4 Employers Share Architecture Portfolio Tips (With Real Examples)
At Bespoke Careers, hundreds of architecture portfolios land in our inbox every week. So what separates the ones that get a call from the ones that get scrolled past?
Bespoke consultants Jimmy Bent (Managing Director), Lucy Cahill (Director) and Craig Murray (Architecture Consultant) were joined by Claudia Tschunko (Leader of ARUP Architecture, UK, Middle East, India & Africa) to review three real candidate portfolios live. What follows are the key lessons, direct from their review.
Bespoke Careers
Bespoke Careers
Bespoke Careers
UK, Middle East, India & Africa
Nail the Basics: Length and File Size
Before a hiring manager even opens your portfolio, two things can already work against you: a file that won’t download and a document that goes on forever. The panel were unanimous keep it tight, keep it small.
“Anything between 8 and 15 pages at an absolute max. It’s meant to be a snapshot of your best work.
The rule applies to the file itself too. A bloated PDF signals carelessness before a single image has been seen.
“Nothing more than 10 megabytes, ideally 5mb because sometimes people have size limits on what they can receive via email.
Quick checklist: before you send
✓ 8–15 pages maximum for an emailed portfolio
✓ Under 5MB ideally, absolute maximum 10MB
✓ Flatten your PDF as the very last step before sending
✓ Keep a longer, detailed version ready for interview
✓ Consistent page orientation portrait or landscape, never both
Pet hates from the panel
✗ Rotating from portrait to landscape mid-document (“That’s a red flag for me” – Craig)
✗ Sending a WeTransfer link. People are increasingly suspicious of external links
✗ Mixing A4 and A3 page sizes in the same document
Open With a Summary Page for Each Project
Every reviewer flagged the same frustration: beautiful imagery with no context. A strong portfolio opens by telling the reader who you are and what you’ve done on each project. The best candidates, the panel noted, solve this with a concise project summary page right at the front.
“What I find quite helpful is if there page at the front outlining their experience or their range of projects. The best people do it with just the name of the project, the RIBA stages they worked on, their role. Their role purely could be one sentence and that’s it. That’s all you need.
What your summary page should include
✓ Project name and type
✓ RIBA stages you worked on
✓ Your specific role. One sentence is enough
✓ Project scale / budget if relevant
✓ Whether it’s student work or professional practice work
✓ Software skills listed in plain text (not icons)
Put Your Best Work First
Time and again the panel found portfolios where the most compelling work was buried at the back. One candidate’s professional experience didn’t appear until page 28 of a 33-page document. By then, most hiring managers have already moved on.
“Good stuff first. Best bits at the front. Professional work should always take the lead.
“People like list their work chronologically and put their best or latest works at the bottom. We sometimes review profiles and it’s not until we get to the end and we’ve almost dismissed them, and then suddenly you’re back in the conversation. A director would probably get three pages in and just go… no.
Always Distinguish Student Work from Professional Work
This was one of the most repeated criticisms across all three portfolios. Without clear labelling, reviewers waste precious time trying to figure out whether a project was completed in university or on the job and that ambiguity can cost you.
“There’s nothing worse than an impressive image with no context of your role and how you’re involved in it. You could have been in a team of three people or a team of 30 people. Without that, you just don’t know.
“Any hiring manager or studio director is going to want to see any experience you’ve got in practice. No matter big or small, you’re always going to want to see that over university work.
Show Your Process (Not Just Final Renders)
One of the strongest patterns the panel noted: portfolios full of polished 3D renders with no context. What separates a good portfolio is evidence of thinking how you got from problem to solution.
“When it’s too image-based, it’s quite easy to hide behind those images. Whereas if I have a site plan presented to me with a proper ground floor plan and I say to the candidate, “Explain the project to me how do you come in, what’s the sequence?” that’s how you sell something to a client team.
“We quite like to see 2D plans and sections. Seeing a nice section or a nice plan is actually something that we find very impressive. And in the times of AI seeing hand sketches is really refreshing. It’s something that we always notice positively.
Media the panel love to see
✓ Hand sketches and drawings
✓ Physical models (photographed well)
✓ 2D plans and sections alongside 3D renders
✓ Process images showing how you developed a concept
✓ Mixed media it signals a range of skills
List Your Software In Plain Text
Icons of Revit and AutoCAD logos look slick. But they’re invisible to Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) the software most large firms use to scan CVs and portfolios before a human ever sees them. Write the names out.
“More and more people are using AI to filter through their applications. If it doesn’t pick it up, you’re going to miss out. It’s not going to pick up an icon. You need to write Revit.
Put Your Contact Details on Every Single Page
Portfolios get printed, shared, forwarded, and split into separate pages. If your name and email only appear on the cover, you’ve lost your best advert the moment someone picks out a page they like.
“Put your phone number and email address on every page. If this gets printed on paper and it’s on someone’s desk, they’re not going to know who you are. The front page especially. You want your LinkedIn there too. We want to be able to see your profile instantly.
Contact info on every page should include
✓ Full name
✓ Email address
✓ Phone number
✓ LinkedIn URL (clickable in the PDF)
Keep Layouts Clean, Consistent, and Accessible
Several of the reviewed portfolios were genuinely well-designed but undermined by tiny text, inconsistent backgrounds, and pages with no clear hierarchy. The panel stressed: employers spend 30 seconds on a portfolio before they decide whether to move on.
“We need to think about accessibility. I’m in my 40s, it’s can be harder to read and I don’t want to be zooming in. You want to capture people straight away.
“A white background always presents stronger. When you switch from white to black, you’ve got a bit of a mix. It’s just better to stick to one preference would be white.
Layout mistakes to avoid
✗ Tiny font sizes. If you need to zoom to read it, fix it
✗ Switching background colour between pages
✗ No clear visual hierarchy. Readers shouldn’t have to decide where to look first
✗ Too many images on a single page. One project per page is ideal
The Three Portfolios Reviewed: What the Panel Said
10–15 Years’ Experience: What Changes at Senior Level
The fundamentals don’t change much but what hiring managers are looking for shifts significantly once you have a decade of experience behind you.
“At that level, seeing the whites in someone’s eyes and understanding who they are is becoming even more important. Experience and the way of leadership, how they shape up in a room that’s as important as their work in a way.
“Highlight the projects where you had the most involvement. If you’re just on it for two weeks, you don’t probably need to include it if you’ve got ten years of experience. You want to highlight your strengths whether you led packages, whether you were on site, whether you were client facing.
What to include at senior level
✓ Number of people managed and team leadership experience
✓ Project wins and client-facing responsibilities
✓ Completed project photography shows quality through to delivery
✓ Tailor the portfolio specifically to the role you’re applying for
✓ Specific packages or deliverables you owned even the toilet package counts
✓ Finance, HR, or wider management contributions if relevant
“What is really quite attractive is when people come in and have a real proactive attitude towards our practice know about our practice well and can demonstrate and articulate a clear vision of what they want to do and the value they can bring. That is as compelling as their work.
The length rule still applies. A portfolio can be 12 pages long even with 20 years of experience. The difference is that at interview, senior candidates can bring a comprehensive second portfolio and when asked “what do you want to see?”, navigate straight to the most relevant pages.
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