Strong UX work. Still no interviews? Here’s what to cut.

Everyone in my last cohort had strong work.
Every single one of them was still stuck.

Not because they didn’t know how to write a resume.

Not because their case studies were weak.

Not because they lacked experience.

They were stuck because they hadn’t made a few uncomfortable decisions yet.

What kept showing up

Across the first two live sessions, the same patterns repeated:

Too many artifacts competing for attention
Consulting experience that didn’t map cleanly to product roles
Over-attachment to effort (“I worked so hard on this”)
Fear of choosing one direction and cutting the rest
Trying to satisfy ATS and hiring managers at the same time

When everything is included, nothing stands out.

That’s not a skill gap.

It’s decision overload.

Where senior designers get stuck

Most senior designers think they need more input to move forward.

What they actually need is pressure to decide what to remove.

In the Level^Up cohort, we don’t start by polishing.
We don’t start by rewriting bullets.
We don’t start by “optimizing” summaries.

We start by deciding:

Which artifacts carry their weight
Which problem is the actual problem
Which persona matters on first scan
What gets cut, even if it’s uncomfortable

That moment is usually tense.

It’s also where people feel relief for the first time in months.

By week two, designers who had avoided their resume or portfolio for a year were suddenly updating and sending new versions - not because things were perfect, but because the decisions were finally closed.

That’s the difference.

What this is (and isn’t)

This is not a templates course.

It’s not a resume rewrite service.

It’s a small, live critique cohort designed to force clarity under real hiring constraints, using the same lens hiring managers use when they have 60–90 seconds to decide whether to keep reading.