Interview prep learnings used to improve portfolio

The screening call

• A 5 to 10 minute screening call for a UI/UX Design Lead role.
• The job: keep one design system consistent across enterprise tools, and take small UI fixes off the core sprints.
• The company's own guide scores four things: problem solving, leadership, role knowledge and working style.
• A video on first impressions gave me the shape: open with a hit, back it with proof, then bridge to their problem.
• I set up a blind hiring manager and a version of me built only from my prep doc, and let them talk.
• Four mock rounds scored 61, 63, 70 and 74. The third was the first one that said advance.

What the mock rounds showed

• Better wording bought 2 points. The rest were missing stories, not missing polish.
• My best answer leaned on AI. But AI is now the medium I design in, the way design files were.
• No story about a shared component library.
• No story about a steady queue of small fixes.
• No story about holding a design system rule when someone wanted to skip it.
• Design files got tedious across separate apps, so I proposed a versioned component package that two apps use.
• At two past jobs, 10 to 15 UI issues a week came in through a shared board, and most were fixed by Friday.
• The tertiary button: I held the rule once, then added it to the system when the pattern kept coming back.

The through line

• Find the lever the product controls. Change the system, not the symptom.
• The tools changed, from design files to AI agents. The way I work didn't.
• A design system has to be adopted, stay true to its source and grow with the product.

What the portfolio was missing

• Six blind reviewers would all advance me at Senior. None would at Lead, on the portfolio alone.
• The hero put an AI tool in the headline instead of how I think.
• Readers don't know the app. A brand name in a title tells them nothing.
• A case study should read problem, then action, then impact, with the decisions inside.
• Eyebrow labels over headings. They keep showing up on AI-built sites.

What I changed

• Built Interview Sim, a tool on my PC that turns a prep doc into a spoken mock interview. On a branch
• Rebuilt the ride-hailing case study as an unpublished draft: problem, then action, then impact. Draft · #64
• It opens on a driver's own words, and the title describes the product instead of naming it.
• Took the eyebrow labels off the whole site. The context that mattered moved into the role line. Applied · #67

Still open

• A real missed-deadline story: what slipped, why, and what I changed after.
• How I'd run one shared library with several designers.
• On phones, the Recruit/Play switch covers Email me.
• Numbers that differ between pages, like PR and component counts.

From idea to the /product hero

• What should the /product hero say about how I design?
• “Every product has a moment where people stop trusting it.” Not picked
• “I find the one lever a product controls.” Product design is many calls, not one. Dropped
• My brain dump: self-taught, years in startups, what works in practice over frameworks.
• “I build digital products based on what actually works in the real world.” Applied · #66
• About: I'm self-taught, so I borrow freely and keep what works. No word about startups. Applied · #66

From idea to the /systems hero

• What should the /systems hero say? My brain dump: adopted, no drift, evolving.
• “Trust isn't a screen. It's a system.” Not picked
• “Design systems don't fail at launch. They drift.”
• “Every product outgrows its design system”, with the AI tool named in the line.
• I combined both, with AI tools instead of a brand name: “Every product outgrows its design system.” Applied · #65

From idea to the interview opener

• What's my 10/10, the one thing I want them to remember?
• The design check: rules caught 2%, the AI reviewer 35%. It leaned on AI. Dropped
• “That's been my work for 13 years.” It sounded like 13 years of AI. Dropped
• Find the lever the product controls: the ride-hailing story.
• Its own prep doc, for product design lead roles. Kept
• The same idea for a design system: fix it once, in the shared component.
• Design files got tedious, so the source of truth moved into code. The tertiary button tested it. Kept for this role

From idea to the case study title

• What should the rebuilt ride-hailing case study be called?
• “Getting Cebu taxi drivers to trust the next app request…”
• “Drivers stopped trusting ride requests, so I changed who gets the next one.” Dropped
• The first title, without the brand: “…trust the next ride-hailing request…” Draft · #64
• Readers don't know the app, so its brand name never goes in a title.