The product design world (at least in the vacuum of social media) is reckoning with what we need from design leadership. No one can seem to agree on whether designers should be craftspeople or businesspeople, and whether design managers should be people managers or creative directors. Some people find these poles to be mutually exclusive, while others say a design leader should be able to do it all.
This broad misalignment on design manager expectations has never been more clear to me than in the portfolio presentations I’ve sat through for design manager candidates this year.
If you’ve ever seen portfolios for individual contributor (IC) product designers, you know they generally tend to look like cookie cutter copies of each other, each one using a template of a theoretically clean design process that no one really follows in the messy real world. Meanwhile, the portfolios I’ve seen from design manager candidates are so diverse in format and content, that you might think two candidates for the same position were applying for completely different roles at different companies.
One candidate might show how they improved their team’s attention to visual design details over time through coaching, while another might demonstrate how they pitched a novel product strategy that led to an increase in their company’s TAM. One candidate might showcase how they handled interpersonal conflicts throughout a sticky political situation, while another candidate might share how they got their hands in the Figma files and up-leveled the project’s motion design at the final hour.
No two candidates fit the same mold because design management can operate dramatically differently in every organization. (And also, perhaps, because thought leaders are suggesting such wildly different ways of presenting yourself.) Just like candidates, companies need to be self-aware. Hiring managers must know what they’re looking for and communicate that clearly to candidates throughout the process. Not only should companies be specific in their design manager job descriptions—not assuming their mold is the standard—but they can also provide a tailored prompt or guidelines on what aspects of leadership they want to get signal on from the candidate’s presentation, leaving behind the aspects that (for better or worse) they don’t feel as strongly about.
The problem is that these unique presentation prompts create a new challenge for candidates who then have to spend countless hours creating a custom presentation for each company they’re interviewing with. It’s not always true, but ICs will often swap out the intro and outro slides (if any at all) for each company they interview with. As a manager, though, it becomes even more important to adjust your storytelling for each particular business. This is one factor that leads candidates to interview with fewer companies at once as they climb up the career ladder. Candidates simply are unable to do justice to every opportunity. This is appropriate for their level, but may be an unexpected mental shift for new managers applying for their first few management roles. My advice for new managers looking for a new opportunity: if you can afford to, be even pickier about where you interview as a design manager candidate than you were as an IC.
These polarizing expectations also beg the question of whether design managers can (or should) be everything to everyone all at once? Can a design manager care about business outcomes as much as they care about visual design craft? Can they care about mentoring their ICs as much as they care about getting high quality output from them? I think it’s possible to be a multifaceted design manager, but getting all of that across in a well crafted 45-minute story to a panel of strangers is really hard.
As an IC product designer, the hardest parts of creating a portfolio presentation are either setting the right amount of context on your niche project/industry, or finding good quality case studies that actually shipped to production before getting cut by some political business problem out of your control. As a design manager, it’s not straightforward at all how to do all that, while also being really clear about what part you played in setting design strategy before the artifact creation began, upholding the bar for craft along the way, and mentoring or inspiring your team, all while ensuring the work actually produced strategic revenue outcomes.
My advice is far from perfect, but I want to share what I’ve learned so far from being on both sides of this table: a design manager candidate and a director hiring a design manager.
First, quit tech and start that farm you’ve been talking about! Just kidding, but also, whispers save yourself.
When selecting case studies, make sure the scope and complexity match the role you’re interviewing for. Do they showcase projects that span beyond a single team, or single area of the product?
Be explicitly clear to your audience why you selected each case study—tell them what you want them to take away from it. That you hold your team accountable to a high bar for design quality, or that you moved your design team closer to business outcomes? That you stayed close to the work, or that you delegated liberally?
Consider splitting up your presentation into two primary case studies that help showcase both your breadth and your depth. For example: One case study could lean heavily on high level design strategy. How did you set a vision for your team? How did that vision align to business goals? How did you influence the roadmap? How did your team bring that strategy to life? How did the results turn out in metrics?
This leaves room for a second case study that leans more heavily on tactical execution. Choose a project where your team up-leveled the visual design quality for your product. Share specifics on how you fill the creative director role by having an eye for detail, owning the team’s output standards, and deploying a systems mindset about consistencies throughout your product.
If you’re worried about picking the right case studies, offer a “sampler” section in the intro or outro where you showcase brief snippets of other work that didn’t fit into your two main case studies. This will briefly give your audience a sense of the breadth of your skills beyond the two case studies you’ve selected, while staying on time.
In the portfolio presentation, I suggest not spending too much air time on the “people management” aspects of your role (1:1s, systems, team rituals). These are typically topics that the interviewers will cover in 1:1 interviews.
Finally, remember that rejection doesn’t mean you aren’t a great design manager. It may just mean you aren’t the right one for that team’s specific needs.
Best of luck out there!
