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Hey and welcome back to a new week!

In this issue:

• Good Portfolio ≠ Interviewing Well: Interviews are a challenge of their own. Once you land them, make sure to nail them with my guide.

• Never Start With A Blank Canvas Again: I’ve used Relume recently to build a new landing page for this newsletter and I’ve been amazed at how quickly I got something together.

• Michelle’s Portfolio: This one blew me away for many reasons.

Thank you for reading!

📋 NEVER START WITH A BLANK CANVAS AGAIN — THANKS TO RELUME

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The Ultimate Design Interview Guide for 2026 🎤

Let’s get one thing straight.

Having a great portfolio does not mean you’ll interview well.

And interviewing well does not mean you have a great portfolio.

They are two very different skills.

I’ve seen designers with outstanding portfolios stumble because they couldn’t structure answers, handle curveballs, or read the room. I’ve seen others with decent portfolios outperform stronger candidates simply because they were prepared, thoughtful, and sharp in conversation.

In 2026, the market is competitive. Multi-stage processes are normal. Some companies keep it lean. Others will run five or six rounds without blinking.

You can’t control that.

What you can control is how prepared you are for each stage.

Here’s what actually matters.

1. Be Prepared for Each Stage

All interviews are interviews.

But they’re not evaluating the same thing.

If you approach every stage the same way, you’ll underperform somewhere.

Recruiter / Phone Screen

This is a filtering stage, not a design deep dive.

They’re checking alignment. Does your experience roughly match? Can you communicate clearly? Are expectations realistic? Any red flags?

Your job is simple: deliver a structured, concise walkthrough of your background, highlight what’s relevant, explain transitions clearly, and articulate why this role makes sense now.

Keep it high-level and calm. Have two or three thoughtful questions ready that the recruiter can answer, such as team structure, reporting lines, or process overview. This is not the time to dive into design system architecture.

Hiring Manager Interview

Now depth matters.

This stage evaluates ownership, decision-making, trade-offs, collaboration, and impact.

Be ready to go deep on one or two projects. Explain why you made certain decisions, what constraints you were working under, what didn’t go as planned, and what changed because of your work. Measurable outcomes and honest reflection go a long way here.

This is also where product research starts to show. You don’t need to critique aggressively, but you should demonstrate that you’ve actually engaged with the product.

Culture / Team Fit

Often underestimated.

You’ll typically meet designers, engineers, product managers, or other cross-functional partners. Craft matters less here than how you operate.

They’re asking: Would I want to work with this person every day?

Be prepared with specific examples of collaboration, disagreement, feedback, and prioritization under pressure. Self-awareness is what stands out here, not polish.

Design Challenge / Whiteboard

This is rarely something you can wing successfully.

Whiteboards test structure and thinking. Take-homes test judgment and scope control.

You need frameworks ready. Clarify constraints. Define assumptions. Think out loud. Structure before UI. Timebox take-homes strictly and document your assumptions and trade-offs.

If you want a deeper breakdown of how to approach whiteboard challenges properly, I wrote a dedicated article on mastering them. Use that as your structured prep companion.

Leadership / CEO Interview

This stage catches people off guard, especially in startups and smaller companies.

It’s not a formality.

Leadership cares about vision alignment, strategic thinking, business awareness, and long-term potential. This is not the time to focus on Figma techniques. It’s about how design supports business outcomes, how you prioritize, how you handle ambiguity, and how you see yourself growing.

Underestimating this stage can undo everything you did well earlier.

Combined Stages

In lean companies, multiple stages may collapse into one long conversation. You might get resume deep dive, case study walkthrough, culture questions, and strategic discussion in a single call.

Prepare for the highest bar. Over-preparing rarely hurts. Under-preparing shows immediately.

2. Always Have Slides Ready

Even if no one has asked yet.

You never know when someone will say, “Can you walk us through a project?”

Have a reusable master deck with one or two strong case studies. Keep it visual, light on text, clear in structure, explicit in ownership, and strong on outcomes. Don’t overfit it to one company so it becomes unusable elsewhere. You should only need light tailoring between interviews.

Treat your deck as a long-term asset, not a last-minute chore.

If you need deeper guidance, I wrote a detailed breakdown last year on how to structure presentation slides, including a template. Use that as your foundation.

3. Have Questions Ready (Strategically)

You should never say you don’t have questions.

But the key is matching them to the stage.

Early on, focus on team setup, reporting lines, hiring timeline, and broad company direction. With the hiring manager, ask about how decisions are made, how design collaborates with product and engineering, what strong performance looks like, or what current challenges the product faces. In later stages, growth path and team maturity become more relevant.

Your questions should signal curiosity and maturity, not friction. Very specific flexibility or negotiation questions are usually better saved for later in the process.

4. Research the Product (More Than the Company)

The product is what matters.

Before a hiring manager interview, use it if possible. Explore flows. Notice patterns. Identify friction and strengths. If it’s gated, request access. If you can’t get access, tools like Mobbin can help you review real product flows and screens to at least build context.

This isn’t about tearing the product apart. It’s about understanding it.

Instead of saying, “I would redesign this,” ask, “How did you approach this decision?” or “What constraints shaped this feature?”

Informed curiosity is powerful.

5. Design Challenges, Take-Homes, and AI

For whiteboards, structure first. Clarify the problem, define assumptions, outline flows, then refine. Think out loud.

For a more detailed step-by-step framework, refer to my full whiteboard challenge article where I break down exactly how to approach them under pressure.

For take-homes, timebox strictly. Clarify scope, document assumptions, show trade-offs, and make it explicit what you didn’t do due to time. Quality of thinking matters more than volume of output. And if the requested scope feels excessive or exploitative, address it or walk away.

If the company is AI-positive, tools like Lovable or Relume can elevate your output significantly under time constraints. If they’re conservative, use AI as support, not spectacle. Either way, you should know how to use it confidently.

6. Practice (Huge Game Changer for Me)

This was the biggest shift for me.

Interviews improve with repetition.

Today, you can simulate almost every stage with AI. Recruiter screens, hiring manager interviews, whiteboards, even feedback on your answers. That’s why I built the Interview Coach GPT: upload the job description, specify the stage, run the simulation, get structured feedback. It’s free, and it works.

Try my free Interview Coach GPT here

But even without AI, practice out loud. Present to a friend. A mentor. Your wall. Your cat.

Confidence isn’t built through hope.

It’s built through exposure.

Final Thoughts

Interviews are not an extension of your portfolio.

They’re a separate skill set.

Stage awareness. Structured thinking. A reusable slide deck. Informed questions. Product understanding. Deliberate practice.

Prepare intentionally, and you will outperform people with stronger portfolios but weaker presence.

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👀 Portfolio Showcase

Today: Michelle Liu

Some portfolios feel good.

Some portfolios feel promising.

And then there are portfolios like Michelle Liu’s — where within seconds you know you’re looking at something special.

Michelle is currently finishing her studies at UCLA, and the amount of work she has already done is, frankly, wild. NASA JPL. Roblox. Apple. Adobe. Figma Campus Leader. Freelance for respected Bay Area startups. All while studying.

That level of activity alone would be impressive.

But activity isn’t what makes this portfolio special.

Execution is.

Let’s break it down.

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

Do you want your own portfolio reviewed in-depth with a 30-minute advice-packed video review? Or do you require mentoring to figure out a proper strategy for your job search?

I got you!

• Book an in-depth portfolio or resume review with me

• Book a mentoring session with me

• Book a quick 15 min chat to ask a question and see if we vibe

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