Part One · 8 of 11

A Mentor’s Cold Water

I thought what I had was good enough to get an offer.

When I was trying to switch from architecture to product design, I sent more than three hundred applications.

I got only a few interviews. No offer.

I kept applying. No offer.

I tweaked my portfolio. No offer.

I made better visuals for my case studies. No offer.

I refined the story I told in my presentations. Still no offer.

I believed that as long as I kept trying, an offer would eventually come.

Then a mentor gave me honest feedback.

She told me there was no way I’d get an offer like this. She told me my portfolio was mediocre. She told me I lacked basic product sense. She told me my case study presentation was too confusing. She told me I should apply for visual design jobs instead of product design jobs.

But I wanted to be a product designer!

I felt down for a few days.

Then I realized I had to face reality and learn why on earth I couldn’t get an offer. Small improvements here and there could only take me so far. Some of my projects had flaws built into them; no amount of extra time would fix them.

So I started learning everything I could about product sense. I began new case studies with much more potential and threw some old ones out entirely. In the end, I changed my portfolio and my presentation completely.

Then I started getting interviews with great companies.

Then I got offers.

Passion, persistence, and small improvements are not always enough.

Sometimes you need the awareness, and the courage, to make a much bigger change.