Hello, it’s Aneta here 👋 This is issue #11 of UX Design Express and today we’re talking about

Executive summary

Have you ever thought how could you optimise your portfolio for hiring managers? How can you help these busy people at work to quickly evaluate your experience and skills? You have probably heard already that hiring managers do not read your case studies. They scam it, especially when we talk about the first experience.

It's not just hiring managers - everyone's overwhelmed by online content these days. Think about how you scroll through LinkedIn or check the news. Do you read every word, or just skim headlines and pictures? Did you read every page of your school research papers? Probably not. So, why would hiring managers read long case studies? You get the idea 🙂

What can you do to get hiring managers see the information you want them to see? Even if they are just scrolling through your portfolio. Executive summary is one of the tricks.

Let’s dive in 🐬

6 Engaging elements to include in your executive summary to make it work

An executive summary is a great way to quickly show hiring managers why you're a perfect fit. It highlights what you did in projects, who you worked with, and the impact you made, all in a nutshell. Plus, it shows you can communicate complex stuff clearly and quickly, which busy people really appreciate.

My strategy for crafting a good executive summary is to show my role and achievements from a project in a snapshot form. This is when I want hiring managers to get the key information about me in a project. Ultimately, they are coming to my portfolio to judge my experience and skills, and see if I am a good match for a role.

What to include in your executive summary?

What you think hiring managers should know about you in the context of a particular project 🙂

1. Case study title

This needs to be a precise sentence with key insights and achievements from a project. You want to communicate what was the project about and what it achieved. You can adjust your case study title to your specific project context but try to be precise and insightful. Don’t talk fluff or just focus on a solution. This is boring.

Think about including these keywords in your title:

• Action verb

• User problem

• Business goal

• Product name

• Target user group

• Market

• Details

• Metric

• Product type: B2B, SaaS etc.

• Feature

• Project goal

• Company name

2. Overview

A short and sweet description about a company, your role, product or similar. Designers approach this part differently. My advice for you is to talk about things that are important for your context but focus mostly on describing your role and contribution. The goal is to give enough context for your reader to understand the environment you worked in.

Frameworks for writing an overview:

• I joined [company name] in a [specific company stage] to [key outcome expected to deliver from you]

• I was tasked with designing…

• I led design process for [product name] from start to finish

• I worked on a [product name]

3. Your role and team

A basic information is to talk about your role and team. Majority of designers focus just on sharing their job titles whereas the possibilities are endless. When it comes to describing your team, don’t hide it and mention the roles or even concrete names of people you worked with. UX is a team sport.

Frameworks for describing your role:

Job title + Unique information about your role

• Led whole design process, from research to implementation

• Crafted product experience from 0→1 (relevant for new products)

• Led full redesign, from start to finish

Job title + List of responsibilities

• Responsible for research, design and testing

• Responsible for the whole design process, from start to finish

• Responsible for branding, product design and testing

Your specific context

• Design team of one

4. Scope of work

Talk about what part of a solution you crafted and what was the exact solution. To make your description even more precise, you can mention if this was a new product from scratch or maybe a redesign.

Framework for shaping scope of work:

• Product development stage

  • Totally new product

  • New feature to an existing product

  • Redesign of a selected feature

  • Redesign of a whole product

• Platform

  • Web

  • Mobile

  • Native iOS mobile app etc.

• Generally about the feature

  • Checkout solution

  • Payment solution

  • E-commerce etc

• Product sector

  • B2C

  • B2B

5. Your impact

Designers don't usually put their impact in the executive summary; they save it for the end of case studies or mention metrics in titles. Since showing you're effective is key, including your impact in the executive summary quickly tells hiring managers, "Hey, I can do my job effectively"

Include 1-3 key achievements from the project. How to define them? What to do if your project was conceptual or just sunsetted? Read my previous newsletter issue about it

6. Final solution image/video

We all suffer from the attractiveness bias. Showing the final solution in the executive summary is not even an option these days, it’s a must. Show a high-quality final image or ideally record a prototype. Video should increase the engagement and make even a better impression. But your solution needs to look good.

3 tools that can help you make your mockups shine:

• Screen recording

• Device shots

• Shots

Last but not least, don’t forget about including the time when the project was done! It’s important since the technology changes rapidly and we want to know if you’re up to date with the tools and the internet patterns 🙂

That's it for today!

Get portfolio support from me ⭐️

There are 2 ways I can support you individually with your portfolio.

1. Let’s do it long-term! The biggest results come from this

2. Hop on a one-time call with me

I’m back in two Fridays with another edition of UX Design Express 👋

Keep designing ✨
Aneta