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Virtual Career Center
Job Search Strategy: Building
A Career Portfolio
A portfolio is a portable and
purposeful collection of evidence
of your skills and accomplishments
presented in an order and format
to achieve a particular objective.
Portfolios can demonstrate and
market transferable skills, refresh
your memory about activities, reduce
interview anxiety, communicate high
levels of interest and preparation,
and reduce concern about falsification
of credentials. Here we present
a few tips for building an effective
career portfolio.
Define your objective
What are you hoping to accomplish
with the portfolio?
Complete a personal career
analysis
What do you want to showcase?
Analyze what you've done and brainstorm
skills (technical/transferable),
outcomes, and tangible evidence
of these accomplishments. The tangible
evidence can include the resume,
formal letters of reference, informal
letters from clients and/or colleagues,
photographs, computer files, disks,
video, credentials, statement of
philosophy, event flyers, agendas,
etc. Sometimes "evidence" may need
to be crafted or recreated when
nothing exists to represent a real
competency.
As you move on in your career,
archive evidence into a working
folio.
Consider the other person's
point of view
Related to the objective you selected
earlier, what is going to be important
to the reader?
Categorize and prioritize
Pull the information together and
connect each of the items in your
portfolio with the reader. Make
each item relevant through the use
of captions, section introductions,
the main introduction and closing.
You can organize your portfolio
chronologically, functionally, or
around a theme.
Use a presentation that works
for you, your audience and the items
you are trying to include. Examples:
standard report packets from any
office store, one of the smaller
3-ring binders, tape or spiral binding
from a copy shop, a complete Web
presentation or a PowerPoint presentation.
Evaluate the portfolio
Evaluate your portfolio related
to eye appeal, consistency, organization
and flow, documented character traits,
documented technical skills, wording,
grammar, clarity, and whether you
met your goals.
Use the portfolio in the job
search
Reference the portfolio in the resume,
bring it to the interview and leave
a copy. If you can't leave a copy,
offer to leave it for a few days.
How can
the Alumni Career Center help you
analyze or display examples of your
work?
- Professional
Development Workshops
- We conduct workshops on many
topics related to preparing for
and implementing a successful
job search strategy. Fees for
individual workshops are $25 and
all workshops are offered at no
additional charge as a feature
of the Alumni Career Center's
Comprehensive
Service Package. See the calendar
at www.uiaa.org/calendar
for details.
- Career
Advising - We can assist
you with development of a new
portfolio, review of an existing
career portfolio, and a strategy
for how to best to incorporate
it into your job search or career.
Career advising is a feature of
the Alumni Career Center's Comprehensive
Service Package, available
for an annual fee of $160 to Alumni
Association members. An option
to meet one time for one hour
with a career adviser for a $40
fee is also available to Alumni
Association members.
- Portfolio
Power by Martin Kimeldorf
Can't find the resources you are
looking for? Have questions about
the Alumni Career Center services?
University of Illinois alumni can
ask our career experts for help
with job searching and career questions.
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