Staging environment

Job Search 2026: What Makes a Great UX Portfolio

Hosted by Jared Spool

Tue, Sep 22, 2026

6:00 PM UTC (1 hour 30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

Free to join

212 students

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UX Job Search: Stand Out in Today's Crazy, Crowded Job Market
Jared Spool
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What you'll learn

What hiring managers need to see in your portfolio

Hiring managers now require portfolios for every UX position. You won’t get through without one. Is yours up to par?

How case study requirements have changed in this market

The rules have changed. You can’t just describe a project anymore. There’s so much more to writing a great case study.

What you’ll need to get interviews and offers

Hiring managers look for very specific things in candidates. If you don’t know what those are, you won’t hear back.

Why this topic matters

In today’s market, hiring managers expect every candidate to have a portfolio. They won’t consider you without one. They need your portfolio to convince them you're qualified to do the job. If your case studies miss the boat, they’ll toss your application aside. You will only get interviews when your portfolio proves you’re the UX professional they need to hire. Is it up to the task?

You'll learn from

Jared Spool

Center Centre’s Maker of Awesomeness and UX career coach.

Everything in this Lightning Lesson comes straight from Jared Spool’s decades of career coaching for hundreds of UX professionals.

Through his work with design leaders worldwide, Jared has learned what hiring managers are currently looking for in new team members.

Crafting your résumé, portfolio, and case studies into compelling documents that attract hiring managers' and recruiters' attention is a design challenge.

There’s more to it than applying to every job that comes your way. You need a more selective strategy that focuses on your strengths. You need the hiring manager to think, This is the person we need to talk to. That will get you invited to the next stage of the interview pipeline.

Join Jared Spool as he explores what hiring managers hope to see in your portfolio.

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