- I hired a new designer onto my team
at ConvertKit recently, which is very exciting.
And as part of that hiring process,
I looked at a lot of portfolios,
read a lot of cover letters and applications,
we're talking hundreds.
Throughout this process,
I noticed that the applications we weren't moving forward
to the next round, often had the same similar issues.
So I want us to collate them and share with you today
the top five mistakes to avoid when applying
for your next design job.
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Mistake number one is not tailoring your application
to the job itself.
Now this is a tough one I know.
When you're job hunting you're just wanting to like,
cover your bases and get
as many applications out there as possible.
But this leads to your application being very generic
and not being tailored to the job itself.
So it means that you're actually more likely
to have it declined and to not be moved forward
to the next step.
I would really encourage you instead of going
for quantity of applications, to go for quality.
To find the roles that really suit your skillset
that you're really interested in,
that you can take a little bit of time
to just write a more tailored application.
It's definitely gonna make your application stronger
if you touch on any skillsets or areas of expertise
that are specifically mentioned in the job description
as part of your cover letter or answers
to any questions asked in the application.
What I saw quite a bit of in the applications
for our role was people saying that
they're really passionate about print and branding,
and it's a web design role that we were hiring for.
So print and branding is not really part of it
because that was specifically called out
and the person specifically mentioned that.
It made me feel like they wouldn't be the right fit
for this role.
If that's where their passion lies,
that's not what the role needs and so perhaps
they'd be better off working somewhere else.
So, make sure that when you're talking about
what parts of design excites you,
you're talking about things that this role itself
would allow you to do.
Any experience that you specifically choose to call out,
and you'll cover letter should be the experience
that specifically aligns with this role the best.
And in our application we asked for an example of
a marketing design project that the person
was the most proud of,
we asked them to tell us a little bit about it,
and what made it successful?
What did they learn from it?
Some people that's an answer to that question wrote about
the design of a product.
And that made us think that they really didn't quite get
what marketing design was and that perhaps again
that would be a reason they wouldn't be successful
or happy in this role.
So we chose to move forward the people
who could actually talk about a marketing design project.
As you write your application,
you should try and use the language that they've used
in the job description to talk about the qualities
of the designer that they want.
You should use them to talk about yourself
so that you already creating some alignment there
and showing that you're a good fit for this job.
I know that takes more time and that's why I'd advocate
for this quality over quantity approach.
Mistake number two is making it difficult for the reviewer
to see the relevant experience in your portfolio.
I was so surprised how often this was an issue throughout
our hiring process.
So the first step of our process
when all the applications come in,
is you go through them and you have to decline,
remove any that don't demonstrate the experience
or the skill set that you're looking for.
Sort of like the first initial pass through to make sure
that the ones you're gonna dig in and give
a full deep proper review for are ones that
could be a good fit for the job.
So in this stage of the process when you're looking
at hundreds of portfolios,
you don't have a lot of time to like read full case studies
in detail, to look through every single project
that is mentioned.
Honestly, you're making a first impression based
on spending like 30 seconds on the site.
Does this person do the kind of work that we're looking for?
That's the question that you're trying to answer.
When I would come across a portfolio that very clearly
had like images of websites as their project thumbnails
for example, that show me right off the back that,
yep, this person does web design.
That's what we're looking for.
They can move forward to the next pile.
When you see your portfolio showcase that instead
of being an image of the project itself uses a logo
of the company that you worked for,
you're forcing your reviewer to click through on the logos
to try and find the type of work that they're looking
for evidence of in your portfolio.
I would find myself sometimes clicking through
on like four different logo images and seeing
that they were more like brand design, or print design,
or even product design projects
and not seeing any evidence of web design in there.
Maybe there was a web design hidden behind one
of the other logos on the page,
but I don't have the luxury of time
to click through every single one to find it.
So, make sure that a reviewer of your portfolio
can easily find the type of experience
they're looking for you to have.
Whether that's through changing up the way you do
your project thumbnails,
to use an image of the project itself,
having categories on your site.
It was really helpful whenever someone had
a web design category, like just the fact
that the category existed itself showed me,
Okay. Yes, they do the kind of thing that I'm looking for.
And I could very easily click on it
and see the quality of the work.
Whatever you can do on your portfolio to just bring
those skills to the forefront so that someone reviewing
can easily see that you've got the right skills for the job.
Mistake number three is honestly in a similar vein
and that is making it difficult
for the reviewer to even see your work in general.
Not everyone has to have a portfolio website,
there are other ways to do a portfolio clearly.
But if the application for the job you're applying for us
for a link to your portfolio.
If your portfolio is a PDF,
you absolutely need to like host that on Dropbox,
host it on Google drive, or something so that you can send
a link through for someone to view it.
I can think of several applications
where they just sort of wrote,
like send me an email and I'll send you my portfolio.
Maybe that's been advice that someone's been giving out
as a way to ensure you hear back from a job application.
Honestly, it's just sort of like slowing down the process
and making it frustrating for the people on the other end.
So, make it easy for them to see your work,
give them that link.
And if the work in your portfolio is password protected
or like there's certain case studies
that password protected,
give that password and like give that access
in your application so that easy for us to go in
and take a look at your work.
Some people would write things like,
contact me to see a case study, or like,
let me know if you wanna see it.
You're applying for this job,
of course I wanna see your work.
Of course there's the thing that I wanna do
as part of this process.
So, let's just like speed things up
and make it easy for me to see it right off the bat.
And as part of that I'm not saying that
you shouldn't have passwords on your portfolios
or anything like that cause I know that some people
are unable to share certain what they're proud of unless
it's password protected cause they can't just have anyone
on the internet seeing it.
But, if you're applying for a job,
you're sort of like inviting me in to look at your work.
So, don't invite me in and then like,
not give me the keys to actually see it.
I was trying to make a metaphor there off
the top of my head it really wouldn't work.
Whatever, let's move on.
Mistake number four is not curating the experience
of your portfolio in your application.
I mean, kind of ties into mistake number two of not making
it easy for a reviewer to see your relevant experience,
but we can really curate a reviewers path
on your portfolio using design cause that's what we do,
to make sure that they're seeing the work
that you're most proud of first.
Cause your portfolio after all is really only
as strong as the weakest piece in it.
If I'm doing this quick review of a portfolio,
and I choose to click on a project that perhaps
isn't your best work,
was done a few years ago and isn't a reflection
of your current skills,
I don't know that, I can make that assumption.
So that project honestly, shouldn't be in your portfolio.
You should be happy for me to click on any project
in your portfolio and for it to feel like,
it's a good representation of your skills and experience
and what you're able to do as a designer.
What's even better though of course,
is to design your portfolio in a way to lead me
to the work you're most proud of,
cause of course we're always gonna have our favorites.
So, if the project you're most proud of is like
a big feature piece at the top of a site,
of course it's the thing you wanna click on
and I'm not gonna like continue scrolling and digging
and go looking for the hidden stuff.
So you can sort of lead a reviewer into the direction
of the work that's gonna showcase your skills the best.
We had some people apply for this role who went even
a step further and created like a custom page
on their site specifically for this job at ConvertKit
where they brought in links to case studies
that they felt were most relevant to the job description.
And that was very much appreciated.
It is a lot of extra effort,
so I'm not saying you have to do that when you apply
for a job,
but it was a great way to curate the experience
and make sure that I was only really looking first off
at the work that was most relevant
to the role we are hiring for.
And then we come to mistake number five
which is more to do with the application itself
and that is having poor written communication.
Now this one is probably more relevant to your role
I was hiring for because we're a remote company,
and in remote companies written communication skills
are very, very important for working efficiently,
for communicating with you work mates.
You mostly find yourself communicating
in an asynchronous written way rather than like,
speaking at the front of a meeting and stuff like that.
And your application is a great place to show
that you have good written communication skills.
And it's also unfortunately a place where
if you have very poor it and communication skills,
it could be a reason that you don't get moved forward.
If your application is very clear and succinct,
uses good bullet points and paragraphs
to arrange information either in the cover letter
and answers to the questions or whatever,
if you have thought about that experience,
it's definitely gonna stand out against an application
that's just like wall of text,
everything spewed out at once.
Putting effort into hierarchy
in your writing even just within an email shows
a lot of respect for the reviewers time and also makes
it really easy for them to find
the information they're looking for.
Because that's the thing with every application
that I'm looking at and like doing a review of.
I'm looking for reasons to move people forward.
Like I'm looking for what lines are up with
what we're looking for,
how does your experience fit with what we need?
How does your skillset gonna help and like bring
to this role,
we're looking for that kind of stuff.
So, the more attention you pay to your written communication
and visual hierarchy and things like that,
the easier it is to find that and to give us like
what we need to move it forward to the next round.
So it is important.
And even if it's just an email or plain text even,
approach it like you would the design of a webpage
and make sure you group information together
and incorporate hierarchy where you can
to make things easy to understand.
So those are the top five issues that I came across
in design role applications.
And in a future video,
I really wanna lean into giving you more advice
for how to get your application out of the pile
and like into that full review stage or interview stage.
I think what I wanna do is take a look
at some real job postings and give you my thoughts
on how I would approach applying for them.
So, we'll dig into that in a future video,
but I hope this was useful for now to hear a little bit
about what not to do and some ways to counteract
those common issues that come up.
I know that finding a job is really freaking difficult
and I wanna do as much as I can to help you progress
in your design career.
So, if you're not subscribed to my channel already,
please do so and I wanna make a lot more videos
to help you land a design job that you love
and one that you can thrive in.
Give me a thumbs up if you enjoyed it,
if you find it useful, and I will see you in the next video.
Bye.
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