Hey, UX friends! Happy Tuesday.
If we haven't met yet, my name is Anfisa—senior product designer at MEWS by day. By night, I help UX designers land meaningful jobs inside the IntoUX Community.
📧You’re a design manager with 127 portfolios waiting.
You skim. You judge fast. You move on.
You don’t have time to read every word, so you do what every hiring manager does: you skim.
20 seconds only. Invite or pass.
Now, flip the script.
What if your portfolio was on the line?
Would it stand out? Would it get that interview?
There’s one way to find out.
Become a hiring manager for 8 minutes
Step into the reviewer’s seat in the Portfolio Review Challenge.
Skim through real portfolios. Make real calls.
It’s fast, brutally honest, and the quickest way to understand why some designers get interviews instantly and others… don’t.
Think your portfolio would survive the cut?
Let’s see.
⚠️ *Only from the desktop.
What actually makes a portfolio stand out?
After watching hundreds of designers struggle with this challenge, these are the patterns that separate the “yes” from the “no”:
1️⃣ Storytelling case study structure
🔹 Start from the end (the impact → then the process).
🔹 Follow the 1-3-1 rule (1 storytelling title, 3 lines of text, 1 infographic).
🔹 Make your images & titles work for you (Does your case study read like a process report or an intriguing storyboard?).
🔹 Personality & Reality: Share obstacles. How did you overcome them?
Boring portfolios fade. Strong stories stick.
💌 Btw, you're invited to a free "Storytelling portfolio" workshop
2️⃣ Make your strengths obvious
Most designers have strong experience — they just bury it.
Ask yourself:
🔹 Are my takeaways and results instantly visible?
🔹 Can someone skim for 5 seconds and get hooked?
💡 Quick hack: Upload your CV to an AI tool and ask it to extract your top strengths and write a one-line bio. Use that as your north star across your whole portfolio.
Your work doesn’t need to be louder.
It needs to be clearer.
3️⃣ Surround yourself with support!
Rejections drain you.
Silence drains you even more.
But you’re not meant to figure the UX job hunt out by yourself.
A supportive circle is not a luxury → it’s leverage.
🚀 Once a year Black Friday sale (get 6mo for FREE)
The IntoUX Community is where designers stop guessing and start progressing: with structure, feedback, and people who get it.
Inside, you’ll get:
🔹 Courses on portfolio storytelling, job applications, strategy
🔹 Weekly workshops: mock interviews, storytelling labs, whiteboarding, AI craft sessions.
🔹 A community forum for feedback, critique, and connections
🧰 Get free Figma Pro for a year — worth $240, included with membership
🚀 We’re just getting started.
If you want 2026 to be the year you step into roles you didn’t think you were ready for: this is your moment to get ahead while everyone else waits for January.
See you inside,
Anfisa
