On your career journey we can all use a little extra guidance.

PORTFOLIO BENEFITS

A portfolio is an opportunity for professionals to demonstrate their worth to the organization using documented evidence of performance. By using tangible samples of your work, you can give clients a better idea of your competencies, the quality of your work, and the value you add for an employer. Not only does a career portfolio communicate your competencies, but it also serves as substantial evidence of your abilities in real-life situations. In a typical job interview situation, candidates are asked to tell what they know and what they can do. Portfolios make it easier for an employer to assess your abilities, as it showcases them in a tangible way, using actual accomplishments.

PORTFOLIO SERVE AS A

• Tangible means to demonstrate your value to potential employers or clients
• Tool to market yourself
• Rationale for getting selected for key projects or to demonstrate your value to current employers
• Tool to assess and differentiate job candidates
• Basis for a meaningful interview

PORTFOLIO AS A SELF ASSESSMENT

As a Resume/CV professional, you know the importance of lifelong learning and professional development. A career portfolio can be used to assess your clients learning and professional development in several ways. One way to use a portfolio is as a means to reflect on personal learning goals and to assess your progress in reaching those goals. Reflecting on your own work is an important part of your professional development. Although doing high-level thinking about our own development is important, reviewing specific examples is even better. It is especially important to look at actual products and share them with your professional colleagues for feedback and ideas.

Tracking competency trends in their industry can help them to take time to reflect on their knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies and benchmark them against prevailing industry practices. For example, your dream job may require that you have knowledge of instructional design. They may want to take a course or workshop on that topic and then produce a portfolio item that demonstrates your competency in that area. This type of personal assessment can be very valuable in your career development.

PORTFOLIO BENEFITS

A portfolio is an opportunity for professionals to demonstrate their worth to the organization using documented evidence of performance. By using tangible samples of your work, you can give clients a better idea of your competencies, the quality of your work, and the value you add for an employer. Not only does a career portfolio communicate your competencies, but it also serves as substantial evidence of your abilities in real-life situations. In a typical job interview situation, candidates are asked to tell what they know and what they can do. Portfolios make it easier for an employer to assess your abilities, as it showcases them in a tangible way, using actual accomplishments.

HOW YOUR CLIENT CAN USE THEIR PORTFOLIO

As A Job Seeker

• As a way to get an interview
• Include information in application packet (Resume/CV link)
• As a way to focus the interview discussion on your competencies
• During a job interview to illustrate your responses
• As an interview follow-up
• Send a sample of a project that they asked about

As An Employee

• As documentation for your performance appraisal
• As a record of your achievements
• To let your boss’s boss know what you are accomplishing
• As a visible rationale to get choice projects or assignments
• As an example of knowledge management, a subtle way to market yourself
• To demonstrate your value to the organization for pay raises