I have worked with many people, and the thing I care least about are the metrics. I know others care, but I cannot trust them. Who actually has the time to find out how a product they designed performed? Unless you are at a dedicated tech firm iterating on every release, those metrics are either not shared or not allowed to be.

I know my experience is not everyone else’s, but I am a realist. Most of what goes into a CV is nonsense that I simply do not care about. The only thing I want to know is what you can actually do. Most of the time I can gauge this from where you have worked before. I know the better agencies and people in the industry and can figure out whether you might produce the type of output we need. So just tell me what you can do.

This might conflict with all the advice floating around, even advice I have had to take when applying for roles in this broken industry. So let me tell you what I actually look for.

It is not a skills list. I hate those. Save yourself the keystrokes. I care about those as little as I care about how you claim to have increased conversions by 4% last quarter. I would rather know that you built a design system that integrated with the framework engineers were comfortable with, such as Tailwind. That is practical to me. This is what happens outside FAANG. People use tools that help them ship.

Yes, I have worked at places that did not use these frameworks, but only because I fought hard to keep the code proprietary since we had the resources. So if you have done the same, mention it. Or tell me you created Figma designs for a mortgage calculator, leveraging the client’s CI to inform your work, and built a small UI kit within budget to prepare for the next iteration. That is useful detail.

Tell me if you used Midjourney to generate concepts before briefing the illustrator who developed campaign content. What was the campaign idea? Did you run it yourself or hand it off? That tells me you can collaborate, explore new technology, and manage handoff.

If you have concepted an app, even if it lives only in your Figma file, share it. It shows what excites you and how you think. If you prefer research and were part of the team that designed onboarding for a banking app, that is fine. I understand you had nothing to do with the dashboard that failed.

These are real experiences. They are far more valuable than polished descriptions stuffed with metrics that could have been pulled from Excel. I could not care less if you know Excel. I only care that you understand your role in design, have dealt with the constraints of small agencies working with early stage startups, or contributed to squads at a high street bank still trying to lead in digital twenty years too late. That says more than any metric ever could.

I cannot tie metrics to your actual contribution. But hearing you describe your real work experience is something I can understand, and it is why I would hire you. The people demanding metrics are delusional, selling lies they have convinced themselves of.

I have been in this industry longer than most. What you can actually do matters. I can spot the nonsense, and I am not afraid to call it out. I lead through brutal honesty and a very direct nature. I will push you to be your very best. Being straight with each other and we’ll do great work together.

Thanks to DDH for his inspiring video on this topic.