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Why You’re Not Landing Interviews—And How to Fix It 🧰
Use this free prompt to uncover what your portfolio, resume, or positioning might be missing
Florian Bölter
May 07, 2025
In partnership with
Hey and welcome back to a new week! 👋
In this issue:
Why Positioning Matters: An absolute key thing to stand out from the crowd in 2025.
Workshop Your Positioning With Me: I’m running an exclusive workshop on this with Uxcel this June—grab your spot with a discount!
Jordan’s Portfolio: Showing that storytelling goes beyond words.
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Why You’re Not Landing Interviews—And How to Fix It 🧰
Most portfolios suffer not from a lack of effort, but from a lack of direction. Designers spend hours crafting their case studies and refining layouts—only to realize they’re not landing interviews.
A major reason? Poor positioning.
If you’ve been following along, you already know how often I talk about positioning as the hidden lever in job applications. Not just in the abstract "how do you describe yourself" way—but in the very real sense of understanding what specific types of roles your current skillset aligns with, and then making sure your resume and portfolio actually show that.
Today, I’ll walk you through a simple process you can use to get better at this—using the job descriptions themselves.
Why Positioning Matters
Most juniors are not hired because they’re perfect candidates—they’re hired because someone saw potential. But the only way to make that potential visible is to frame it the right way.
The truth is: if you’re not getting interviews, it’s not always your skills. It’s often how those skills are framed. Whether they feel relevant. Whether they signal fit.
Positioning helps you:
Apply to the right kinds of roles
Frame your skills clearly and intentionally
Build a portfolio and resume that match the expectations of your target jobs
If you want to go deeper on this: I’ll soon be hosting a live workshop on crafting your positioning. It’s going to help you:
Identify where you actually fit in the market
Figure out what kinds of jobs you’re best suited for
Craft your positioning statement
Spots are limited and as an Open Doors subscriber you’ll get a nice discount. Check the section after the article for more information and the discount code!
Step 1: Collect Your Target Roles
Before we use any AI prompt or resume advice, we need to get clear on what you’re aiming for.
Find 3–5 job descriptions that you think you’re a good fit for. Not just any roles—jobs that genuinely interest you and where you can already imagine how your experience might apply.
These should be roles where you’d say:
“I think I could actually do this job.”
“I’ve done similar work or have transferable skills.”
“I can picture myself in this environment.”
Why this matters
Many juniors apply to dozens of jobs without noticing how different they are from one another. But if you’re applying to a fintech startup focused on B2B dashboards one day, and a lifestyle brand app the next, you’re going to get widely different results. These roles require different strengths, portfolios, and case study examples.
So before we analyze anything, collect these roles (as PDFs or plain text is fine).
Step 2: Use This Prompt to Analyze the Roles
Once you have the roles collected, open ChatGPT and paste in the following prompt. If you’re using the free plan, that’s totally fine.
Prompt: Please act as a senior career advisor. Review the three job descriptions attached and identify the top three skills that I need to showcase in order to be considered a good fit for these jobs. Also provide a short summary of the ideal candidate that would likely get an interview for all three of these roles.
My result for three roles I picked, I think I’d apply to if I was on the market right now
You can upload the job descriptions or paste their text directly. ChatGPT will respond with:
The top 3 most important skills across these jobs
A summary of what the “ideal candidate” would look like
This alone is helpful—but it gets more powerful in the next step.
Step 3: Compare the Output to Your Materials
Now it’s time to compare what you’ve got to what these jobs are looking for.
Resume
Look at the top 3 skills and the summary you received.
Are those skills represented in your resume?
Are they clearly visible in your bullet points and summary?
Are they hidden toward the bottom, or missing entirely?
Even if you have those skills, your resume might not make them obvious. This is a great moment to highlight them more prominently.
Example: If the skill is “data-informed decision making,” do you talk about how you used research or metrics to drive design changes? If the job calls for “collaboration with product and engineering,” do you have examples of cross-functional teamwork?
Portfolio Intro
Most portfolios start with an intro or tagline. This is the first thing people read—and one of the most important places to show alignment.
Ask yourself:
Does my intro highlight the skills and environment types these jobs are hiring for?
Do I mention the kinds of problems I’m good at solving?
Would a hiring manager read this and think, “This person gets what we do”?
Chenchen’s intro is an excellent example how to pack yourself into one single sentence
You don’t need to list every skill from the prompt—but if your intro says you “love turning confusion into clarity,” and the jobs are all looking for deep UX research, you might want to say more about how you do that.
Case Studies and Project Types
Here’s where it really comes together.
The biggest mismatch I see is between what juniors apply to—and the kinds of projects they showcase.
Example: Say the jobs you analyzed are all for data-heavy B2B products, like SaaS dashboards or admin portals. But your portfolio only shows:
- A dog-walking app
- A plant care reminder tool
- A meditation tracker
Are these bad projects? Not at all. But do they align with the complexity and challenges of B2B interfaces? Probably not. You’re showing work that feels more visual, more lifestyle-focused, and likely consumer-oriented.
So when a hiring manager scans your work, they’ll think, “This person’s done some good stuff, but it’s not the kind of work we need.”
This doesn’t mean you need a real B2B project. Even a well-crafted fictional case study that shows you understand workflows, data structure, and problem-solving in complex environments can do wonders.
If your case studies are all in a different category than your target roles, that’s a sign: you either need to switch your target roles—or create a project that better matches them.
Summary
If you’ve ever wondered why you’re not getting interviews—even when you feel qualified—this is the work that helps clarify it.
Positioning isn’t just fluff. It’s how you:
Understand which roles fit you best
Build materials that match those roles
Improve your chances of actually getting responses
This process helps you do all three.
📅 WORKSHOP YOUR POSITIONING WITH ME
Tired of being seen as “just another designer”? In a market full of portfolios and profiles that blur together, clear and intentional positioning is your best unfair advantage.
In this interactive 90-minute workshop I will guide you through a series of hands-on exercises to help you define your personal positioning as a designer.
You’ll learn how to identify your real strengths, understand what roles you’re truly fit for, and define the kind of designer you uniquely are — so you can stop sounding like everyone else and start standing out for the right opportunities.
By the end of the workshop, you’ll connect your past experiences, skills, and interests into a focused narrative that helps recruiters and hiring teams see immediately why you’re the right fit, and just as importantly, where you’re not.
Join me on Tuesday, June 10 at 6 PM CET (12 PM EDT, 8 AM PDT)!
Tickets are limited to 30 and as an Open Doors subscriber you are getting an exclusive 15% discount!
Use UXCEL15 at checkout when choosing a ‘Standard Ticket’ for 15% off!
Get your ticket now
👀 Portfolio Showcase
Today: Jordan Putnam
Jordan Putnam’s portfolio is a standout example of how to combine clean aesthetics, compelling structure, and confident storytelling.
Hailing from Australia and having completed his MSc in HCI in London, Jordan has already landed a role — and it’s easy to see why. His portfolio reflects a clear eye for design, solid process thinking, and a storytelling instinct that goes beyond the norm for junior designers.
Let’s dig into what he’s done particularly well — and where there’s still a bit of room to refine things further.
That’s it for this week—thanks so much for the support! ♥️
If you’d like to support my efforts on Open Doors further you can buy me a coffee. If you ever got any value from my emails consider it so I can keep this newsletter free and available to everyone out there.
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 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