I’ve been pulse-checking hiring managers on how much of a candidate’s case study they actually read.

The answer surprised a lot of designers.

At the screening stage, they skim. Headlines, images, bold text. Maybe the first few lines. If nothing catches their eye in 20 seconds, they move on.

At the manager interview stage, it flips. If you make it that far, they prepare. They read your portfolio in full before the walkthrough. They don’t want you to repeat what’s already on the page. They want you to dive deeper.

So in reality, they’re reading both less and more than you think.

Here’s what came up again and again in their answers:

→ They want a clear connection from problem to solution

→ They’re checking for high quality in interface or interaction design

→ They want a simple narrative they can follow without effort

→ They care about the outcomes, the pivots, the trade-offs, and the learning

→ They want to see how you worked with PMs, engineers, and stakeholders

And here’s where most case studies go wrong:

❌ Dumping 40 screens in a row

✅ Starting with a skim-friendly summary that gives the whole story in 5 lines

❌ Filling slides with process steps

✅ Highlighting the 2 or 3 decisions that mattered most — and why

❌ Burying impact metrics at the end

✅ Putting the before/after results right up front

❌ Writing in jargon only another designer understands

✅ Using plain words anyone can follow, even outside design

The real gap isn’t craft. It’s clarity. Hiring managers aren’t evaluating your Figma skills from a PDF. They’re scanning to see if your thinking comes through quickly.

And when they slow down later, they want to know who you are to work with — how you made decisions, how you handled constraints, how you learned.

That’s why I’m running the AI Portfolio Workshop this Wednesday. I’ll show you how to reframe your case study through a hiring manager’s lens — so it works in 20 seconds and in a deep dive.

Grab your seat here → https://community.careercreators.com/events/DE0AE5

Talk soon,

Joseph