Episode 94
No, you don’t need 3 – 5 projects in your UX portfolio to apply for a job
15 min listen
Episode 91
15 min listen
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Episode Summary
How many projects should you put in a UX portfolio? It’s a common belief that you need 3-5 projects to start applying for jobs, but that’s simply not true. In this episode, we bust the myth that there’s a magic number of projects required. It’s the quality of your work that matters (similar to the length of a UX case study.) A single, well-documented project that clearly shows your thought process, problem-solving approach, and impact can be far more effective than multiple weaker ones.
We’ll explore what UX recruiters and hiring managers are really looking for in a portfolio. They want to see how you approach problems, the decisions you make, and how you drive results. Whether you have one project or three, the focus should be on telling a cohesive story, showcasing your design thinking, and demonstrating real-world impact.
If you’ve been holding off on applying for jobs because you think you need more projects, this episode is for you. Don’t wait for a “perfect” portfolio—learn how to make the most of the work you have. Tune in for actionable tips on presenting your work, understanding what recruiters care about, and making your portfolio stand out with fewer, but stronger projects.
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Discussion Questions About The Episode
- Can you recount a time when focusing on the quality of a task or project led to greater success for you? How did that experience shape your approach to future projects?
- The myth of needing 3 to 5 projects before applying for jobs is strongly debunked in this episode. Why do you think this myth persists, and what strategies can you employ to ensure that your portfolio reflects depth and quality rather than just quantity?
- How do you currently present your projects and thought processes? What changes might you make to better convey the narrative and impact of your work?
- Reflect on a project you've worked on recently. How did you decide on the methods and approaches you used? How do you convey these decisions and their impacts effectively when discussing your work with others, such as employers or peers?
- Have you ever delayed taking a significant step in your career due to a pursuit of perfection? How might embracing a ‘good enough’ approach change your career trajectory or opportunities?
Episode Notes & Links
Episode Transcript
Sarah Doody [00:00:00]: Hey there. I’m Sarah Doody, host of the Career Strategy Podcast. Many professionals are seeking more impact, flexibility, growth, and let’s face it, getting paid what they’re worth. But how do you unlock this in your career? It starts with strategy. I’m taking you behind the scenes of what’s working for my career coaching clients. You’ll hear strategies and actionable, yet sometimes against the grain, advice for how you can be the CEO of your career and stop dreading Mondays. Ready to level up your career? Let’s get after it. Welcome back to another episode of the Career Strategy Podcast.
Sarah Doody [00:00:42]: And today, I want to address a big myth, that you need 3 to 5 projects in your portfolio before you start applying to jobs in user experience, product, etcetera. It is not true. Full stop. And I’m gonna explain why focusing on quantity of projects in your portfolio is a mistake because what really matters is the quality of how you talk about the project that is in your portfolio. I have seen many people apply to a job even with just one project in their portfolio. Maybe they had more projects to add, but they saw this job and they wanted to make sure they applied. And they knew that if they waited to finish all these other projects, the job probably would have already hired someone. Right? So it’s not about having this magical number of projects in your portfolio.
Sarah Doody [00:01:51]: It’s about the quality of how you talk about the projects that are in your portfolio. One thing I wanna say is where did this 35 number come from? I don’t know. I think someone said it once and everyone just started saying the same thing. Right? There is no law out there that says 3 to 5. It is subjective. I think it has been amplified by UX boot camps, by influencers, etcetera. And I really encourage you just to set that aside for now because, as I said, we have personally seen people inside our job search accelerator career strategy lab apply to jobs with only one project in their portfolio. Maybe because they were at the beginning of their career and only had one project they felt like they could include.
Sarah Doody [00:02:46]: Maybe they had 20 years of experience, but they’re super busy and they didn’t have time to get quote 3 to 5 in, so they focused on 1 and then they applied to a job with 1. Right? So I want to dive into, first of all, this whole quantity over quantity element to this because when it comes to portfolios, quality matters far far more than quantity. Recruiters and hiring managers are not sitting there with a checklist determining, like, did this candidate have more than 3 projects in their portfolio? If not, I’m not going to interview them. That is probably not happening. And, honestly, if someone is doing that, you probably don’t want to work at that company. Right? That is a weird culture. Alright. So what they’re looking for, what the recruiters and hiring managers are looking for is simple.
Sarah Doody [00:03:42]: They wanna understand how you think, how you solve problems, how you came to decisions, how you approached whatever the project was, and how you dealt with curve balls that may have come up in the entire process. Right? So this means that even if you only have 1 or 2 projects in your portfolio, as long as you are doing those things, right, demonstrating your UX thinking, your process, and the value that you brought to the project, you’re in a great position to apply. And why is that? It’s because so many candidates don’t do this. So many portfolios either look exactly the same or they’re essentially just like a photo album of deliverables with no explanation, and that is not what recruiters and hiring managers are looking for. Right? So one strong well explained project is worth more than 5 mediocre ones in your portfolio just so you can comply with this fake rule that you must have 3 to 5 projects in your portfolio. Alright. I want you to also focus on the depth of the projects in your portfolio and not the literal number of projects. Right? So instead of worrying about having 3 to 5 because we’re not those type of people, we are gonna focus on the depth of storytelling of the projects you do have.
Sarah Doody [00:05:20]: So number 1, we want to show your thought process. Recruiters want to see how you approach the project, how you identify problems, how you came up with solutions, why you made different decisions, the result of what you did. They wanna get inside your head. It’s almost like they wanna be in, like, the driver’s seat as you’re doing the project, so to speak. And to do that, we just have to tell them. Right? So we need to break down our process if it was a research project, you know, not just like next I conducted a survey, but they wanna know well, how did you even decide that a survey was the right research method to begin with? How did you decide who to qualify as a person to fill out the survey? Right? Why were they the right people versus some other criteria of people? How did you decide on the types of questions that you’re asking? What did you learn after you did the survey and then people filled it out and you analyzed and all the information, etcetera? Right? How was that used in product decisions even? Things like, what would you do differently? You know? So, that’s what I mean when I say show your thought process, tell the story of what you did, why you did it, how you did it, what happened. Don’t just have this generic portfolio that’s just kinda like a checklist, which is super boring if you’re reviewing sometimes hundreds of portfolios a day to be honest. Alright.
Sarah Doody [00:07:03]: Number 2. We wanna highlight the impact of what we did. Now, we have a whole other podcast episode about quantifying your impact and the value that you had on a project. So we will link to that in the show notes. But I wanna remind you that it’s not enough just to show people what you did and show the deliverables. We need to explain the impact your work had. Now, as I say in this other episode, you might not have an impact like, I made the company $1,000,000. Right? That is not realistic for most people.
Sarah Doody [00:07:42]: So we wanna think about how did maybe the product or feature improve after you designed it if if it was more of a a design project. Was there, like, a before and after that you can contrast to show the impact? What maybe problems did it solve maybe even on your own team? Did whatever you worked on, did it help streamline your team’s processes? Did it help save time, save money? Who knows what? The other thing we can think about is not just the impact, but also the scale of what you worked on. And we talked about this in the other episode, but if you can’t say you made the company a $1,000,000, go back to our survey example, tell us details like this, you know, survey had 500 or 5000 respondents. That’s a big deal. But if you don’t tell us, I won’t know that. And if I’m a busy recruiter or hiring manager and I see that in your portfolio, seeing that the survey had 500 or 5000 respondents might, like, pique my interest and make me pay attention versus a portfolio that just said, next I did a survey or something like that. Right? Okay. So, we also wanna make sure that we’re telling a really cohesive story.
Sarah Doody [00:09:09]: And I know you hear people say your portfolio needs to tell a story and they don’t really tell you how to do that. So, we need to think of your portfolio like a narrative. Like, if I was having coffee with you right now and I said, talk me through this project, what would you say, you know? Think of it as though you’re telling another human being about this project. Because when you frame it like that, it’s going to help you include details that are gonna help keep the person engaged and hopefully avoid having it sound like kind of a stale book report or something like that. So the the project and the narrative in the case study, we really want it to take people on a journey from start to finish, sometimes problem to solution. So even if you only have just 1 or 2 projects that you can include in your portfolio, as long as they’re presented well, they show your thinking, your thought process, etcetera, you are ready to apply. And as I said, we’ve seen multiple people in career strategy lab apply to jobs with literally one project. Sometimes some of them even said, I didn’t make it all the way through the portfolio course inside career strategy lab because I kind of ran out of time because there was a deadline to apply to the job.
Sarah Doody [00:10:44]: So I applied with a quote good enough version of my portfolio and I still got an interview. And we believe this is because the quality of the stories that are told in portfolios of people in Career Strategy Lab give recruiters and hiring managers what they are looking for. And we know that because so many people say that after they have been in an interview they’ve received compliments about the quality of that story and their ability to articulate what happened in that project. So, don’t ignore the element of creating that narrative, telling a cohesive story, and not just telling people what you did, but tell them why you did it, how you decided to do that, what happened, what was the outcome, how did you come up with the solution, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So let’s get to some quick action steps. What can you do right now? Alright. Number 1, take a look at the projects that are already in your portfolio and do they provide the level of depth that we just went over or are they just talking about I did this, then I did that, then I did this, then I did that, right, with zero explanation. Because there may be opportunities where you can better explain your thinking, your process, and your impact, and that could help you stand out.
Sarah Doody [00:12:21]: Now, number 2, if you only have 1 or 2 projects, do not panic. Right? We wanna focus on making those as strong as possible rather than worrying about adding more projects just to comply, like I said, with this fake rule that you have to have 3 to 5. And number 3, I would say start applying. Don’t let this fake 3 to 5 rule hold you back. And even if you’re only working on one project right now to be putting in your portfolio, if it’s not finished yet, don’t worry. I would say start applying. Because if you apply to the job today, you’re probably gonna wait at least a week to hear back from them. So that’s 1 week that you can work on this project.
Sarah Doody [00:13:12]: And then even if you did get an interview 8 days from now, let’s say, that would, number 1, light a little bit of a fire under you to get it finished. But, also, 2, I just wanna remind you that, like I said, we’ve had people say they were not even finished with the portfolio part of career strategy lab, kind of rushed through it, and still got interviews with a quote good enough portfolio. Because if you wait for perfection, you’re gonna miss out on opportunities. Right? And if you’re not applying, you’re not gonna know if maybe you can get hired with your current portfolio or the 2.0 of your current portfolio. So the bottom line here is that you’re ready to apply if you can clearly communicate your process, your impact, and your thinking, and go beyond just saying what you did. So don’t wait until you have more projects. Start applying now because you never know, you might actually get interviews. Alright.
Sarah Doody [00:14:21]: So we wanna let go of the idea that we need this 3 to 5 projects. What matters is the quality of how we talk about the projects we do have. And if you’re feeling unsure about your portfolio or your case studies, I have a bunch of resources for you. So check the show notes. We have a case study template that may be valuable to you. We also have a portfolio course that you could do separate from committing to 3 months in career strategy lab. And that is all. So I hope you found this helpful.
Sarah Doody [00:15:00]: I will see you in another episode very soon. Thanks for listening to the Career Strategy Podcast. Make sure to follow me, Sarah Doody, on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. If anything in today’s episode resonated with you, I’d love to hear about it. Tag me on social media or send me a DM. And lastly, if you found this episode helpful, I’d really appreciate it if you could share it with a friend or give us a quick rating on Spotify or review on Apple Podcasts. Catch you later.