Well done, you’ve done the hard work and your sharp application and CV has landed you an interview. Your CV will have featured a shortened folio of quality examples of your work.
Preparing for an interview
Now you need to prepare your folio for an interview, either online or in person.
This will most likely feature primarily work from your tertiary design course. Potential employers are not expecting a folio full of commercial work. It is a chance for the interviewer to recall their own time in education and the fun work on the briefs given at this point in a design career.
Check the details
An important step is to check if there are spelling errors you have missed while submitting your projects. If there are, now is the time to fix and update the work. This will be one of the first things a senior design team will spot, which goes for typos in titles or captions, depending on the folio format.
The next step is to make sure you have answers as to what the brief was and how you explored it. If you need to, make notes so you can refer to during the interview. The designer/s interviewing you will want to hear what you enjoyed, what you learnt. Designers are curious and the more depth you can demonstrate, the deeper the conversation and engagement. Examples: why you chose the font you did; how the colour palette was arrived at; what you learnt about the topic you did not know previously.
Have a range of projects
Look at the range of projects you have. If you have researched the studio you have applied for the role with, you should have an idea of the type of work they produce. Do you have any gaps? Depending on the timing, now is the time to take the initiative and either re-work a previous project from earlier study or set yourself a new brief, to include as example. Remember the interview team will be looking at your potential to develop your design skills. The more you can show your attention to detail, the better your chances of landing a role.
If you have any freelance projects, include these. However, depending on the quality level of the work, this/these should not sit in a primary position in the folio.