Hey and welcome back to a new week!

I’m continuing to ship new things to Open Doors and last week I added an NDA Portfolio Advisor to help you navigate any work that is behind an NDA and giving you actionable tips on how to still surface it in your portfolio. If that is relevant to you go check it out! Since you are subscribed here you just have to re-enter your email - no strings attached!

I also launched the landing page for my new talent collective which I absolutely invite you to join if you think that you have a top notch portfolio and are ready to be matched with some of the best design teams in the game!

In this issue:

• LinkedIn Optimization In This Economy?: Yes! Because it can definitely do something for you in the long run. Just don’t obsess over it.

• Justin’s Portfolio: A portfolio proving that Enterprise software doesn’t have to be boring and visually unattractive.

Thank you for reading!

🏄️ JOIN ME FOR LIVE VIBECODING IN BERLIN

Kickstart your portfolio with me in Lovable—live in Berlin!

Join me for an in-person masterclass on “Vibe Coding Your Portfolio with Lovable” at Community Gathering #2 by Employed.World

We will start from scratch and I will show you step by step how you can go from idea to a production-grade portfolio in the matter of an hour with Lovable.

As part of this masterclass you will receive a free 1-month Lovable Pro plan so you can take it beyond the masterclass and apply what you learned in your own pace at home.

I rarely do in-person event but when I do I make sure they are accessible and fun! So make sure to come around. Make sure to book the entry + the Portfolio Vibecoding option here.

🗓️ Friday, April 10th
📍 Engelnest Coworking

Your LinkedIn Profile Can Probably Do a Little More for You 👀

A lot of designers don’t think much about LinkedIn.

And honestly, I get it.

For most juniors especially, LinkedIn can feel overwhelming and cringe. It’s noisy, it’s full of people posting stuff they think they should post, and it often doesn’t feel directly connected to actually getting hired.

So before we get into this, let me make one thing clear.

This is not an article telling you to spend hours polishing every corner of your LinkedIn profile.

You do not need to obsess over this.

You do not need to become a “LinkedIn person.”

And you definitely should not treat this like the magic lever that suddenly gets recruiters flooding your inbox.

That’s not how it works.

But there are a few basics that can absolutely help.

They help in two ways.

First, when you reach out to someone, there’s a decent chance they’ll click through to your profile. And if they do, your profile should make your work easy to understand and easy to access.

Second, LinkedIn does play a role in how recruiters discover people. The recruiter side of LinkedIn is not especially sophisticated, but that’s actually part of the point. It relies a lot on fairly basic context like your role titles, experience, and skills. Which means that if your profile is set up well, it can work in your favor.

Not dramatically. Not magically.

But enough that it’s worth spending a little bit of time on it.

The First Thing People Should See Is Your Portfolio

One of the most common things I notice is surprisingly simple.

Someone reaches out to me and asks if I can have a look at their portfolio.

Or they apply for a role I’m helping with and I click through to their LinkedIn.

And then I can’t find their portfolio.

Sometimes it’s tucked away under contact info, which is better than nothing. But that’s not where it should live.

Your portfolio should be immediately visible.

That means putting it into the featured section.

If someone lands on your profile and wants to get a quick read on you, this is one of the first places they’ll gravitate toward. It acts like a little highlight reel. So use it that way.

Your portfolio should be the first item there.

Not hidden in a dropdown.

Not buried in contact details.

Not missing entirely.

If your portfolio matters, make it easy to find.

Use the Featured Section to Surface Strong Signals

The featured section can do more than just hold your portfolio.

And that can be useful.

You don’t want to fill it randomly, but if you have something genuinely strong, this is a great place for it.

For example, maybe you posted a project on LinkedIn, X, or somewhere else and it got real traction. Maybe you built something cool, shared it publicly, and it picked up attention. Maybe it’s a small vibe-coded tool, an interaction experiment, or some other piece of work you’re genuinely proud of.

That kind of thing can be very worth surfacing.

Why?

Because on the original platform, the moment usually passes. The post did its rounds, people liked it, maybe saved it, and then it disappeared into the feed. But if someone visits your profile later and sees that piece of work still sitting there, it becomes a lasting signal.

It makes you more memorable.

I’ve featured juniors before simply because I came across something they made that stood out like this. And making sure that kind of work remains visible on your profile is smart.

That said, don’t dilute this section with weak stuff.

If the only extra thing you have is some random link that doesn’t really say much about you, leave it out. A weak signal can do more harm than good here.

You could also link directly to individual case studies to expand the surface area of your portfolio a bit. That can work. But I’d think carefully about it. Sometimes a portfolio is meant to be experienced from the homepage first, because that page sets the tone and context. If that’s true for yours, then sending people straight into a case study might actually be counterproductive.

So the rule here is pretty simple:

Use the featured section for high-signal work only.

If all you have that really deserves to be there is your portfolio, that is completely fine.

Your Experience Section Should Work Like a Good Resume

After making your portfolio easy to find, this is probably the most important part.

Your experience section matters more than most people think.

A lot of people treat it like something they just have to fill so the profile doesn’t look empty. But really, you should think of it much more like your resume.

What did you do?

What kind of work were you involved in?

What impact did you have?

What skills did you use?

If your resume already has strong bullet points with actual outcomes, numbers, or meaningful responsibilities, you can often reuse and adapt those here.

That’s a very good starting point.

And there’s another reason this matters.

This is one of the main areas LinkedIn uses to understand what your profile is actually about. If your experience clearly describes relevant work, relevant skills, and the kind of impact you’ve had, that gives recruiter search much more to work with.

You can definitely feel this over time.

When I started mentioning certain things more clearly on my own profile, I got different types of recruiter outreach. At one point I added founder because of Open Doors, which is technically true. And that immediately changed the kind of messages I started receiving. Suddenly I was being surfaced for startup-founder-adjacent things much more often.

That wasn’t really the outcome I wanted, but it proved the point very clearly.

What you put into your profile does travel through the system.

So make sure your experience section actually says something useful.

If you don’t know what to write, start with your resume. If the bullets there are already strong, that’s one of the easiest ways to improve this section without inventing a whole new version of yourself.

Your Skills Matter More Than You Think

This is another section people either ignore entirely or fill in very lazily.

That’s a mistake.

There’s the About section, there are the Top Skills, and then there’s the full Skills section further down. These things are connected, and together they help LinkedIn understand what kind of work you should be associated with.

If you leave this empty, you make yourself harder to find.

That does not mean you should stuff it with nonsense.

It means you should be intentional.

Start with the obvious and relevant terms. For many of you that will be things like:

• Product Design

• UX Design

• UI Design

• Interaction Design

• Design Systems

• Figma

Then think about what else is truly relevant to the kind of work you want to be found for.

If design systems are important to your profile and your work actually supports that, include them. If you work with Framer or have relevant front-end knowledge, that can also make sense. If you’re targeting a certain kind of role and there are recurring keywords in job descriptions for that role, pay attention to those too.

But keep it grounded.

If your profile says “design systems” and none of your experience mentions anything remotely related to design systems, that probably won’t help much. You might get surfaced in a search, but people don’t stop at the skills section. They will look at the rest of your profile too.

So the goal is not to game the system with random keywords.

The goal is to make sure you are clearly associated with the most important keywords that genuinely reflect your work.

Also, I wouldn’t waste too much space on generic soft skills here. Those are usually much less useful in this context. And I also wouldn’t clutter things up with old, overly specialized software that no longer says much about the kind of work you do.

This section should help someone understand your professional shape at a glance.

That’s it.

Do the Basic Cleanup Too

This is the least important part of the whole article, so don’t overthink it.

But yes, your profile should look decent.

Have a normal profile picture. It does not need to be corporate. We work in design, not enterprise sales. You do not need to wear a suit. A clean, friendly headshot is enough. Mine has a cap and a t-shirt and that’s completely fine.

Just use common sense.

And for the cover image, basic is also fine. Maybe it visually aligns a little bit with your portfolio. Maybe it reflects your personal brand a bit. But honestly, it does not need to do much. It mostly just shouldn’t look sloppy, confusing, or badly designed.

That’s all.

A Good LinkedIn Profile Won’t Get You Hired. But a Weak One Can Make You Easier to Overlook.

Your LinkedIn profile is usually not the main event.

Your work still matters more.

Your portfolio matters more.

Your actual ability matters more.

But LinkedIn often acts as the bridge.

It’s the place people check after you message them.

It’s the place recruiters scan when they’re searching.

And it’s the place where missing or weak signals can quietly make you less visible than you should be.

So don’t overinvest.

But do the basics well.

Make your portfolio easy to find.

Use the featured section strategically.

Write an experience section that says something real.

Fill in relevant skills.

And make sure the whole thing looks like it belongs to someone who takes their work seriously.

That won’t magically change your career overnight.

But it may very well help you get seen a little more often, understood a little faster, and remembered a little better.

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👀 Portfolio Showcase

Today: Justin Shi

This week’s portfolio is from Justin Shi, a product designer based in Los Angeles and currently working at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

And this is a really important one.

Because lately, a lot of the portfolios we’ve looked at leaned heavily into consumer-facing design. Mobile apps, polished UI, high visual bar, all of that.

Justin’s work sits in a very different space.

Enterprise software.

Now, I know that for many people, that immediately sounds… less exciting. But it really shouldn’t. Because what Justin demonstrates here is something that’s actually much harder:

Delivering high-quality design inside constraints.

Legacy systems. Complex data. Technical limitations. Organizational friction.

And despite all of that, Justin produces work that feels thoughtful, clean, and genuinely well crafted.

That’s not easy.

Let’s break down what makes this portfolio work so well.

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