Joseph here.

Here’s something I wish more experienced designers understood.

When a hiring manager looks at your portfolio, resume, or LinkedIn, they are not trying to admire your career.

They are trying to answer a much more specific question:

“Is this person the right problem-solver for the problem I’m hiring for?”

That is the first scan.

Not your entire career history.

Not every project you’ve ever touched.

Not whether you followed the perfect double diamond process in chronological order, which, let’s be honest, is not how most real work actually happens anyway.

They are looking for fit.

Role fit.

Level fit.

Problem fit.

Have you solved the kind of problems they are dealing with?

Does your work resemble the kind of mess they need someone to handle?

Can they see the level of judgement, ownership, and influence they are actually hiring for?

If the answer is unclear, they move on.

That is where a lot of experienced designers get hurt.

They may have 10, 15, or 20 years of experience.

But the way their portfolio is written makes the work look smaller than it was.

The insight reads shallow.

The decision-making is hidden.

The stakeholder influence is vague.

The impact stops at “we improved the design,” instead of connecting the dots to what changed for users and what that meant for the business.

And at senior level, that is expensive.

Because seniority is not just years.

It is the depth of your thinking.

Can you move beyond “users did this” into why it happened?

Can you show the invisible forces shaping the experience?

Can you explain what you noticed that someone more junior would have missed?

Can you connect the design decision to the user change, and then to the business outcome?

That is the level hiring teams are trying to see.

And the hiring team is not always just a design manager.

It can be a Head of Product.

A VP of Product.

A CTO.

A founder.

A Head of Engineering.

A growth leader.

People who may not speak “design process” the way you do, but still have a real say in whether you get hired.

So when people say, “My work should speak for itself,” I get it.

But the truth is, your work speaks better when you give it the right language.

Language that makes your level clear.

Language that makes your impact easier to trust.

Language that helps the hiring manager feel like bringing you in is not a big risk.

That is the part I work on with clients.

I’ve seen staff, principal, and lead-level designers who have done tremendous work, but you would never know it from their portfolio, resume, LinkedIn, or interview answers.

The work was there.

The signal was not.

Inside The Backdoor, this is one of the first things we fix.

We rebuild your case study, resume, LinkedIn, outreach, and interview story around the way hiring teams actually read and decide.

The goal is not to make you sound impressive in a fake way.

The goal is to make your real level easier to see.

I wrote the full June intake details here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mci8w5E9so_a5hjT1zIqjYM6W5EKfUooGmWtaUJLe_0/preview

If this feels relevant, reply “I’m in” and I’ll send you the enrollment details.

Joseph