So, you’ve launched your career search by updating your resume and cover letter. You’ve even applied to several vacancies that caught your eye. Now, how do you to stand out in this competitive job market where bachelor’s degrees are a dime a dozen and master’s and MBA’s are on the same route. Well, I’m glad you asked me because I have the answer. You see, when you put education on paper, it all looks the same, unless you graduated from an Ivy League school, which most of us did not. So, in the sea of “everyone looks like me,” you can still use a secret weapon to stand out from the crowd. It’s called a career portfolio.
A career portfolio is your chance to present your unique knowledge, skills, and abilities to a potential employer in a way that you can’t with a resume and cover letter. You see, the resume lets the employer know where and when you gained your professional experience. You use your cover letter to tell the employer how you used your experience listed in your resume to help your current or former employers resolve challenges that they faced. I’m sure you’ll agree that anyone can say that they did something and were great at doing it. Your career portfolio on the other hand, allows you to show your potential new employer actual samples of your work. Actual samples speak volumes, because the employer does not have to guess about the quality of your work because the career portfolio gives them the real thing in their hand.
So, I’m sure that your next question is, “How do I build my very own career portfolio?” Well, I’m glad you asked me that question, too. Why? Because I have that answer, too. Believe it or not, you can actually build your career portfolio in one day if you already tend to keep work information organized on an SD card, thumb drive, or in the cloud.
Keep reading and I will detail the ten (10) steps you need to take to get your career portfolio project off the ground.
- Select a personal motto – Your brand is literally a reflection of your values. So, if quality is important to you, your motto should reflect it. If honesty and integrity are important to you, your motto should reflect them. For example, I believe that people should be important to Human Resources professionals. For me I am particularly concerned about helping others fit in…especially those from different backgrounds and cultures. I got so tired of witnessing so-called Human Resources professionals treat employees in a rude manner that I created a motto to express how much I value and respect others. So, I adopted my personal motto, “Everyone who comes into my presence leaves with their dignity in-tact.”
- Get your updated resume – Remember, your career portfolio reflects the body of work that you have accomplished during your career, or at least while on your current or most-recent job. It is also imperative that the work products you include in your portfolio are yours and that they are represented on your resume. You won’t want a hiring manager to question the authenticity of your work experience. You see, recruiters and hiring managers sometimes receive hundreds or thousands of submissions to vacancies, so their objective is to whittle that large group down to only the top most-qualified candidates. Don’t give them a glaring reason to toss your resume.
- Write a letter of introduction – Be creative. Remember, you wrote your cover letter to ask for the interview. Now that you have the interview, why not write a letter of introduction to your interviewers? Let them know how much you appreciate being invited for an interview and use the rest of your paper real estate to your advantage. Your resume provided the details of your work experience and your cover letter explained how you’ve used your experience to resolve challenges for your employer. Now, your letter of introduction can give your potential new employer a peek into who you are as a person. Let them know why you enjoy working in your career field; Tell them something about your work ethic or tell them what your most-memorable career moment has been; and call their attention to something that you feel makes you stand out from the crowd (i.e., career-related blog; speaking engagements; honors/awards; program development; inventions; books written; white papers, etc.).
- Gather information on your most-noteworthy and most-recent work project(s). You’ll want a combination of completed projects and projects that you are currently working on. The reason being that you want the interviewer to know that you’ve been successfully managing projects for a while. Include a document, such as a proposal or a description of the final project outcome, in your portfolio. Be prepared to answer questions about the project during your interview. I recommend that you use the STAR method to craft your description of the project or product. Briefly describe the situation that you faced. Describe the tasks that you had to complete and the challenges that you faced and the role you played in resolving the challenge. Then describe the actions you took to ensure success, including who you worked with to get the job done right. Then last, but not least, describe the results. Were they positive results that ended in a win for you? Even if your results were not favorable, what did you learn from the experience? How has the learning experience helped you to approach similar circumstances differently? Remember, the interviewer is looking for evidence of your creativity, flexibility, and ability to learn from your experiences and apply what you have learned to future workplace situations.
- Decide the order of the documents in the profile – Put thought into the order that you list your documents. I will share with you that when I was in my last active career search I changed the documents and the order of the documents in my career portfolio based on the contents of each vacancy announcement. This is why the information and workbook exercise in Module III – Analysis of a Vacancy Announcement is so crucial. You can use the most-impactful duty statements in the vacancy announcement to determine what types of work products to include in your career portfolio. If the vacancy announcement required the ability to interpret/write policies and procedures; develop/facilitate training; and perform workplace investigations, my portfolio included up to two policies that I’ve written or updated; at least one PowerPoint presentation of training that I developed or co-developed; and an investigative report that I wrote (with names and other confidential information redacted).
- Develop your table of contents – Now that you have decided on the documents to include in your portfolio and have placed them in order of importance, you are ready to develop your table of contents. I recommend that you place your letter of introduction immediately after the table of contents page. After that, place your work products, each as a separate section, in successive order after the letter of introduction.
- Assemble your documents in the order listed on the table of contents – Place a tabbed divider at the start of each section and label the divider so that anyone who reviews it will be able to easily locate the information that they are searching for.
- Design your cover page – Unless you are interviewing for a position in a creative career field (i.e., writing, fashion, art, performing arts, it is usually best to keep your cover page simple. Use a clean, easy-to-read font and leave a lot of white space so that it does not look busy. I typically use a report cover page style for my career portfolio’s cover page. Which results in a cover page layout like the shown in the snip-it below:
Example of Portfolio Cover Page Layout - Secure everything in a three-ring, or three-prong, binder.
- Make one copy for each interviewer if there are four or fewer total. If there are more than four interviewers, it is totally acceptable to assemble one portfolio for every two interviewers to share. They will only toss it once their records retention period re: employment recruitment records expires. And there is no need to kill any more trees unnecessarily.
Congratulations! You have just taken one of the most-effective steps towards distinguishing yourself from the crowd of other qualified candidates. Go You!
Bonus: Want to make an even greater impact on your potential new employer? Do so by digitizing your portfolio. This will enable you to leave the binders at home and showcase your technology skills by providing the interviewers with a URL to access the portfolio’s contents. In a later bog post, I will detail how to digitize your career portfolio. This WOW factor alone will earn you a place in the top three candidates. Claim your spot in the top echelon.
