NYC Design Meetup: What sets a successful designer apart today? Side projects, a hunger to learn, and impactful storytelling.

The design job market is going through an evolutionary shift, the boundaries between roles are blurring, and even though there seem to be tons of open positions at first glance, both sides are having an increasingly hard time connecting. Polished portfolios and refined case studies aren't enough anymore. The AI era has leveled the playing field—pretty much anyone can generate top-tier work samples nowadays, so evaluation criteria are fundamentally changing. In this special episode recorded live from a sold-out meetup in New York, Jakub Karlec chats with design leaders and recruiters from companies like Shopify, Capgemini, and the startup Tennr about the reality of today's hiring and what actually sets designers apart in the job market.They talk about why designers still have an edge over developers thanks to design thinking and real-world problem solving. But also how AI can give a fresh wind to seniors with 20 years under their belt, letting them rediscover that childhood joy of creation without losing their authority. You'll learn why recruiters wading through stacks of applications are primarily looking for reasons to REJECT candidates, and why a weekend cooking app or a fun experiment in your "playground" section is worth more to leaders than official client work tied to a design system. We touch on the power of storytelling in the first two seconds, proactivity in the form of sending a coded prototype as a follow-up, and how juniors are helping companies discover new AI tools.This public version features an edited snippet of the meetup discussion. If you want to listen to the unedited 30-minute live Q&A from NYC covering unpaid work, tips for juniors, or why it's better to go to the beach and touch grass instead of endlessly tweaking your CV for ATS systems, subscribe to the 2FRESH Newsletter at https://2fresh.design/newsletter.A new episode comes out next week, and all subscribers will get access to the full recording of the entire NYC debate!