If we're all living and dying honestly, companies hire for three reasons: skills, presentation, and credibility.

Your portfolio should do its best to communicate all three, as it essentially serves as your online sales letter. If other designers don't like what you've got, it may be because they're not the target market.

Bottom line here is this: Never take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from, myself included, and sure as hell test your portfolio and get feedback from the people making the hiring decisions.

Fail fast. Fail often. Fail forward.