Welcome to “Land Your Dream Job” series, Part 8, as we learn how a career portfolio can catapult you from “a candidate” to “The Candidate.”
When you are competing for your ideal job, your invitation to an in-person interview can bring on the pressure. You know that this is the job that you’ve been praying for and you have the exact mix of education, experience, and drive to join the employer’s team and contribute quickly to their continued success. So, just how do separate yourself from the pack of other candidates for whom this is their dream job as well? With a career portfolio.
Career portfolios showcase your career-impacting, job-related qualifications in a tangible way that employers can see first-hand. You see, anyone can say that they have what it takes to get the job done, but not everyone can produce actual examples of the work that they have completed during the course of their career. Besides practicing your interview skills, being prepared is also of paramount importance to your career search success. This is why I advise my clients to always keep a copy of the work products that they complete. Because today’s technology makes it almost mindlessly-easy to save different types of documents, there’s no excuse to not save a copy of your work to your own personal cloud account, a flash drive, or to send a copy to your personal email. So, let’s get you started with looking at what you should consider as you build your career portfolio.
You should approach each stage of your career search intentionally, and this stage is no different in that regard. As you decide what to include in your career portfolio, you should consider the following: 1) What do you want your career portfolio to achieve on your behalf? 2) What are your most career-impacting work projects? 3) Do you have enough examples of your work products to build an effective career portfolio?
- What are you most career-impacting work projects? During my most-recent career search, which landed me with my current employer, I wanted my career portfolio to tell my career story. Since I had been a human resources professional for 25+ years, my professional experience at each stage of my career contributed to my being the ideal candidate for the Human Resources Manager position that I had applied to. So, I began planning my portfolio by identifying my most career impacting work projects. Then I considered the role that I played in the completion/success of each one. I recalled those that I led. I considered the outcome of each of them? I thought about the challenges the team faced and remembered how we worked around them to meet our goal.
In the earlier stages of your career, you will likely not have a host of large-scale projects to call upon. It takes time to build this history. So, remember that career impacting is different at each stage of our careers. This should not stop you from building your career portfolio since it should be representative of your level of expertise in your career. It should show career growth from one assignment to the next.
Even if you don’t consider your work projects to date to be career-impacting, a hiring manager may so don’t shortchange yourself by failing to include even smaller work projects. Even if you did something seemingly small, like developing charts and graphs to explain data, include that information without divulging any confidential business information. Who knows, your potential employer may need someone who has that skill. You would likely be surprised about the number of people who do not possess the computer skills that their employer needs them to have. If you are a strong writer, showcase that skill because the art of writing well, unfortunately, appears to be disappearing in our technological age. If you have strong customer service or interpersonal skills, showcase them. If you receive a gift, and email, or other recognition from a client or customer, take a picture of the gift or print the email for your career portfolio. I recently unexpectedly received flowers and a thank you card from a customer who was seeking additional details about a position with our organization, that she was interested in. So, I took a picture of the flowers and have saved the card and will include a copy of in my career portfolio.
- What do you want your career portfolio to achieve on your behalf? – Your career portfolio can represent you well in a number of ways. So, it is completely up to you how you put your professional best foot forward using your career portfolio. For instance, you may want to keep your career portfolio simple and have it to serve as a repository of a varied assortment of work products from your professional career. If so, then you would simply place them in a binder, add a title page, and be prepared to explain each example to the interviewer(s) when you meet in person. Or, if you feel that your current or most-recent job is more closely related to the job that you are vying for, with that in mind, you will likely use your portfolio to showcase your work products from the current stage of your career. Since your portfolio’s focus will be on recent projects, it will hopefully be easier for you to identify your selected work products and to hopefully get a copy or tangible representations of them to include in your portfolio. Now, if you want your portfolio to tell your career story, you will need to put a bit more effort into it building and organizing it. So, I recommend that in this case, you think of your portfolio as a good book where each new chapter builds up to the next. With that in mind, you will want to categorize the work product samples that you include in your portfolio, as well as present them in chronological order. You also will need to include a table of contents and description/title tabs for each category or section of your portfolio. Your unique experience will determine how each section will be laid out.
If you are aspiring to make your break into a new career field in which you don’t have a great deal of experience, I encourage you to use your portfolio to showcase your “transferrable skills.” Transferrable skills are the knowledge, skills, and abilities that are of high-importance in many career fields. Think about it, most career fields require creativity, written and verbal communications, some level of interpersonal skills, and project management, to name just some. So, think about the required knowledge, skills, and abilities that you have acquired and developed so far during your career. How did you grow them? Which ones of them will your new career require you to have? How can you showcase them in your portfolio?
- Do you have enough examples of your work products to build an effective career portfolio?
If you think that you don’t have enough examples of work products to build an impressive career portfolio, think again. Remember, to include a copy of that certificate from the team-building training that you completed. Also, if there are some knowledge, skills, and abilities that you need to strengthen, why not look into self-paced training platforms like Udemy.com, Alison courses, Lynda.com/LinkedIn learning, etc. and subscribe to some relevant courses. Many employers will be impressed by the simple fact that you took the initiative to gain the skills that you need to make yourself more marketable.
As I said in point #2, focus on your transferrable skills which are skills that you have gained during your career in your current field and could prove very useful in your new career field. You can seldom go wrong by focusing on creativity, communication, interpersonal interactions/customer service, and/or project management. These are also all skill sets that you can complete training courses in, via self-paced training that you can complete when your schedule permits.
As Always, Career Search Success to You! Go Get Your New Job!
