Your Ultimate Guide to Creating a Career Portfolio

Chances are, you already have a resume and curriculum vitae living somewhere in your digital space. You have learned to create these during your first internship, anyway. You know how important they are. But more than these two essential documents, a fresh graduate should also understand the benefits of having a career portfolio.

What is a career portfolio?

Like that of a resume, the goal of a career portfolio is to show your future employer your capabilities as an employee. However, the latter is a lot more extensive than the former. It provides specific examples of a job seeker's work output and experience. It certainly makes you stand out from the rest of the candidates. If you do not know how to create a career portfolio, don't worry! Here is a simple guide of everything you need to know.

1. Include career-relevant documents

What does one put in a career portfolio, exactly? Basically, you should include every document relevant to your industry. Specifically, these are the following documents you should incorporate:

a. Resume
A resume will summarize your professional experiences. If the hiring manager does not find the time to review your whole career portfolio, s/he will refer to this to assess your capabilities. Have two copies of your resume in your career portfolio so that you can easily give a copy to the hiring manager when s/he asks for it.

b. Certificates
Insert copies of all important certificates in your career portfolio. This includes your diplomas, certifications and licenses, or certificates from trainings and conferences.

c. Awards
Do mention if you have any achievements or special awards relevant to your industry. If you graduated with honors, add them to your career portfolio. Board topnotchers may also add their recognition to their portfolio, as well as employee-of-the month awards. Even athletic recognitions will be helpful for your career portfolio!

d. Letters of recommendation
Generally, letters of recommendation vary from job to job. Former employers, professors or instructors are good sources of these.

e. Work samples
Ideally, your work samples will take up the bulk of your career portfolio. But, this is not to say that you should just fill your portfolio with random work samples. Filter your work samples carefully and make sure to choose your best works. If you have numerous outputs, look through your most recent works. You can also include the feedback you received from your employers or instructors if you want to.

2. Know the best platform

Nowadays, a career portfolio does not always mean a physical copy of everything you need. It can also be in the form of a website. If you are applying for an online job, then you might want to have a carefully curated digital career portfolio. On the other hand, some hiring managers are still traditional and prefer having something to hold in their hands. Know which platform is the best for the company you are applying for.

If you are creating a digital career portfolio, beware of the visibility of your personal information. While work samples are generally safe to share to the public, a resume with your contact details should remain between you and your employer.

3. Make your career portfolio visually pleasing

Your career portfolio should have a clean format and a neat front page. If you can add photos to make your career portfolio interesting, do so. Many times, photos will be able to explain your experiences better than anything. Having an eye for design is certainly a plus point, especially in this generation where most people are visual learners. If you are presenting a digital career portfolio, you must make sure it is appealing. Do not bombard it with blinding colors and fonts that are difficult to read. If you are not confident with your design skills, consider asking help from a layout artist.

4. Show off team projects you worked on

Having work samples that show off your capabilities as an individual is great. Presenting your contribution in a team effort is another thing. Employers will love to see a team player, and having actual output on your career portfolio will say a lot about you as compared to merely stating that you are a team player in your resume. To make this part even more powerful, you can briefly explain how you contributed to the project. State if you took on any roles and explain how you used the roles to further the project.

5. Organize your documents

For the sake of your hiring manager, organize your career portfolio according to the importance of the documents. It is important to have your resume in front, so that s/he can refer to this easily. For physical career portfolios, a table of contents would be a nice addition and a great help for the hiring manager. Digital career portfolios, on the other hand, should have proper menus and categories so that viewers can easily navigate through the website. If possible, add a password to documents with personal or confidential information and only let the hiring manager know about the password.

6. Personalize your career portfolio

Have a master copy of your career portfolio which has everything you need. Then, before you apply for a job, remove everything irrelevant to the company you are applying for. Make sure to showcase a career portfolio that will make your target company want to hire you to create the same output for them. Also, always check your career portfolio before you hand them to the hiring manager. You never know when you will have to correct some errors in their content.

7. Assess your career development

Do know that having a career portfolio is not only helpful for your job hunt. It also lets you assess your career development as you add more and more to it. Even when you are already hired, review your career portfolio from time to time and see what you can add and remove from it. The more changes you make means the more improvements you are having in your career.

Having a career portfolio definitely makes you a strong candidate. Follow all these tips and you will have an easier time curating one for yourself.

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SEEK Asia is the extension of the Australian Securities Exchange listed company called SEEK. The company's purpose is to help improve people's lives through a better career. SEEK Asia's database consist of over 500,000 corporate hirers and over 24 million candidates.

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