Ever found yourself in a job interview struggling to explain how you contributed to a project without examples on hand?
Us, too. The fact is, interviews aren’t exactly the easiest place to show your work in the best light possible. As intimidating as they are, they’re also a fairly surface-level conversation.
Your interviewer scans a few lines on your resume, you give a handful of 30-second explanations about your work (hoping they’re imagining what you’re describing as you intend), and then? You shake hands and head for the lobby.
With a portfolio site, you take charge of your own narrative. You have full control over what you choose to focus on, and, by extension, what you want to draw your potential employer’s attention to.
But while creating an online portfolio opens a lot of opportunities, it doesn’t fix a major sticking point in the job search: the interview. And that’s why I’ve got one huge (but surprisingly simple) tip for you: pull out your iPad.
Squarespace's templates (like the one our Senior Designer, Sarah, uses for her own portfolio) are designed to look great on every screen including an Ipad in landscape.Step 1: Find a Tablet Device
Or just borrow one. That’s it, really. Well not all of it, but this is the only hack you’ll ever need to put your best foot forward in an interview. Here’s why:
The upside of building a portfolio online, particularly via a platform like Squarespace, is that your site looks good everywhere—on every screen and every device. It’s designed that way.
When potential employers receive your cover letter, resume, and portfolio URL in their inboxes, they can look at your site from their laptops, their phones—they can even project it on a giant screen in the middle of a team meeting if they want to (a scary thought, we know, but one we’ve seen happen before). No matter where they see your work, your work will look its best.
The best part is that this feature works both ways. By bringing an iPad to your interview, you can show your work in the best light possible—on a screen of your choosing where all those visuals and descriptions you spent hours creating look exactly as you intended them to.
Step 2: Get it Ready the Night Before
The evening before your interview, after laying out your interview outfit, review your interview question flashcards, and print out copies of your resume, open your tablet and pull up your site in advance. The “in advance” part is key here: load your homepage on one tab, then open tabs for some of your top projects and let them load fully as well. You may also want to open your LinkedIn profile in another tab.
Why? Because the room in which you interview might not have wireless (we know it’s a crazy thought but better to assume the worst), and you’re going to want to pull up various projects during your conversation.
When you’re done prepping, get a good night’s sleep.
When you’re done prepping, get a good night’s sleep.
Step 3: Whip it Out During the Interview
Carry the iPad into your interview along with those copies of your resume, then wait for your moment. When your interviewer starts into her questions about your work history, ask if she minds if you show her a few examples. (She won’t mind.) Then pull out your iPad and start flipping through the tabs you pre-loaded.
Having that iPad means you can show how three-dimensional your work is and, by association, how three-dimensional you are. And it’s the simplest way to set yourself apart from the other candidates who come before and after you and find themselves trying to explain their work via hand motions and convoluted descriptions.
There’s also another added bonus: your project pages will serve as visual cues to remind you of the talking points you wanted to cover. It’s a sneaky way to bring virtual notes into the interview with you. Call it cheating if you like—we’d actually argue it’s the savviest thing any candidate can do. And that, readers, is why they’ll remember you.
And if the conversation turns to a project you haven’t preloaded? Politely ask the interviewer if there’s an easy way to connect to the internet, so you can pull them up. If there isn’t, send her those links in your thank-you email. It’s a great way to add some personalization to your note, thereby giving you another opportunity to stay top-of-mind.
So in three words: bring an iPad. Do it every time, and you’ll never find yourself stuck in an interview process for long
