Future-Proof Your Career with a CMD and Smart Portfolio Management
Make it a regular part of your job to keep your design portfolio up to date.
Sadly, layoffs aren’t uncommon in today’s job market – especially for designers. A record of your career accomplishments and portfolio aren’t just nice-to-haves—they’re critical professional lifelines. But what happens in the event that you lose access to the tools and files that showcase your recent work? For too many designers, an unexpected layoff can result in losing access to cloud-stored design projects, costing precious time and opportunities. Let’s talk about how to prepare yourself for your next job opportunity and avoid this pitfall while setting yourself up for success with a Career Management Document (CMD).
What Is a CMD?
A CMD is your personal, ongoing record of achievements, metrics, lessons learned, and positive feedback. This wonderful article from A List Apart, The Career Management Document, outlines why a CMD is integral to your career development and illustrates how it can streamline your transition into a new position. By capturing professional growth and successes in real time, you’ll always have a comprehensive resource for updating and maintaining resumes, portfolios, or LinkedIn profiles.
Here’s why a CMD is critical for design professionals in today’s unpredictable job market:
Timeliness: Document accomplishments in real time to preserve critical details
Reflection: Analyze your growth and identify areas to improve
Efficiency: Quickly adapt content for resumes, LinkedIn, or portfolio updates. Use the ARM Impact syntax to describe professional accomplishments on your resume, case studies, and LinkedIn profile for best results
As the original article notes, a CMD isn’t just for job seekers. It can be used as a tool for continuous growth and preparedness. If you don’t already have one, use your next performance review as incentive to create an initial draft.
Protect Your Portfolio Before It’s Too Late
While the CMD helps you articulate and record achievements, your design portfolio showcases your craft. Without a solid portfolio, the odds of you securing an interview—let alone a new job—are slim. Unfortunately, losing access to cloud-stored designs (hello, Figma) is an all-too-common issue when leaving a company. Unexpectedly losing access to years of work can cost job candidates weeks or months of precious time rebuilding work samples and case studies. Here’s how to safeguard your work:
Update Regularly: Do not procrastinate! Make it a part of your job to incorporate work samples into your portfolio throughout your employment to avoid scrambling when it’s time to move on. Regularly save versions of your work that you’ll maintain access to in the event of losing access to your cloud files
Seek Permission: Whenever necessary, get permission to include certain designs in your portfolio. Most employers have no problem with this, especially if proprietary details are removed. Adding password protection to case studies or only sharing them in a private interview setting is always an option
Build Case Studies From Public Work: Annotate screenshots from design initiatives that have gone live. Create case studies that clearly explain your role on the project, challenges and learnings, and success metrics
Closing Thoughts
Combining a CMD with proactive portfolio management ensures you’re always prepared to showcase your value. As A List Apart emphasizes, the best time to start documenting is now—before the unexpected happens. Taking small, consistent steps starting now can make a world of difference for your career tomorrow.
