How Can I Use My School Work to Launch and Support My Career After Graduation?

By Daniel J. LeBlanc MCS, Webmaster

Whether you have a formal degree from an accredited college or learned your job skills on your own, you had some training and practice at some point. If you are a student completing a degree path then you may have no actual work experience at all. Often the class or schoolwork we do when preparing for a career is the only actual experience we have in our chosen field of study when we begin to test the job market with our new resume/CV.

This article is not age-specific. I launched a new career myself when I was in my 40’s so age has nothing to do with it when you are trying to transition into a new career where you have zero actual work experience to include. Regardless of your age, an online portfolio will go a long way when hunting for that first job. When I use the word ‘student’ in this article I am speaking of anybody learning a new career or improving their job skills in an existing career, regardless of age.

What should an online portfolio of achievements look like?

The look and feel of your online portfolio is just as important as the content itself. If you are a software or web developer then your portfolio should be more than documents; potential employers will be impressed with a portfolio that allows a user to run your software or website applications in addition to viewing the code. Most recruiters or hiring managers are not highly skilled in reading computer code. In these instances it is better that they could see a live demonstration of the code.

Students of accounting or business majors should consider examples of papers about theory or any truly ground-breaking ideas you might come up with. Anything that gets formally published should get called out and appear at the top of your online portfolio. Likewise, any work that receives a particularly high grade or written accolades from the grading professor could go a long way to impress recruiters and hiring managers. 

What if I’m learning on my own away from a school?

This is the most common example in modern times and probably I will move this section of my article to the top in a few years since that is the most popular way people are learning today. And why not? Why pay for formal education when employers are considering direct experience a greater asset than a formal education? I completely understand.

People who learn on their own generally learn better than those following a formal educational institution. But you have to be much more resourceful in this instance. There are many benefits to a formal education such as career and course guidance as well as work placement that you don’t get when you study on your own.

In addition to studying your chosen profession you have to keep close watch on the job market for your vocation. The demand for a particular job skill changes daily. Disruptive technologies eliminate the need for human laborers and that next great career you have been preparing for might be eliminated or at least less in demand when you are ready to enter the job market. 

In regards to the subject of this article; you will have to find your own online resources for publishing your content. And be sure to choose a content hosting platform that has a reputation for longevity, security and good search engine optimization.

Where can I publish an online portfolio of my work for free or for low cost?

If you are truly Internet-savvy then you know that the word “free” means anything but no-cost. There are many content publishers that will provide a limited free account and for some, this may suffice.

The best resource of course, is if you can afford to build your own website. This does not need to be as daunting as it seems. There are many easy website building tools that allow students to quickly design, build and launch a website without any prior knowledge of web development (see list of resources below). 

Here on LinkedIn you can actually create and publish articles for free but there are limitations. URL’s get disguised and image file names are also renamed. Your content is first ranked by LinkedIn before it gets ranked by the search engines so even if you have great technical SEO when building your article on LinkedIn it will be edited for publication. A better way to use this feature on LinkedIn is to first publish your content elsewhere and then syndicate it here on LinkedIn. That brings you the best of both worlds as long as you remember to indicate the canonical syndication URL.

Many of the other social networking platforms include tools for publishing longtail content but each has its limitations when compared to running your own website.

(Search engines penalize publishers for duplicate content. To get around this, be sure to include the original syndicated location where you published your work initially known as canonical tag. This tells the search engine crawlers that this is duplicate content so they don’t penalize.)

Which study or schoolwork should I include in my online portfolio?

This really depends on your particular vocation and what might be important to a potential hiring manager. If you are going into business administration then that controversial college paper you wrote might not be good to include in your online portfolio, even if your classmates or teacher thought it was good. If in doubt, don’t include it or at least ask a recruiter or other hiring manager what they think.

Asking the people who interview you for feedback in regards to your interview skills, resume or online portfolio is a good idea. You won’t always get it, even though most will promise it, but asking shows that you are learning and growing from the interview process.

Needless to say, remove anything that is in doubt and elevate the placement of any work in your portfolio that might be particularly pertinent to a job you are applying for. Most website building tools and social media publishing sites offer metrics that tell you which of your articles/papers are more popular. These are the ones you want to promote the most on social media and on your website. 

When applying for positions online there are resources for adding your online links. Be sure to promote any of your schoolwork here that is particularly pertinent to the job. The benefit to building papers/articles on your own website is that each article has a unique URL making it easier to direct a reader to the exact content you intend. 

Easy Resources for Building a Website Without Web Development Skills

Most of these sites offer a ‘free’ option but they are limited to the number and types of web pages you can create. Things get much more expensive if you are going to try to sell something so best to have a completely separate online portfolio for your resume and study work, away from any e-commerce you might be doing. Either way, I make no promise as to the end costs of any of these products.

While WordPress is open source, you will pay to host a website in WordPress and the costs will climb depending on how many pages, the length of pages and the type of content you want to publish.

Where can I publish an online resume or CV for free or low cost?

The number one resource for this is going to be LinkedIn, for sure. You don’t have to be a Premium member either. Every working person should have a LinkedIn profile and should keep it updated with new skills, certifications, achievements, awards, promotions, volunteer work and anything else that you might want a recruiter or hiring manager to know about. 

Even if you build an amazing web presence that brings thousands of visitors weekly you should still maintain a profile on social media and especially LinkedIn. These are the single best places to promote your career and should be kept up-to-date before your own website. 

If you publish new work or other publications on your website then you should use social media to promote it. 

Other resources for online resumes or CV

Some of these are simply resume creators which may be of use. Others allow you to create, link and promote your online profile on social media and to provide links to recruiters. I make no claim as to the cost or longevity of these online providers but wanted to provide some resources for those studying on their own. I tried to list them in the order in which I feel they might be most useful.

#online #resume #builder @danieljleblanc.com