If you’ve read the post “What is Professional Portfolio?” and have an interest in creating a hard-copy (vs. a web-based) portfolio for your next job interview, here are a few tips to get you started:
1) Schedule yourself several hours to devote your undivided attention to getting your portfolio organized.
2) Collect evidence of your skills and accomplishments from experiences such as: employment, training, professional development activities, education, leadership, and community involvement. The items should all be relevant to your career goal. Recent examples are best. See the post “What is a Professional Portfolio?” for a list of specific items you could choose to include.
3) Sort your pictures and documents into categories; education, related work experience, skills, special projects, professional development, leadership activities, community involvement, etc.
4) The most effective portfolios are those that are targeted to the job or industry being sought, so take time to analyze your “audience.” Use a job description as a filter to sort your items into relevant skills/experience categories.
5) Once you’ve gathered all of your documents, you are ready to begin the process of putting it all together…
Make color copies of all the original documents on high quality paper
Invest in a faux leather/leather 3 ring binder, clear (and non-reflective) page protectors, and divider pages with tabs
Create typewritten labels for each tabbed section
Create a table of contents page that corresponds with the tabbed sections
Put your documents in the page protectors and include in the appropriate order/tabbed section with the table of contents at the beginning
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Final Tips: Organize the sections in a way that includes the most relevant information at the beginning of the binder with less important sections toward the back. Feel free to use some creativity, but don’t let your portfolio take on a scrapbook feel – keep it professional and not too cutesy.