’m the one.

But when 200 other designers apply with a portfolio that says the same thing, what makes the one who gets picked different?

Let me walk you through the new framework I’ve built for this.

Story outline

  • Promise: What does your portfolio promise?

  • Signal: What signals prove the promise?

  • Bar: What’s the bar for the role you want?

Promise

What does your portfolio promise?

Every portfolio makes promises. You find them in 2 places:

  • the job descriptions you’re aiming at

  • and your own positioning

Think of them as the criteria you need to meet. The list of requirements you figure out for yourself.

The most common are visual design and problem solving. Almost every designer claims those 2, because they’re at the core of our job. Still, as a hiring manager, I manage to pick the portfolios where those promises look more credible and stronger. Those designers get the calls.

And the promises shift by role. Different jobs want different things:

  1. Startup Product Designer

    1. Speed

    2. Range

    3. Ownership

  2. Product organisation

    1. Depth

    2. System thinking

    3. Polish

  3. Design engineering role

    1. Building

    2. Shipping

    3. AI fluency

My strategy:

Before you design anything, write down exactly what you’re promising and for which role. The wrong promise is the most expensive mistake to fix later.

Example of AI requirements for AI Design Leader

Signal

What signals prove the promise?

A promise with no proof is just a tagline.

A signal is the precise example that backs the promise up. It’s how you make the claim credible.

Signal examples:

  1. Visual design

    1. Polished screens

    2. Recorded prototypes

    3. Product demos

  2. Problem solving

    1. Trade-offs

    2. Problem statements

    3. Visualised problems

As a rule, a signal comes in 3 formats:

  1. Written → carries the thinking

    1. The trade-off you named, and why

    2. A sequence of decisions, not a sequence of screens

    3. The invisible work, the call you made at the hardest point

    4. One decision zoomed in: context, tension, options, trade-off, consequence

  2. Visual → explains and impresses at a glance

    1. Annotated screens with the problem marked where it happens

    2. Before and after

    3. Multiple options

  3. Interactive → shows how it moves and feels to use

    1. Recorded prototypes and demos

    2. The flow from one screen to the next

    3. The live link

The strongest case studies use all 3 formats to proof their promises.

My strategy:

Pick your single hardest decision and prove it across all 3 formats, written, visual, interactive. One decision shown in full communicates quicker.

Signal of problem solving skill (old portfolio of Ethan Chng)

Bar

What’s the bar for the role you want?

Promise and signal are on you. The bar is not.

The bar is whether your signals are enough, and that’s set by things outside your portfolio:

  • Who else is applying

  • Who already works on the team

  • The organisation’s own standards

  • Where the industry is heading

Take storytelling. The bar used to be showing your process, the steps, the method, the neat arc from brief to solution. That cleared it for years. Now the same process work is table stakes, and the bar has moved to value language. What the work was worth, what it changed, why it mattered to the business.

Same promise and signal type, but higher bar, because everyone else caught up to the old one.

My strategy:

Look at who already holds the role you want and how they make promises in their portfolios. That’s your real bar, not the one in your head.

Example: the bar for getting hired by Jenny Wen at Anthropic

Learn AI in 5 minutes a day

You don't have to scroll every AI thread, track every new tool, or watch every demo. 

The Rundown AI breaks it all down for you — the latest AI news, tools, and tutorials in one free 5-minute email every morning. 

Trusted by 2M+ professionals at Apple, Google, and NASA.

Sign up to start learning.

My Designer Toolkit 🛠️

Tools I actually use in my workflow. Some links support this newsletter.

  1. Framer → My go-to website builder

  2. Mobbin → My go-to app library

  3. Granola → My go-to note taker

Want help with your UX portfolio? 🎁

  1. Build your UX Portfolio with this course

  2. Grab Storyline Portfolio Framer Template

  3. Book a portfolio strategy call with me

Questions? Reply directly.

Keep designing ✨
Aneta

Keep Reading

© 2026 Be Your Own Design Team.
beehiivPowered by beehiiv