Building a Portfolio (and a Free Portfolio Checklist)

When I first graduated college (having earned a BA in Technical Writing), none of my professors shared the idea of having a portfolio. I graduated with several essays, technical documents, etc. scattered all over the place, and once I realized that I needed a writing portfolio, I had lost a few of the documents that businesses would have cared about. I ended up having to create something last-minute for a job interview and did eventually get a writing gig.

My alternative certification program shared the strategy of having a teacher portfolio. They recommended bringing in a binder of different lesson plans, classroom artifacts, email communications, etc. that would showcase how I'd run my classroom.

Looking back at that portfolio now, I was all over the place. While it was clear that I was enthusiastic, my assets assumed a best-case scenario. (If my students' parents were involved, this is how I'd write a classroom-wide email for an event. If I had another teacher willing to partner with me, here's the cross-curricular lesson I'd teach.) I brought that binder into my interviews and referenced it when I was answering questions and sharing my work with them. At one point, I entered a panel interview. Having that binder passed around while I answered questions helped with 9 sets of eyes that would have been staring at me... I got that job.

But no one really talked with me about portfolio strategy in either of these instances.

Portfolios are a tool that you can use in almost any job hunt to show your current skills and job artifacts. If you're new or trying to break into an industry, it can be the best way to show what you can or would do in a given scenario.

If you're like me when I was creating my first portfolios, here are some things you might struggle with:

Do you have the "right" scenario?

In teaching, you can kind of assume some of the kinds of scenarios you might need job artifacts for. But if it's for a new kind of role in a new industry, how do you know if you even have a good handle of the kinds of problems the role will need to solve? Focus on the business problems you imagine that role would work to solve.

Are you balancing prioritizing the scenario over the tool?

And sometimes we're just looking to show that we can use the tool, which doesn't always play in our favor. For instance, if I were to want to write an email to parents in my teaching portfolio, the principal doesn't care if I know how to use Gmail or Outlook, they care that I addressed the parents effectively. Same thing can happen here.

Yes, you will need to show that you can use industry-standard tools, but be careful that the tool you're using fits the scenario need and that you're still prioritizing solving the problem. (One I like to share with my ID mentees is that you likely wouldn't want to make a Rise for a trucker. A podcast might be a better choice.)

Are you sharing everything you've ever made? (Psst, don't.)

When we aren't sure, some of us resort to sharing everything we can. In my first ID portfolio, I included fiction and nonfiction pieces I'd written in addition to all the various ID stuff I created. This would have made sense had my assets made heavy use of story, but they didn't. So instead of making my portfolio focused, I shared everything and risked confusing my visitors.

Make sure that you're sharing quality pieces rather than leaning into quantity. A few polished pieces are going to have a greater impact than everything you've ever done. Recruiters and hiring managers don't have a lot of time to sort through all the things and find what actually interests them. Not only that, but some of the projects may no longer be the best example of your current skills.

TLDR

• Focus on the business problems you imagine that role would work to solve.
• Ensure the tool fits the scenario need and that you're still prioritizing the solution, not the tool.
• Curate your work so visitors can find what they need as quickly as possible.

Related Articles:

• Ask these when comparing your portfolio to someone else's
• Do I really need a volunteer client for my portfolio?

This article was one of four in the newsletter Experience Points. At the end of that series, I shared a free portfolio checklist with my readers.

If you'd like that free resource and the articles I wrote, you can use the sign up form below: