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Portfolio for Hiring, eight weeks
Portfolio for Hiring, Eight Weeks, India

Four hundred portfolios arrive. Six reach the creative director.

The other 394 were not worse at design. Eight weeks on what happens to your portfolio after you send it, taught by the creative director who receives the shortlist.

Apply for the next batch
400 portfolios per open role 6 shortlisted

What actually happens to it

1

Your link is opened for a few seconds on a phone, between two meetings, by someone deciding only whether to open it properly later.

2

It goes into a folder with four hundred others. Nobody reads four hundred of anything. They sort.

3

A recruiter shortlists six and has to defend each one out loud. If your work cannot be described in one sentence by somebody else, you are not defensible, so you are not shortlisted.

4

The creative director gets fifteen minutes and three tabs. He is not asking whether you are good. He is asking whether you are the specific kind of good this team is missing.

5

Nine of your eleven projects are fine. Those nine are what is holding you back, and you added them because you thought more was safer.

6

Somewhere in this chain you were rejected, and nobody sent you a reason, so you assumed it was the craft and went and improved the craft.

It was almost never the craft.

There are three portfolios and they are not interchangeable

A portfolio that gets you hired will lose you a client, because a client is buying an outcome and a hiring team is buying a person.

This programme

For hiring

In house roles, studios, agencies and product teams in India. Built for the shortlist, the fifteen minute review and the portfolio round.

Separate programme

For clients

Freelance and agency work. A different argument entirely, because a client is buying an outcome and does not care about your growth.

Separate programme

For admissions

Masters applications. Admissions read for potential and thinking, and reward the exploration that a hiring panel skips.

Who this is for

Designers with two to eight years who keep reaching the second round and stopping

The work gets you seen. Something after that is losing.

Designers whose portfolio is a chronology

Everything you have made, in the order you made it, because deleting your own work feels like lying.

Designers going for a level up

Senior, lead, or a studio with a name. The bar is not more polish, it is evidence of judgment, and your portfolio contains almost none.

Designers in a good job with a three year old portfolio

Fine, until the day you need it fast.

Designers returning after a break or a switch

You need the gap to read as a decision rather than a hole.

Final year designers with real internship work

Only if there is work to cut. There is nothing to strategise about an empty portfolio.

Not for you if you want Figma help, a Framer template, or someone to make it look better. Looking better is the one thing you already know how to do.

Who is teaching this

Akshat Raghava. RISD alumnus. Creative Director and Co - Founder of Beryl Agency. Four - time I Design Award winner. Co - Founder of HireDesigners.

He does not teach portfolios from the designer's side. He is the person the shortlist is handed to.

At HireDesigners we do not work off job descriptions. We sit with the creative director and ask what they actually want, and it is never what the posting says. That gap, between the advertised role and the real one, is where most good designers get eliminated, and it is not visible from outside the room.

We vet on three things.

SkillWhether the output holds up.
StyleWhether the aesthetic belongs in that studio.
SyncWhether you can work with these particular people.

Placements hold at 97.3 percent retention because of that filter.

The Eight weeks

Weeks 1 and 2The argument

Every portfolio makes a claim. Most make it by accident. Auditing your existing work for what it already proves versus what you keep saying about yourself. Deciding the one role you are hunting, because a portfolio aimed at three roles is aimed at none. Specialist against generalist, and what each costs you in an Indian hiring market. Writing the single sentence a recruiter will use to describe you when you are not in the room. That sentence is the product of these two weeks.

Weeks 3 and 4The cut

Which projects leave. The hardest fortnight and the one that moves the needle most. Ordering, because the second project is read more carefully than the first. Building each case study around the decision you made and the option you rejected, not the process you followed. Showing your contribution on team projects without shrinking or inflating it. Killing the process dump, the mood board, the persona and the empathy map, none of which anyone reads. What to do when the best work is under NDA. Writing for someone skimming on a phone with the sound off.

Weeks 5 and 6The surrounding evidence

The portfolio is one of four things they look at. The others are your CV, your LinkedIn and whatever comes up when they search your name, checked in that order once the portfolio interests them. Making all four say the same thing. A CV a recruiter can defend line by line. LinkedIn written for search, since that is where recruiters actually find you. Deciding whether visibility is worth your hours at all, and the honest answer is that for most roles it is not, because posting weekly is a poor substitute for four excellent case studies.

Weeks 7 and 8The room

Presenting the work live, a separate skill from building it and where most second round rejections happen. Talking about a project that failed. Handling the design challenge, including whether to accept an unpaid one. What the portfolio round is actually testing, which is whether they can bear to sit in a review with you every Tuesday. Reading a compensation conversation. A written and dated 90 day plan with named companies, named people and the specific work you still need to make.

What you leave with

Seven things, all of them yours, all built during the eight weeks.

One sentence

That describes you, tested on people who hire.

A shorter portfolio

Fewer projects in it than the one you have now.

Three rebuilt case studies

Written around decisions, reviewed line by line.

A CV and a LinkedIn

Carrying the same argument as the portfolio, not a second version of you.

A named shortlist

Companies and the specific people inside them who should see it.

A presentation you have delivered out loud

And had torn apart once, before it counts.

A dated 90 day plan

Written as triggers. Not apply more. If a target company posts any design role, the note to the named person goes out within 48 hours.

Why only four

Your average project is the problem, not your worst one

Across seven studies, adding mildly good material to strongly good material makes the whole set score lower, because people evaluate a set by averaging it rather than adding it up. Your eleven project portfolio is being scored as an average of eleven.

Cutting six raises the average without you designing anything new. Almost nobody does this voluntarily, which is why it is done with someone else in the room.

Weaver, Garcia and Schwarz, Journal of Consumer Research, 2012.

The first pass is a rejection clock, not a reading clock

Eye tracking of recruiters screening applications put the initial scan at around seven seconds. The number is disputed and the sample was small, so treat it as direction rather than gospel. The direction is not disputed. That first pass decides whether anyone reads you properly, and it turns on structure and legibility, not on quality of thought.

Ladders eye tracking study, 2018.

A signal is only worth what it costs to fake

This is Spence's job market signalling, the idea that earned him a Nobel. Anything a weaker designer could add for free carries no information. Awards, tool logos, a five step process diagram, everyone has them.

A named constraint, a decision with a cost, a number you moved. Expensive to fake, so these are the only parts being read as evidence.

Which is why four. Cutting your work, rewriting your case studies and rehearsing your presentation all need someone looking at your actual files in the week you make them. Four is where that survives.

Two ways to do this

Shared batch
₹60,000
  • Four people maximum
  • 8 live sessions of 60 minutes
  • Your real portfolio reviewed in front of the group
  • Watching three other portfolios get cut, which is where most of the learning happens, because you are ruthless about other people's work and sentimental about your own
One to one
₹1,75,000
  • 8 private sessions of 60 minutes
  • full portfolio reviews
  • Line by line rewrites ofcase studies
  • A recorded mock portfolio round, with Akshat as the creative director
  • Direct access between sessions
  • monthly reviews after the programme ends, because the plan is only worth what happens in month three

Take one to one if you are actively interviewing now. The shared batch if you are preparing for a move in the next six to twelve months.

Questions

Will this get me a job?
No, and anyone promising that is lying. It gets you into the shortlist more often. What happens in the room after that is partly you and partly them.
My portfolio is decent already.
Decent is the exact problem this addresses. Bad portfolios fail for obvious reasons. Decent ones fail for invisible ones.
Do you redesign my portfolio?
No. You will design less than you expect and delete more. If visual craft were the issue you would not be reaching second rounds.
I cannot show my work publicly.
Week 4 covers NDA work properly, which most portfolio advice skips entirely.
Is this only for people job hunting right now?
No, but it is only for people who intend to be hired by someone. If you want clients, take the freelance and agency programme instead.
₹60,000 is a lot.
One level in most Indian design roles is worth several lakh a year. This is priced against that, not against a course.
Do I have to become active on LinkedIn?
No. Week 5 will probably conclude that for your specific target, posting is not worth the hours, and will tell you what to do instead.

They are not comparing you to a standard. They are comparing you to the other five tabs.

Apply for the next batch

Next batch starts 15 October 2026. Applications reviewed as they arrive.

Beryl Agency, Sector 11, Noida.

Portfolio for Hiring. Eight weeks, four seats. ₹60,000 or ₹1,75,000. Apply