geographers:

getting jobs
planning careers
at work

starting your portfolio collection

What is a portfolio?

"The professional portfolio: think of it as a collection in progress, a place where you store those things related to your training, work experience, contributions, and special accomplishments. It is the place to document all your work-related talents and accomplishments so that you have a good sense of your 'assets.'

As you gain a clear understanding of your lifework story, you'll increase your ability to see your potential and communicate it to others. This newly gained insight can assist you in assessing where you are on your career track."

                                   -from Portfolio Power by Martin Kimeldorf

An effective portfolio is a visual representation of your experience, strengths, abilities, skills - the things you like to do, and do best.

Just as there are different kinds of scrapbooks, there are wide variations in professional portfolios and in where and how they can be used. Here's a starter list of artifacts to consider. Begin your collection with whatever is relevant to YOU.

List of Suggestions

Start with who you are now. Collect all the important information about you. (The Personal Information list is a good basic collection to keep safe and available because it will save you time when you need to verify any of these documents for employment or other reasons.)

Personal Information

• Birth certificate

• Social security card

• Driver's license (copy)

• Any other licenses (including business, professional and technical)

• Health records (incl immunizations)

• Passport/Citizenship papers

Education

• Schools attended (all - elementary, middle school, high school, technical, college, university, private, etc.) school addresses, even names of teachers

• Transcripts (all)

• Diplomas, certificates, CEUs, licenses

• Course descriptions

• Assessments, test results, appraisals, grade reports

• Awards, honors, honor society memberships

• Internships, apprenticeships, special projects

• Workshops, seminars, conferences attended

• Independent learning (things you've learned on your own, or taught yourself)

• Special training (military, private institute, business, etc.)

Activities

• Leadership positions held

• Hobbies or Interests (time devoted to or photos?)

• Participation in team sports

• Service project participation

• Volunteer activities

• Organizations joined (all)

• Public speaking or performances

• Awards

• Travel

Work-Related Activities

• Jobs/Contracts held (title, description of all duties, supervisor, phone, address)

• Performance reports, appraisals

• Accomplishments

• Military training, citations (complete description of duties, activities)

• Awards

• Professional licenses

• Publications, reports, published articles

• Training materials

• Samples of brochures, flyers made

• Attendance records

• Organization charts

• Customer surveys

• Documentation of accomplishments - increases in sales, decrease in claims

• Computer-related items

• Major projects completed/participated in

Personal Qualities or Strengths -- Don't forget the activities that you might be taking for granted! (Especially if you're young or have little formal education or work experience)
For example:

• Strengths (personal qualities that will help you contribute to an employer)

• Teamwork and people skills, problem-solving, budgeting, planning and organization, time management, energy, discipline, motivation, persistence, responsibility, dependability, etc., etc.

• Contributing to your family (teaching, caring for siblings, cooking - all require planning, responsibility, dependability)

• Helping your friends or working on extra-curricular projects (may require teamwork, problem-solving skills, teaching skills, people skills)

• Raising a family and/or running a household (requires budgeting, organization, time management skills, adaptability)

• Keeping fit and healthy; being member of sports team (requires energy, discipline, motivation, persistence, teamwork)

Notice that few of the items on this list are actually physical objects. Others imply the existence of objects, and some are intangibles, like activities or personal qualities. You'll need to bring out the intangibles, by creating something to represent them visually. Having a visual representation of your accomplishment will give you an opportunity to talk about why you have included a particular item and what it represents in terms of your abilities.
 

Collecting Portfolio Artifacts

It's usually best to collect portfolio artifacts while they are being created, but it is possible to create portfolio items that "represent" your past accomplishments after the occasion has passed.

1)  At the time (artifacts made on the job / during the volunteer activity, or hobby)

Reports or research summaries

Training packets

Graphics for annual report

Sales percentage increases

Handouts from training workshops

Customer survey results

Published articles

Attendance records

Computer print-outs

Brochures, flyers

2)  After the fact (representations of artifacts made at the time)

Resume, certificates

Pie charts of sales, bar graphs of savings

Collage of travel experiences

Title page of report written

Photo of award or you accepting award

Symbol that represents your philosophy, with text description

Newspaper clipping describing event you contributed to

Photo of product you helped develop.

Information Ownership

When collecting artifacts to represent your past work accomplishments, include only items which you clearly own, or which you have permission to include. For example, if you have written a report while employed, your employer is normally considered the owner, even if you wrote it as a contract employee. Be aware that you should not be divulging proprietary information of any kind. Be especially wary of showing any information relating to sales figures, computer programming or business development plans.

If you are unable to get permission to use examples of your work, you still should be able to (creatively) demonstrate your contributions. For example, try converting your sales figures into percentages. ("My team increased the sales of our division by 37 percent." or "My program led to a 40 percent increase in customer satisfaction, according to our annual customer survey.") Visually, the figures could be represented by a pie chart, or bar graph, as long as it is not possible for a reader to take proprietary information from your display. You may be able to scale down a copy of your example to the point that the figures are not readable, but the concept of your accomplishment is visible. Or, perhaps, you could remove or obscure the actual data.

Students have a distinct advantage in this situation, because their writing, research and data manipulation samples from classes are clearly owned by them. However, students must be aware that they cannot freely make use of work they have completed during an internship or period of employment, unles they have written permission from that employer.
 

Geographers:

getting jobs
planning careers
at work