How to deal with “meh” responses to your portfolio
Young designers and illustrators jumping into the professional world run that scary and intimidating gauntlet known as “finding a job”. It’s rough. It’s exciting.
It’s a lot of work setting up interviews, and the majority of your efforts go unheeded. Next level ghosting. So when you get one, you are in hyper-sensitive mode and each interview can feel like a make-or-break opportunity. You want to make the most of each precious one. That’s a lot of pressure. You just want to blow people away and be “the next one”.
It’s stressful when you don’t hear back. But if you are not generating excitement - and callbacks - from the people you are interviewing with, it might be time to take a cold, hard look at the work you are presenting.
It’s brutal when your portfolio is not lighting people up. No excitement across the table, no enthusiastic “tell me more about this piece!” or physically leaning in by the reviewer. Creative people in hiring positions don’t have time to spend looking at subpar or unfocused portfolios. They’ve gotta run. But put a great book in front of them and magically, they have plenty of time to look. You know when you’ve got a winning piece in your book. And when you’ve got a piece that just shouldn’t be there. This is where you look to your mentor - or a trusted experienced creative professional - to help you edit. A really good mentor will give you honest and constructive feedback on your work, maybe help you brainstorm ideas for new work and then give you some creative direction. No one is doing you any favors by just generically praising your work.
(By the way, it’s not the reviewers job to give you an honest and meaningful critique. But if you listen closely, you should get a good sense for where and why it doesn't stack up. Don’t be defensive. Be honest with yourself and listen with an open mind. Feedback is a gift!)
The biggest thing in my opinion is identifying areas you can focus on to create fresh, focused projects aimed directly at the places doing the work you’d love to be doing. If they're doing a lot of User Experience design, show them some UX work. If they’re serving clients in the healthcare category, it might be a good idea to show them some of your own healthcare-focused projects. Just-out-of-school portfolios are typically broad and relatively unfocused in that regard. But the smart money is on the person who has at least a piece or two directly related to what that firm is doing. Sounds obvious, but it makes a huge difference to that person across the table.
You are better right now than you’ve ever been. Maybe that work in your book from a couple of years ago isn’t quite as good as the work you're doing now. If that’s the case, let it go. Get it outta there. Invest in yourself and develop some new, focused work with a nice story. Build some nice case studies…and blow them away.
I’ve got a lot of thoughts around this topic. I’d love to share them with you. Send me a note: chris@creativecareerstarter.com