UX Interviews: The Portfolio Review

So you’ve applied to some really great positions and luckily, you’ve heard back! Now it’s time for the next step. Interviews.

I’ve recently started interviewing for UX positions myself. And while this has been an exciting time, it’s also been pretty nerve-wracking.

I’ve learned that interviewing for UX positions can be done in a variety of ways. You may have a typical behavioral interview, a whiteboard challenge, a portfolio review, a take-home design exercise, or maybe even a mix of the types. It all depends on the company.

While preparing for these different kinds of interviews I’ve picked up a few tips and tricks that have helped me feel more confident in my interviews and wanted to share them in hopes it’ll help you with yours!

What is the portfolio review?

The portfolio review is a presentation where you go over UX projects you’ve worked on previously. It serves as a way for the company to better understand you, your design process and the way you communicate. From what I’ve seen, these interviews usually range from 30 minutes to an hour. You also typically have control over the structure of the presentation. So whether you want to present directly from your site or create an interview specific presentation is up to you.

Goals of the Interviewer

I started preparing for this interview by trying to better understand what exactly these interviewers are looking for. I did this by watching tons of youtube videos of senior designers and hiring managers reviewing UX portfolios. From my research, I found three main things:

1. They want to know your personality. The fact that you were able to get an interview shows that the company feels you have the basic skills to succeed in the position. But what about the personality? In such a collaboration based field, it is important that companies find employees that fit in with their company culture.
2. They want to see how you communicate. On the job, you’ll have to present your designs to a number of different people. So, of course, they want to assess your presentation skills… how clearly you explain things, your storytelling method, etc.
3. They want to hear the why behind your design. This is a big one. Interviewers want to be sure you base design decisions on things like user testing, research, and design principles.

Preparing Your Presentation

I’d recommend that you opt to create a presentation for the interview. It allows you to tailor your portfolio to that specific company and takes into account the possibility of facing technical issues when presenting an online portfolio. Select 2–3 of your most relevant projects. Ideally, ones that align with the company’s specializations and job requirements and that highlight your design skills the most.

Structure of the Presentation

Here’s the order I used for my presentation.

Title Slide
Agenda
Introduction
Project Title
Project Details
Project Results
Project Brief
Design Process
Final Outcome
Takeaways & Next Steps
Thank You Slide

1. The Title Slide: This is the slide interviewers will see when they’re coming in and settling down. Keep it simple and include your name and the company you’re making your presentation for.
2. Agenda: This is where you go over the way you’ve structured your presentation and confirm the structure with your interviewer. State what projects you’ll be presenting, how much time you planned on spending for each section, and ask your interviewer if they’d prefer to wait until the end for Q&A or if they’d rather discuss throughout.
3. Project Title: Self-explanatory. Tell them what you’re talking about!
4. Introduction: Never jump right into your presentation! Include an introduction to give your interviewers a bit of background on you and your experience. Talk about any specializations, how long you’ve been in the field, where you’ve worked or gone to school, and your values. For my presentation, I decided to show my values by sharing three fun facts about me: my sorority, my current tech obsession, and my future goal of getting my master's. On the surface, those are random facts but they can show the interviewer that I value collaboration, innovation, and education. Try to display those values that align with the company you’re interviewing with.
5. Project Details: Here’s where you provide an overview of the project you’ll be presenting. Make sure to state your role, project team members, tools used, and the project’s timeline. Also, include a line or two about the project’s purpose.
6. Project Results: This is where you’re gonna give the interviewers a preview of what's to come. Don’t go in-depth here, that’s what the final outcome section is for. Just briefly show them what you were able to come up with so they aren’t totally in the dark when it comes to you presenting your process.
7. Project Brief: Why does your project exist? What was the problem you aimed to solve? Share it here.
8. Design Process: This is the meat of your presentation. Don’t just share what you did and how you did it, share the reason you did it. Provide photos of key deliverables. Ask yourself, what insights did you gain from using certain research methods? How did those insights influence your design? Why’d you choose that research method to begin with? Use storytelling techniques to tell the story of your project. (A great article that helped me with this can be found here.) If this project was done with a team, be sure to state what you did and didn’t do.
9. Final Outcome: This is where you’ll go in-depth about the results of your project. What’d the final design look like? Was it actually implemented? What metrics came from your usability tests and what did that tell you about the design you came up with? How did your features solve the problem? How did your design add to the company’s success? Be honest here. Failures are a part of the design process. Employers would like to see how you handle these failures. If the design didn’t work, explain why and how you’d fix it.
10. Takeaways & Next Steps: Here you’ll present what lessons you learned from this project and what you’d do next if you had more time. Would you run some more usability tests? Is there a certain feature you’d like to refine or remove completely? After changing that feature, what’s the result you’d hope to see? How would you measure whether your changes were beneficial or not?
11. Thank You Slide: I think it’s always good to thank the interviewers for their time. If you agreed to leave questions at the end, it’s also the time for that. Share any final thoughts you may have.

Presentation Design

Don’t go overboard here. Obviously, as a designer, your presentation should look good, but don’t do so much that it gets to be distracting. You also want to keep from distracting your interviewers with too much text. Use illustrations and easy-to-follow charts to show key project information and elaborate on these images with your speech. Furthermore, don’t get hung up on using a certain number of slides. Each slide should pertain to one idea, so use as many you need to make sure your slides don’t get oversaturated with information. You should only worry about fitting within your time limit.

Practice

You know what they say, practice makes perfect. It’s true! So practice however you see fit. Record yourself, time yourself, present to your friends and family; Whatever helps you the most. This will help to get rid of your nerves and make you feel more confident, allowing you to flow naturally during the presentation and better answer questions about your project that may come up.

During the Interview

1. Be enthusiastic. This goes without saying. You don’t want to hear a monotonous lecture, why would they? You should naturally have some enthusiasm about the projects you’ve worked on. If you don’t, that may signify to interviewers this isn’t something you’re passionate about. And you don’t want that.
2. Relax. I know it’s easier said than done but calm down. Mentally remind yourself that being nervous will make you more prone to stumble. Try some breathing exercises before. Listen to your favorite playlist. Do whatever you need to do to feel a bit more at ease when presenting.
3. Don’t rush. Take your time. Interviewers are not as familiar with the project as you. They’ll need more time to digest what you’re showing them. Pause here and there to encourage feedback and questions. It’ll make your presentation more conversational and ultimately put you and your interviewer at ease.
4. Answer questions truthfully. During the presentation, your design decisions will be questioned. Don’t make up answers. Of course, you don’t wanna say “I don’t know” when questioned about huge aspects of your design but what about when they ask why you chose that color for that button? If you have a solid reason state it, but if you don’t it’s okay to say that. Maybe you felt the color just fit the theme. You can use this as a chance to ask them if they would have made a different design decision there and, once you hear their answer, tell them you honestly overlooked that but you appreciate them making you aware of that perspective. After hearing their answer, you may be able to use it to offer an even better decision as an afterthought.
5. Be aware of time. If you practiced well enough, this should be easy. Ask your interviewer to alert you about time or keep a watch on hand to make sure you aren’t spending too much of your time on certain slides. You want to be sure you get to present all the information important to the project and that you get to show off all your skills.
6. Ask them questions. This interview isn’t just for you. Get to know the company and try to better understand the role. How big is the design team? What kinds of projects will you work on? What do they love about the design team? Where could the design team improve? Make sure this role is actually a fit for you. Here you can also ask them if they’d be okay with you reaching out to them with any questions that come to mind after the interview. It opens the line of communication for you to connect with them after the interview and allows you to get important questions answered. Win-win!

After the Presentation

1. Ask for feedback. This shows that you’re self-aware and open to feedback, traits that are essential to your success in designing at a company. And hearing about ways you can improve your designs from senior designers is always great. Even if they’re unable to give immediate feedback it doesn’t hurt to ask.
2. Thank them. After you thank them initially in your presentation, reach out to them via email or LinkedIn to thank them and genuinely express how much you enjoyed the conversation. It’ll make you stand out in the interviewer's mind and it doesn’t hurt to make that connection for any possibility of future opportunities.
3. Breathe. It’s finally over. Take a second to reflect on where you could improve for future interviews and appreciate what you did well. Even if the presentation didn’t go so great, look at this as a learning experience. Interviewing is a skill so the more interviews you have the more likely you are to crush the next one. Remember to be kind to yourself during this process.

Now what?

If it went well (And I’m sure it did), you may be asked to partake in a design exercise. I plan on discussing those in another article!

In the meantime, good luck with your interview. If you have any questions about anything mentioned feel free to reach out to me or to comment. I’d love to help as much as I can.