176: Stuck at the Final Round of UX Interviews? Andrew Re-Did His UX Portfolio and Got 3 Offers (Including Blue Origin)
Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX, Product Design, UX Research · May 25, 2026 · 59:12
Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX, Product Design, UX Research
Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX, Product Design, UX Research · May 25, 2026 · 59:12
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What do you do when you have years of experience, you're making it through rounds of interviews, but you still aren't getting offers? For Andrew, the answer was scrapping his entire UX portfolio and starting over.
Andrew had been applying to jobs for a year. He was making it to the final interview rounds at companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google, but he wasn't getting offers. On paper, everything looked great. He couldn't figure out what was missing.
Eventually he did. After six years at GE, he'd gotten so deep in the work that in interviews, he'd talk at length about how interesting the products were and the intricacies of the industry. He was selling the products instead of himself. So he scrapped everything and rebuilt his portfolio around a single core message: what he does, what he's good at, and what he can bring to the companies he's applying to.
The clarity changed how he talked about himself in interviews. By the end of each conversation, hiring managers knew exactly who he was and how he'd be an asset. Three offers followed, including one from Blue Origin, where he accepted a role that brought him back to the intersection of hardware and software that drew him to UX in the first place.
Topics Discussed:
✅ The difference between selling the product you worked on versus selling yourself to a potential employer
✅ The value of working on your resume, LinkedIn, and portfolio in parallel rather than sequentially
✅ Why making it to the final round but not getting the offer might signal a problem with your portfolio
✅ How perfectionism and long iteration cycles quietly destroy your confidence and what breaks the pattern
✅ What it looks like to rebuild your career materials around a single core message and how that clarity shows up in interviews too
Links From This Episode:
🎯 How I can help with your UX job search
📋 Get my UX case study template
Episodes: Career Strategy Podcast with Sarah Doody | UX, Product Design, UX Research
