Portfolio

When Your Resume Just Isn't Enough – Other Important Tools Of The Job Search

iStock | BRO Vector

When it comes to looking for a job, a lot of emphasis is given to the big three – your resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile are some of the most essential pieces of your search. But job seekers have many other tools at their disposal. Each job process has its own challenges but are united by one thing, when you’re in the room you’re a salesman and the product you’re selling is you. Elevating yourself over other candidates is the ultimate upsell.

Other than your dazzling personality and confidence, when you want to leverage more than the big three, you may consider adding the following arrows to your quiver:

  • References ListsReferences matter. If references aren’t requested during the application process, they are optional. It is to your advantage to have a list of references ready and waiting to go. Your references are professionals you’ve worked with or for and will attest you’re a find.  Having people advocate on your behalf means something and the fact you’ve volunteered to provide references does too. Be assured, recruiters and hiring authorities often call your references so be sure you’ve had a conversation with them in advance so you know what they’re going to say – don’t assume a former boss or co-worker will give you a gushing review. Make sure.

  • Reference Letters – Not to be confused with a list of references as described above, this a hard copy letter you have on your person that you can hand over in a job interview. That means you have to ask a potential reference to sing your praises in writing. That’s a big ask but if you can get it, that says a great deal about your character and reduces the recruiter or hiring manager’s task list (which is appreciated, remembered, and factored in). In the US, reference letters aren’t prevalent among professionals, but in Europe, for example, there are places a written reference letter is common, even expected, so if you want to work overseas you may want to consider going this route.

  • Portfolios Portfolios are a must for creatives, such as graphic designers. It’s essential to show your best work in the best ways. You should consider creating a traditional portfolio you take into the interview room and a digital version. This is another opportunity to expose recruiters and hiring managers to your work and skill sets. It’s also to your advantage to exploit the best aspects of both formats – traditional and digital. Naturally each version should include a mix of your best and most recent work, but the formats are different so use their unique strengths to your advantage. If you want to take a deeper dive on portfolios check out this past article, “The Portfolio.”

  • Presentations – During the course of your professional career, you may have worked on a special project, executive presentation, or some act of gravity that had a direct positive impact on achieving whatever goals had been set out. If you have metrics to support that narrative, any related documentation can be an asset. If, for example, you have professional proposal (e.g., business proposal for funding), a power point (e.g., marketing strategy), audio/video recordings, lectures, etc., that may advance your candidacy nobody will fault you for using them to demonstrate the value you will add to whatever role you pursue.

  • Work Samples – If you’re in a field that makes stuff, like product design and development, you may have played an integral in producing goods that amount to three dimensional portfolios. Maybe you’re an architect with a model of one of your designs that was built, a product developer who created or worked on a best-selling product, or are in specialty industry like robotics (yes, robotics) or 3-D printing (most recently projected to be a $67 billion year industry by 2028) and have impressive toys to share with the class. Use it all.

  • Day One Plan: This is the casino special. A high risk, high reward special assignment you undertake just for this employer to present at your interview.  You create, for example, a plan specific to the role you’re trying to get that details what you would do on Day One and beyond. Think 30-day, 60-day, 90-plans. Whatever you can legitimately represent as a realistic pathway given the limited information you may have. You can’t know the inner workings or strategic plans of a potential employer and to assume that position would be overplaying your hand. What you can offer is the methodology you will employ in the role, the tools you will you use to measure your progress, and the benchmarks (e.g., KPIs) you hope to achieve.



Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Making A Portfolio That Pops – Showing Off Your Creativity As A Job Hunter

iStockphoto.com | FoxysGraphic

iStockphoto.com | FoxysGraphic

If you are a designer, artist, photographer, model, or advertiser you rely on your portfolio – a case, binder, or notebook showcasing your most accomplished work. For “creatives”, the portfolio is a traditional and essential tool used during the course of their work and when a job search is on.

Contemporary portfolios have expanded to include the digital domain, social media networks, and can also be an optional but effective differentiator among “non-creative” professionals. Portfolios give you an additional opportunity to in a deeper way.

No matter who you are, or whether you have a traditional portfolio, a digital one, or both, it needs to be polished and professional. Here are some guidelines for you to consider

TRADITIONAL (I.E., PHYSICAL) PORTFOLIOS

  • For creatives, especially designers of every sort, the physical portfolio is the first choice he or she makes that reveals his or her professionalism and style. The portfolio itself can be just as beautiful as what is inside and makes just as strong of a statement about the person carrying it. Choose a portfolio that feels like a natural extension of who you are.

  • Everything must be important. With a traditional portfolio, you are limited by physics. Your case can only hold so much. This forces you to formulate a “portfolio strategy” to compile and assemble the work in a way that dovetails your job/career goal.

  • Choose your best work by committee. Enlist some trustworthy opinions to select a cross-section of your most spectacular and, if branded, recognizable work. A range of perspectives will temper self-criticism and parental bias alike.

  • Tell The Greatest Story Ever Told, Which is You. Organize your best work so it tells the story of you -- your unique perspective, your distinctive style, your inspiring journey, and your growth -- in whatever your field of endeavor.

 

DIGITAL PORTFOLIOS

If you’re already in a profession that requires hauling around a physical portfolio, you already have a digital portfolio as well, which, while necessary, have advantages and disadvantages.

Disadvantages:

  • Creatives like to be in-person when presenting work so they can act as its interpreter and chief advocate. It’s natural to have a pure vision of how your portfolio should be perceived, something is often lost during the transformation of that vision into the material.

  •  Online, you have no limits – and that is not necessarily good. It is tempting to include too much. Be cautious, too much information can lose the focus and achievement-oriented result you get with a portfolio-as-story approach.

  •  There is no substitute for the real thing. You can study photographs of the Sistine Chapel for years and it will not prepare you to see the real thing. A digital scan may not “pop” off the page like a printed piece.

Advantages:

  • The digital portfolio is on a website that is another opportunity for you to show off your skills in an organic way. Like the traditional portfolio, the website says just as much about you as its content. 

  • Anywhere, anytime. You can pull up a digital portfolio on any device to show to anyone at any time for instant self-promotion. The link to your work can be easily and widely distributed. No matter how great your 100-year old leather Tuscan case may be, it does not fit in your pocket.

  •  Your digital portfolio is a companion to your traditional one. This is yet another opportunity to tell you story. You can use the same work, but presented to take advantage of the medium, or different work as long as it follows your overall portfolio strategy.

  •  Links to your portfolio are often required on job applications. Online job applications for creative roles typically ask for links to any creative work you have done, so a professional well -organized online portfolio is a must.

  •  More and more creatives design in, and for, the digital world. A traditional portfolio isn’t as strong of an advantage for a game developer as a visual artist. For design that lives and breathes in the digital world, the digital portfolio becomes the primary channel of promotion.

 

PORTFOLIOS FOR NON-CREATIVE PROFESSIONALS

Portfolios are not considered required tools of the trade for professionals in non-creative roles, and it would seem awkward if a job candidate interviewing for an accounting position pulled out an oversized case and started highlighting their most complex Excel spreadsheets.

This doesn’t seem fair. Most people are limited to a cover letter and resume. However, in our contemporary online job market two paradigm shifts have taken place, 1) the now standard use of Automatic Tracking Systems, and 2) the rise of professional social media networks, notably LinkedIn.

  • It’s not a portfolio, but it’s portfolio-esque. The additional layer of the application process swept in by the use of Automatic Tracking Systems, often includes fields that allow anyone, not just Creatives, to include links to external websites, something you can’t do on a resume.

  •  LinkedIn has expanded the resume. Perhaps your local paper wrote an article about you, or you’re an engineer with several high-profile patent applications. Maybe you have a new certification, or documents you wrote for which you won an award. You can include all of these things on your LinkedIn profile, which every recruiter and hiring manger uses.

  •  Social media networks have made every professional with a digital footprint a portfolio. Like it or not, recruiters and hiring managers don’t just stick with LinkedIn. Every social media account, professional or personal, is fair game. This once again gives you an opportunity to showcase professional accomplishments that can’t be communicated, for one reason or another, through a cover letter or resume.


Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercareerstrategies.com.

How Should I Organize My Work Portfolio?

iStockphoto.com | fotostok_pdv

iStockphoto.com | fotostok_pdv

 

A portfolio of work can be an essential job interview tool for graphic designers and other creatives. But even if you're not a creative professional, a well-designed portfolio can be a fantastic way to highlight your skills and achievements.

In case you're not familiar with the concept of a portfolio, it's usually a case, binder, or notebook containing pieces of your work. Think of it as a browse-able brochure of what you have to offer to an employer.

Perhaps you're a marketing professional and you've had an article written about you in the local paper. Or you're an engineer with several high-profile patent applications. Maybe you've written documents that show off your writing skills. Include these!

Your portfolio needs to be polished and professional. Here are some guidelines for you to consider when assembling one.

  • Make it clean - Your portfolio should consist of your best designed work, arranged neatly and well formatted. Mount the items on the page.
     

  • Make your work stand out - Select pieces that best show off your creativity and intellect.
     

  • Make it tell a story - Organize your work in such a way that it says something about the progression of what the reader is looking at.  Group like with like; if your work has improved as time has progressed, organize your work in such as way that it shows how you've grown.
     

  • Make it shine - Pick your best pieces. Get an outside opinion on what is your best work - not everybody may agree with your personal opinions, and it's easy to become attached to your favorites. And if you've worked on recognizable brands, the inclusion of these projects will usually rise to the top.
     

  • Make it available online - A digital portfolio is great because you can always pull it up when you're sitting in a hiring manager's office. An online training module you designed can come alive when presented in multimedia.


Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.