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Hey and welcome back to a new week! 👋 

In this issue:

• Why Your Resume Matters Too: Your resume deserves some love too. I’ll show you 4 things you can easily apply to it.

• Learn About Service Design: ‘Ask a Service Designer’ is probably the best newsletter for you if you are interested in Service Design!

• Tabitha’s Portfolio: Dive into a very unique portfolio with me

• Today’s Question: How many case studies should my portfolio have?

🤝 TODAY’S PARTNER

Are you curious about service design?

Ask a Service Designer is a monthly-ish newsletter answering your biggest service design questions - skills, career paths, examples and deliverables from real projects, and more. You’ll also get resources, jobs, and the occasional video of a dancing agency founder (true story!) 💃🏼

Here’s what readers have to say:

• ‘Just a note that this resonates SO much and I've forwarded to at least 9 people LOL. Thanks for writing such great stuff!’

• ‘This is a delightful newsletter! I always end up reading it right to the end and needing to pull out my notes app to give myself reminders of things to come back to later.’

✨ Top Jobs This Week

Associate, User Experience Designer @ Blackrock (San Francisco, US 🇺🇸)

Associate UI/UX Designer @ Konrad Group (New York, US 🇺🇸)

Junior Graphic Designer @ Redbarn Pet Products (Long Beach, US 🇺🇸)

Junior User Researcher - Consumer Experience @ Spotify (Stockholm, Sweden 🇸🇪)

Junior UX/UI Designer - (m/f/d) @ Buynomics (Cologne, Germany 🇩🇪)

Get More Interviews: 4 Ways to Improve Your Resume Today 📈

Your portfolio gets all the attention in design job applications—but what if recruiters never even open it?

The reality is that recruiters and hiring managers look at your resume first. If it doesn’t pass their initial scan, your portfolio may never even be considered. I validated this by tracking application links for myself and mentees: when resumes didn’t make the cut, portfolio links weren’t even clicked.

Your resume serves one purpose: to highlight your most relevant skills and experience as efficiently as possible. But many designers make the mistake of treating it as a formality instead of a strategic document.

Here are four improvements you can apply immediately to ensure your resume works for you—not against you.

1. Open With a Strong Summary

A brief summary at the top of your resume functions like your portfolio intro—it sets the tone and ensures recruiters understand your profile within seconds.

Why This Matters

✅ Provides quick context, reducing the risk of misinterpretation.

✅ Helps career changers or those with non-traditional paths clarify their background.

✅ Can help differentiate you in a stack of similar resumes.

How to Get It Right

• Keep it short—2–3 lines max.

• Ensure consistency with your portfolio intro (or at least keep them aligned).

• Avoid generic buzzwords like “passionate” or “creative”—focus on specific strengths.

Example

For reference, Chenchen Lu used the same summary across her resume and portfolio to create a cohesive experience.

Dexter Sulit took a concise approach in his resume, cutting down to essentials while still giving recruiters a strong first impression.

2. Use Impact-Driven Bullet Points

Your experience section is the most critical part of your resume—but listing responsibilities isn’t enough.

Common Mistakes

❌ “Designed a new checkout flow in Figma.”

❌ “Created a design system for the product.”

❌ “Led user interviews.”

These tell what you did, but not why it mattered.

How to Fix It

Use the Google XYZ formula:

📌 “Accomplished X, as measured by Y, by doing Z.” (explained here).

Example

If you don’t have measurable results, still prioritize achievements over tasks:

For reference, Chenchen’s resume applies this well by focusing on outcomes rather than just activities.

3. Summarize Non-Design Experience

If you’re transitioning into design from another field, your resume can easily get too long—especially if you have years of unrelated experience.

Why This Matters

✅ Helps recruiters focus on your design qualifications without distraction.

✅ Prevents your resume from exceeding two pages.

✅ Allows you to highlight transferable skills without taking up excessive space.

How to Do It

1. Filter out any past roles that aren’t relevant or transferable.

2. Group past experience into a single section rather than listing each job.

3. List transferable skills in concise bullet points.

Example

Previous Experience (Marketing & Business Development)

• Led cross-functional projects, collaborating with design, development, and product teams.

• Managed data-driven campaigns, improving customer retention and engagement.

• Worked with top brands, including [Company X], [Company Y], and [Company Z].

This approach saves space while ensuring that your previous experience adds value to your application.

4. Add Direct Links to Case Studies

One of the biggest mistakes designers make is assuming recruiters will navigate to their portfolio on their own.

Why This Matters

✅ Many recruiters only check resumes—if your case studies aren’t linked, they may never be seen.

✅ Increases the chances of hiring managers actually reviewing your work.

How to Do It

• Embed links directly into your experience section where relevant.

• Place them strategically, where they naturally fit into impact bullet points.

Example

This guides recruiters toward your portfolio at the moment they’re most interested.

Final Thoughts

Your resume is the first filter in the hiring process. If it doesn’t make the cut, your portfolio might never even be seen.

Key Takeaways

✔ Include a strong summary to set the tone.

✔ Write impact-driven bullet points that focus on outcomes, not tasks.

✔ Summarize non-design experience concisely if you’re a career changer.

✔ Use direct links to case studies to encourage portfolio visits.

A well-optimized resume doesn’t just list what you did—it tells why it mattered and ensures recruiters actually engage with your work.

By implementing these changes, you can drastically improve your chances of landing an interview.

⁉️ Q&A

Today’s Question
How many case studies should my portfolio have?

💼 More Jobs

UX Engineer @ Realign LLC (US 🇺🇸 Remote)

Graphic Designer @ Guidepoint (New York, US 🇺🇸)

Junior Graphic Designer – AI Asset Creation @ Alpinestars (Torrance, US 🇺🇸)

UI/UX Designer @ Leap Tools (Canada 🇨🇦 Remote)

Product Designer @ Manulife (Toronto / Waterloo, Canada 🇨🇦)

Associate UX Designer @ 1-800-GOT-JUNK? (Vancouver, Canada 🇨🇦)

(Junior) UX/CX Designer (m/f/d) @ Lloyds Bank GmbH (Berlin, Germany 🇩🇪)

Frontend Entwickler / UX Designer (m/w/d) @ iteratec (Hamburg, Germany 🇩🇪)

Product Designer (m/w/d) @ Guestnet (Brixen, Italy 🇮🇹)

Grafiker & UI/UX-Designer (m/w/d) für innovative Digitalagentur @ Bergwerk – Digital Experiences (Switzerland 🇨🇭 Remote)

Product Designer @ Algolia (Paris, France 🇫🇷)

Junior Product Designer @ Playbook Engineering (Krakow, Poland 🇵🇱)

👀 Portfolio Showcase

Today: Tabitha K.

Not gonna lie, Tabitha’s portfolio blew me away visually when I first opened it. You very rarely see this level of visual execution with people early in their design career. Tabitha took risks with her portfolio but in my opinion they all paid out double. The fact that she leveraged state of the art tools like Framer and Unicorn Studio makes me happy too. There are so many things out there right now that enable you to set accents in your work and I’m glad to see people leveraging them like that.

But let’s go into the substance and see what makes Tabitha’s portfolio such a great package.

The Good:

• Absolutely NO Fluff: Tabitha’s case studies are visually-focussed on super light. There is no fluff whatsoever. No long-winded descriptions, no deep insights too but that is okay because she still manages to tell a compelling story about the project. The main reason this works is because she manages to show the absolute essential of her work and make the reader understand how it addressed the original problem. Relevant information is given on the fly and while it sounds daring, it works. With all the space gained from having so little text, Tabitha makes her visuals speak which works great. Yes, a very UX-heavy role would probably prefer more process and thinking shown but the market currently heavily favors excellently delivered work—and that you can find here!

• Distinct Personal Brand & Playground: As said previously, visually and interaction-wise this portfolio impressed me a lot. I kept thinking about it long after closing. Tabitha managed to brand herself and her portfolio in a memorable way. In a world where some roles amount 300+ applications this matters a lot! Part of this was also her playground or what she calls ‘Lab’ where she shows some smaller or more experimental work. This type of work should be shown in the same line as your main case studies but it can make a beautiful addition to it to showcase your range of skills.

If you can’t tell by now, I really liked Tabitha’s portfolio and I find it highly memorable. But it wouldn’t be this section if I wouldn’t be able to find at least one or two things that could be done to raise the level even a bit more.

The Potential:

• Higher Resolution Visuals: Tabitha uses biiig visuals in her case studies. This is great. Show, don’t tell. However these visuals should look absolutely crystal clear on every ordinary screen. On mine they didn’t. I do have larger screens than the average MacBook but they are not unusually big. It’s always a balancing act to show large visuals crystal clear without affecting loading times but compressing tools can help a lot here. Framer does most of that job already and as long as you upload in very high resolution, Framer will usually take care of it so don’t shy away to export your screens at 2x or 3x resolution even if those files seem big.

• Split Up Product Design & Graphic Design Work: Now this one depends. It depends on what Tabitha’s desired next role is. There are roles that have a strong overlap between these disciplines. If Tabitha is going exclusively for roles like this this point can basically be ignored. However if there is a desire to steer more towards one of the disciplines I would distinguish the case studies a bit more by that. This doesn’t mean you have to delete any of the work. Just visually separate it and start with what you have your focus on. This will especially help recruiters who are looking for specific type of work and sometimes can’t distinguish it all too well themselves. After all they aren’t designers. But it also puts more emphasis on the work you definitely want people to see.

Tabitha’s portfolio is a masterclass in personal branding, visual splendor and leveraging amazing tools to produce a memorable result. On top of that her work is excellent too. Make sure to check it out!

That’s it for this week—thanks so much for the support! ♥️

If you want to support me and the newsletter further, consider subscribing to the Premium version. You will also get a lot of other good things on top!

If you need more tailored help on your journey into design here is how I can help you further:

• Book a portfolio or resume review with me

• Book a mentoring session with me

• Book a quick 15 min chat to ask a question or get to know me

Keep kicking doors open and see you next week!
- Florian