I was scrolling through a design Slack community yesterday.

Saw this message:

"I'd rather stab myself in the eye than write another case study. Nobody even reads them. And mine just feels boring."

Posted by someone with "Senior" in their title.

I laughed. Then felt terrible for laughing.

Because she's absolutely right about one thing.

The most experienced designers often feel the worst about their portfolios.

Here's why:

Junior designers have clear project boundaries. They redesigned the checkout flow. They made the buttons bigger. Simple before-and-after story.

Senior designers?

They spend months on strategic initiatives that touch twelve different systems.

They facilitate workshops with executives who change their minds weekly. They balance technical constraints with user needs with business politics.

Their real work doesn't fit into a neat "problem-solution-results" template.

So they try to squeeze complex strategic thinking into junior-friendly case study formats.

And it feels fake.

Like wearing clothes that don't fit.

The solution isn't better templates.

It's a completely different approach.

Instead of showing past work, show future value.

Rather than packaging old projects into case studies, you create a strategic document that showcases opportunities you see at target companies.

It positions you as someone who thinks strategically about their business challenges.

Not just another designer with a portfolio.

Because hiring managers don't want to read about what you did somewhere else.

They want to see what you'll do for them.

P.S. If you're tired of trying to make your senior-level experience fit into junior-level portfolio templates, the Trojan Horse Doc approach might be exactly what you need. It's one of the core strategies we cover in Career Creators - along with strategic outreach that gets 30% response rates and positioning frameworks that make you the only choice they're considering.

Reply "Details" if you want to learn more about Career Creators.