The logic is sound. But as a design leader thinking about our community I vouch for more efficient ways of communicating one's skills.

The one thing that building portfolios and perfecting those details cost us is a LOT of time. And once that is done, there're waves of time-consuming engagements that one goes through with the whole job-hunting process. While still trying to run things smoothly at the current job and keeping abreast of the industry.

And given the point of the portfolio is to showcase the work one has done, therefore again investing so much over custom portfolio visuals sounds redundant.

While a beautiful and well-done portfolio would definitely be compelling for the recruiters. And I'm all for the benefits of it. But it's not really something I'd propagate as an idea or a practice for the product design industry.

Also, parallels could be drawn between a visually beautiful portfolio and those fancy Dribble/Behance "UI" images. In itself, they don't speak much about the plethora of skills a product designer is evaluated on, particularly their thinking and learning abilities.

Therefore, for the efficiency of the product design job-hunting process I recommend minimal, content-focused portfolios. And also call for my fellow design leaders to think about it.

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And as Jared Spool says,

"If you're trying to hire designers & require a portfolio, you're not gonna get top talent. The best designers don't have them."