I think what we talk about is one side of the problem — designers making their work look perfect. The other side is companies truly expecting these perfect and polished case studies with beautiful design. But turning this into an opportunity, that's a great way for designers to separate design-mature companies from immature ones.

If you have a really good UX case study in your portfolio that tells the story of the challenges you faced and how you overcame them, but the company rejects you because they expect ONLY polished design work, be glad! You dodged a bullet of working for a company that doesn't understand design. Keep looking.