Career Portfolio Basics
http://depts.washington.edu/geogjobs/Careers/pfolbasics.html
Why are professionals using portfolios now?
For decades, artists, photographers, architects, designers and writers in search of work have
used portfolios to showcase their abilities and their qualities. Finally, others are now discovering
how portfolios can help them in their careers.
Portfolios can help people in business and industry move more freely in the current work
environment, in which more individuals are acting as if they were independent contractors,
selling their skills and capabilities whenever they can fill an employer's needs.
Portfolios can help the already-employed with career transitions, because few can expect to
work for one employer for an entire career.
College professors and career advisors are realizing that the process of developing a portfolio
can be an important learning tool for students to help them assess their learning and to compare it
to the employer's need for skilled, capable employees.
Students are discovering that portfolios offer a better way to demonstrate their learning
experience that adds value to their potential for specific kinds of work.
Why is a portfolio worth the work??
It helps you:
1.) prepare for interviews.
2.) convince others of your skills, abilities and qualities.
3.) communicate clearly (finding your focus, focusing the interview conversation).
4.) showcase your skills.
5.) demonstrate the results of your work.
6.) establish the habit of documenting your accomplishments and results.
7.) create a personal data base.
8.) assess your own progress in your career development.
9.) see and evaluate the patterns in your own work preferences and values.
A portfolio is not a resume. A portfolio may contain a resume. A portfolio may be large or
small, a few pages to 20 or more. (Fewer is better.) A portfolio may contain colorful graphics.
Most people use their portfolio in interviews. They do not send them out as if they were resumes.
What is a portfolio?
A portfolio is a visual representation of your abilities, skills, capabilities, knowledge, qualities
- and it represents your potential.
Physically, it's a collection of things - artifacts - tangible materials - that represent workrelated events in your life. (But, always remember that you may have developed skills that are
now work-related while you were playing team sports, while pursuing hobbies or volunteer
activities, or simply pursuing your interests.) The portfolio provides "evidence" of your potential
by demonstrating what you accomplished in the past.
Artifacts
An artifact is any tangible object/item that can represent your accomplishments and qualities.
In the same way that archaeology reconstructs a civilization from artifacts, a portfolio
reconstructs your work life from artifacts. In both cases, the artifacts are fragments that
represent pieces of the whole. Artifacts include:
1.) Work products you've made on the job. You could include reports, computer print
outs, graphics, handouts, published articles, etc.
2.) Something you've created to summarize or "represent" things you have done. It could
include:
a.) a summary of evaluations from a workshop, a bar graph that shows rising sales
figures, or a chart showing your contribution to a team.
b.) a statement of your philosophy, or you could symbolize your philosophy by
using an image or developing a collage of images.
c.) a photo of you accepting an award (particularly if the award is an object
designed to sit on a shelf.)
One size does not fit all. Because those skills, qualities and knowledge can come from so
many different places, even the portfolios of twins could be drastically different from each other.
Self-assessment is important
An effective portfolio is a visual representation of your strengths. This means that you can
present both your skills/abilities (what you can do) and your characteristics/qualities that speak
to work style (how you do it). Thus, you need to know what you do well and what you want to
do. Self-assessment is a necessary first step.
A "learning" portfolio is not a "job" portfolio. The learning portfolio, as instructors and
educational institutions use it, tends to focus on documenting the process of all learning that has
occurred in a limited context. (Students may be encouraged to include early, stumbling efforts
that lead to more accomplished learning, for example, actual exams that range from poor to
excellent, so the student's learning and improvement can be seen.) When you are focusing on
learning, this can be very useful.
However, a "job" portfolio (ideally developed for interviews for a specific category of jobs)
focuses on one's potential for accomplishing specific work. Also called a professional career
portfolio, it assumes that learning has happened. Employers are not interested in the learning
process, but on those skills, abilities, experience, or personal qualities that relate to the specific
work they need to have done.
Not knowing the difference between these two kinds of portfolios and their purpose can be a
problem for students who lug a 5-inch-thick notebook portfolio full of class projects along to an
interview, thinking that their only goal is to prove that they have learned something - anything.
What are the differences?
Portfolio Traits
Learning Portfolio
Career Portfolio
Length
Long (10-100 pages)
Brief (3-20 pages)
Focus / Purpose
Diffuse - purpose to document (all)
learning that has occurred in specific
area, including trail of improvement,
focusing on content and process
Narrow - purpose to
demonstrate that individual
has work-related skills,
abilities, qualities necessary to
fulfill the potential of specific
job
Audience
Potential employers, who
Educators responsible for learning
want to see only the relevant
assessment, who want to see evidence skills, abilities and qualities
of all skills learned, and of related
demonstrating how this
cognitive development
individual will do the job in
question
What to include
All evidence of learning in specific
course(s)
Person who
determines what is
to be included
Educational professional (responsible Owner of portfolio (applying
for educational assessment)
for job)
Form and
appearance of
portfolio
Notebook is usual - can be large, may
contain substantial text, usually
Professional binder or
organized in chronological order,
notebook - should be thin with
Only evidence of skills,
ability and qualities relevant
to specific job
with explanations of relevance to
learner
limited sections of text,
organized by categories
relevant to job, with graphics,
captions, etc.
Clearly, learning portfolios and career (job) portfolios are parallel but different. Either can be
contained within a person's permanent portfolio "collection," but they are not interchangeable. It
is easy to imagine a student drawing examples for a job portfolio from the learning section of a
portfolio collection, but the reverse is less likely.
How do you make a portfolio?
You start by developing a portfolio "collection" that contains all of your artifacts, but, much
like a resume, you want to focus the temporary portfolio you'll use for a specific event, so that all
the items are relevant to your audience and support your purpose.
If your "audience" is an interviewer (for a job), you'll want to focus the "job" portfolio so that
evidence of your ability to do that job is crystal clear. Your "purpose" is to demonstrate that you
have successfully accomplished the tasks represented in the portfolio (which should parallel the
job description), to support your assertion that you can do the job. If your "audience" is your
current boss in your annual review, your "purpose" is to focus that temporary portfolio on
evidence of your good work in that particular job in the past year.
Whenever you make a portfolio (for any specific, temporary event), your choice of artifacts
from your collection will depend on your specific audience and your purpose.