Elevators in Ronald Lu & Partners’ recently completed Garden Crescent tower in Hong Kong. Image credit: Ronald Lu & Partners

Your architecture portfolio is one of your most powerful tools when searching for a new career opportunity. Whether describing your work at a networking event or presenting your previous projects in an interview setting, the ability to clearly and succinctly pitch your portfolio has the potential to evoke intrigue and excitement in the listener and influence the lens through which your prospective employer will read your wider work. However, the ability to capture a body of work as rich, complex, and varied as an architecture portfolio requires deliberate planning and preparation.

With that in mind, we have assembled below a series of tips to help you design and deliver a brief elevator pitch to introduce your architecture portfolio during a job search.

Do you have advice for pitching your portfolio while searching for your next role? Let us know in the comments.

Why create a portfolio elevator pitch?

Before unpacking how to create an elevator pitch for your portfolio, it is worth reflecting on why you should create one at all. While you are unlikely to physically find yourself in an elevator explaining your creative work to a potential future employer, the ability to clearly and succinctly summarize your work is highly valuable in an employment context.

Your architecture portfolio likely contains many varying projects, complete with narratives on design visions, processes, and technical details. Meanwhile, the portfolios of recent architecture graduates will contain thesis projects rich in complex theoretical and research strands, in addition to design ideas that evolved over months and semesters. If you do not intentionally craft a 30–60-second pitch that succinctly introduces your work, clearly states the overall theme of your portfolio, and captures the essence of your skills and interests, you will quickly find yourself lost in the weeds when trying to summarize years of work in one interaction.

The more equipped the listener is to follow your work from the first line, the more positively they are likely to receive your message.

Start with a one-line hook

The beginning of your elevator pitch should accomplish two things: summarize your work’s ethos in one line, and do so in a way that engages the listener. If you are a graduate whose thesis involves urban farming, for example, your hook could be: “My work explores how urban farming can make cities more beautiful and exciting places to live.” If you are a mid-career architect who has worked on large, international projects, your hook could be: “My work shows how one team can be tasked with designing in radically different geographic contexts across the world, but still embody the same design principles.”

Your opening line should capture the listener’s interest while also offering them a lens through which they can read your work. The more equipped the listener is to follow your work from the first line, the more positively they are likely to receive your message. Meanwhile, by framing your line as a ‘challenge’ such as ‘making cities more beautiful through farming’ or ‘delivering on the same principles in multiple geographies,’ the listener will also become more emotionally invested in your message.

Incorporate 1–2 projects in your pitch, but no more

Having set out the ethos of your work, you can reinforce this ethos through specific examples. Taking our two examples from above, our urban farming graduate may summarize their final year project in a couple of lines, such as: “I developed a system for transforming abandoned parking structures in Los Angeles into urban farms, where each car parking space is owned by a different restaurant, and each level is a different stage in the food cycle.” Meanwhile, our international architect might say, “In one project, I led the design of a stadium in China that doubled as a landscaped park to ensure this landmark is not only active during sporting events. At the same time, I led the delivery of a transport hub in the Netherlands that also incorporates living and working, so that it becomes more than just a point of arrival and departure from the city.”

By connecting your examples to your opening hook, you will position yourself as somebody taking action on your aspirations: You are ‘solving’ the ‘problem.’ Meanwhile, teasing concrete examples of your work will help pique the interest of the listener, who will be curious to learn more. However, be careful not to go into too much detail on each project (tempting as it may be, given how much effort you likely exerted on them). Likewise, mentioning more than 1–2 projects in your elevator pitch runs the risk of overwhelming the listener and unnecessarily prolonging your pitch.

Communicating the relevance and value of your work not only reinforces a proactive outlook on your part but also invites the listener to ‘buy into’ your mission.

Reinforce the value proposition of your work

With the ethos of your work summarized, and one or two examples teased, it is time to reinforce why your work is relevant. Our urban farming graduate may briefly explain the importance of reintroducing food production to cities by way of changing attitudes, revitalizing dormant areas, and addressing climate change. Meanwhile, our international architect might explain the importance of large-scale projects being interwoven with their local context, or of typically ‘detached’ typologies such as stadiums or transport hubs becoming more integrated with wider cities.

Communicating the relevance and value of your work not only reinforces a proactive outlook on your part but also invites the listener to ‘buy into’ your mission. When the conversation or interview becomes more detailed, having your value proposition already established ensures that the listener is reading and analyzing your portfolio from an angle that compliments your work.

End with a call to action

Concluding your pitch with a call to action avoids the potential for an ‘awkward silence’ to set in and instead offers you and the listener a natural way to continue the conversation beyond your pitch, whether now or in the future. If you are speaking with a potential employer at a networking event, this might involve asking to exchange email addresses or setting up a future conversation. Remember that, in some cases, you may not physically have your portfolio with you when delivering your pitch, so a call to action may be offering the listener a link to where they can see more of your work.

If you are in an interview, meanwhile, your elevator pitch is a valuable way to introduce the theme of your portfolio before jumping into details. Therefore, your call to action may be as simple as asking the interviewer if they would be interested in hearing about one or two projects in more detail.

You will want to sound natural and conversational but not scripted or robotic.

Practice your pitch, but without memorizing it

While it’s important to practice your pitch to ensure smooth delivery, avoid memorizing it word-for-word. You will want to sound natural and conversational but not scripted or robotic. When practicing, use the opportunity to also pay attention to your tone, body language, breathing, and pace of delivery.

If you find yourself rushing through your elevator pitch, this may be a sign not only of nerves but of trying to say too much in too little time. Such nerves (though inevitable) can be helped by practice, relaxation techniques, and simply reminding yourself to speak slightly slower. Your pitch can also be shortened by reducing the number of examples you are giving of your work.

Create more than one pitch

Considering that your elevator pitch will be no more than 60 seconds, it may be a worthwhile investment to map out more than one pitch, even for the same portfolio. After all, there are likely several ways through which you can present your portfolio, whether emphasizing the most common typologies in your work, the level of technical detail across your work, or the materials used. Knowing how to introduce your portfolio in multiple ways will better enable you to adapt the narrative of the work to suit your circumstances.

As mentioned in the ‘call to action’ advice, you can also craft separate elevator pitches for use in different contexts, such as in interviews, networking events, or more informal social settings.

Do not limit elevator pitches to your portfolio

While this edition of Archinect Tips focuses on crafting an elevator pitch for your portfolio, you don’t need to stop there. The formula described above, namely an opening hook, 1–2 stories or examples, a value proposition, and a call to action, can be tailored for several aspects of your job search. You may choose to formulate an elevator pitch to describe your employment history, your skills specialty, your overarching motivation for practicing architecture, and more.

More broadly, elevator pitches have several valuable applications in architecture beyond job search settings. Stay tuned to upcoming editions of Archinect Tips for more examples.