WACE lunch at UW, Career Portfolios
- Tuesday, March 19, 2002
Here
are the collected comments and suggestions from participants at the WACE luncheon.
I collected all that I could, so if you have more, or recognize a comment
that I've mangled, please let me know and I can fix it and/or add to it. (Note:
it's a long page, but everything is right here.)
-
How do YOU define a career portfolio??
A career portfolio:
-
is
a compilation of materials
-
can
be a visual representation of skills, achievements and recognitions that
demonstrates the individual’s expertise. It can act as a means of demonstrating
an individual’s career goals.
-
is
documentation used in support of job search and/or to reflect progress in
career. Would include resume and other things, such as work samples, lists
of presentations, etc. – hard copy or electronic
-
is
a collection of examples, artifacts, work products that demonstrate skills
and strengths applicable to career goals and objectives
-
is
a file of stuff (artifacts)
-
is
a way to make examples of skills (expertise) concrete
-
consists
of visual representations
- is documentation
of progress made
- can be hard
copy or electronic
- is
a collection of information that amplifies the resume. May demonstrate a particular skill:
writing sample, art work, etc.
- is
a collection of “artifacts” that shows one’s level of achievement or mastery
of certain knowledge and skills and showcases talents and abilities – a portfolio
is a collection of these artifacts.
Purposes & Uses of Portfolios
Portfolios can be used:
-
for
entry into school (example of an MBA program, to show goals)
-
for
career development over time
- to
make skills concrete
- as
a record of outcomes
- as
an aid to self-reflection
- in
job interviews
- to
display one's work
-
as
a med(?) learning portfolio, bridging to career (also may be degree requirement)
- for
assessment of learning
- from
employer’s perspective – useful to employers forlearning about candidate in
relation to job
- What potential do you see in the idea
of students preparing career portfolios for interviews??
Plusses
-
They
encourage reflection, and review of past experiences/accomplishments.
-
They
help students identify sample representations of their accomplishments.
-
Students
can focus on what is most crucial for the employer to know about them.
-
Portfolios
provide the “picture is worth a 1,000 words” examples.
-
For
quiet students, it gives them an opportunity to be equally competitive in
proof by example.
-
They
help students prepare for behavioral questions.
-
Portfolios
prompt students to assemble samples of their work.
-
They
help force students to focus on their strengths, measured against what is
necessary for the position. They help build students' confidence in what
their strengths are and their ability to express it in the interview.
-
Preparing
a portfolio in anticipation of an interview helps students reflect on the
relationship of their past experiences and accomplishments to future goals.
-
Portfolios
are good for reviewing and reflecting on examples to use in behavioral interviews.
-
They
are especially useful when showing examples, if the students have reviewed
and related the items that are most pertinent.
-
Portfolios
r eally facilitate telling stories.
-
They
take the emphasis off “the interview.”
-
they're
unique/new (and help a candidate stand out).
-
Portfolios
show results.
-
They
help students discussing their qualifications with employers.
-
They
h elp students prepare (and reflect and focus) on their strengths/accomplishments.
-
Portfolios
give tangible evidence that demonstrate qualifications.
-
The
learning style of interviewer may be important (and a portfolio may
resonate with a visual-learning interviewer).
-
By
preparing the portfolio, a student will be better prepared to answer questions
with specific examples.
-
Portfolios
offer a good way to show results.
- Portfolios
can appeal to “visual” and “auditory” oriented interviewers
.
- Portfolios
can increase student confidence going into interviews.
-
Students
can rely too much on a portfolio.
-
The
newness of portfolios can be a problem, in that a student may have to explain
the purpose of a portfolio.
-
To
be effective, students have to know how to present portfolios effectively.
Question
– How much is it really helping and not distracting (in a job interview)?
- What do Recruiters want to see in portfolios??
(as perceived
by college career counselors)
They want:
-
to see how it relates to the job.
- brief
representations that relate to the position they are hiring for.
- solid
examples of skills and projects related to their need.
- things
that clearly and directly relate to the job or organization. Less is better – because it shows the ability to discern.
- to see organization, and initiative
in going the extra mile.
-
writing
samples, work projects, pictures of 3-D projects, graphs, results, outcomes.
-
writing
samples or other projects.
- outcomes.
- specific skills to be clearly demonstrated.
- portfolios that confirm
that the students actually did what they say they did.
Also:
- Many
recruiters balk at the term “portfolio,” perhaps because they don’t want to
be overwhelmed with pages and pages to review. And yet if you avoid the term
“portfolio” and talk about the kinds of documents inside, employers express
a lot more interest, which makes sense, given how many of them are using behavioral
interviewing techniques.
- Portfolios seem like
a logical extension of behavioral interviews.
- The timing has to be right (to
show a portfolio).
- Brief
is best and the portfolio has to contain material pertinent to recruiters'
needs.
- Portfolios can be used effectively at informational interviews.
- There's a perception that portfolios are used in graphics-oriented fields,
like art, photography, etc.
- Portfolios
are integral to story telling and concept-of-proof.
- Interviews
where portfolios are introduced can become more of a conversation between
peers.
-
Think
of the portfolio in terms of the professional version of a scrapbook.
-
Provide
guidelines of what to include in a portfolio.
-
Have
sample portfolios available for students to see.
-
Encourage
students to keep artifacts that can be used in a portfolio.
-
Teach
students how to organize their materials and how to write captions to describe
the material included.
-
Offer
to preview and critique the portfolio.
-
Need
to coach – how are we going to help students develop the ability to use
portfolios?
-
Practice
is important - both in preparing and presenting portfolios.
-
Need
to develop interviewing techniques that will help students better use
portfolios.
-
Our
role is to help students understand the newness of portfolios.
-
Help
students to articulate their skills.
-
We
need to tie portfolios in with skills – to organize portfolios around skills.
-
Bottom
line for portfolios (in interviews) is their relevance to the position.
-
Help
students overcome the "Reflection Challenge" – morphing the mission
statement into a career mission statement (What is the relevance of this
to career goals?)
-
Understand
and be able to tie into SCANS report skills – because some high school students
are already doing web portfolios using SCAN skills as their standard.
How do they support and relate to skills gained in college?
-
Catching
the interest of young students hard to do (competing with hormones).
-
We
need to be showing students how to use portfolios in interviews (and avoid
the danger of misuse).
-
We
should be teaching students to articulate their skills.
-
Getting
students to reflect is difficult, especially solo, but it may be easier
in groups.
- What other questions should we be asking?
-
Do
students want this? How do they see it?
-
We
see the importance of students seeing their accomplishment, but what
do the employers think of this? (And, do they want
it)?
-
We
need to be talking more to employers, to find out what they do want
in portfolios.
-
Get
more employer input – what do they want to see?
-
What
else can we call this? (portfolio
terminology seems part of the problem)
-
How
do we explain better to employers how they can gain from this?
ETC
- Other points that emerged in the discussion.
There
are more "running start" students now and enforced major choices
may be happening too early for them.
Portfolios
may evolve developmentally.
It's
interesting that very few of us have developed our own career portfolios
- And,
not a whole lot more of us are working with students on portfolios, either.
Who
else is using portfolio systems?
Cascadia working with portfolios college-wide – are requiring
e-portfolios, in which students
can select which part is accessible to others.
( http://www.cascadia.ctc.edu/teaching_and_learning/learning_experience.htm
)
WOIS
has portfolio information
http://www.wa.gov/esd/lmea/soicc/career.htm
http://www.wa.gov/esd/lmea/soicc/prtfolio.htm
Univ of Oregon – Portfolio – self-select, strengths, values, etc can
be compiled into resume
Portfolio Academy (5-school
consortium)
http://www.portfolioacademy.com/
Kalamazoo - AAHE site with search engine
http://www.kzoo.edu/pfolio/
AAHE
Portfolio Clearinghouse
http://www.aahe.org/teaching/portfolio_db.htm
Fla St U – went to employers and asked what skills are
you looking for?
http://www.career-recruit.fsu.edu/careerportfolio/enter/login.html
(Portfolio Home)
http://www.career-recruit.fsu.edu/careerportfolio/enter/intro/step1.html (1
of 10 steps to portfolio)
http://www.career.fsu.edu/
(Career Center Home)
Also mentioned
at the meeting:
Pinpoint
– Applied Insight
http://www.appliedinsight.com/
CareerWay
http://www.careerway.com/counanduniv.asp
Background
of Kate's earlier interviews with recruiters
What are Career Portfolios?
And, can the concept help in an interview?
To get some objective information on the use of career portfolios in interviews,
I started asking questions of recruiters last year. My results are below this
summary that also describes how that led me to propose this WACE program.
(Or, go directly to the Results.)
My main discovery was that collge career development folks and recruiters
seemed to be talking about different things. Most recruiters I spoke with
at first said that career portfolios wouldn’t be useful to them in interviews.
They said the ones they had seen were awful – two inches thick and full of
original coursework, complete with errors marked and grades on them. Some
recruiters said that portfolios would distract from their main goal of finding
out what the students’ skills were, and others said portfolios would get in
the way of the interaction they wanted, to see if the students “fit” the profile
they were looking for. So far, only one or two out of nearly a dozen recruiters
have seen intrinsic value in student portfolios, and mostly it was the potential
they saw in the idea, rather than in their actual utility.
From career people, my impression of career portfolios is totally different,
that they offer a practical way for students to demonstrate their skills and
abilities relevant to particular kinds of work. While I’ve interpreted that
difference as a problem of meaning and terminology, I wanted to get back to
the source, to ask how we all define portfolios, and what makes them good
- as in, USEFUL.
So, my questions for the WACE program came down to this – is there potential
in the concept of students preparing career portfolios for interviews? If
so, what do recruiters want to see in portfolios? And, what can college career
counselors do to help students with this? To get the WACE discussion started
on the 19th, I asked for thoughts on the following four questions:
-
How do YOU define a career portfolio?
-
What potential do you see in the idea of students preparing
career portfolios for interviews?
-
What do recruiters want to see in career portfolios?
-
And, what can college career counselors do to help students
with this?
I got one reply and added it into the comments and suggestions that we compiled
at the meeting (listed above).
Results
Reactions on career portfolios from just a few recruiters at Spring Career
Fair, 2001, where companies were seeking primarily Liberal Arts and Business
majors (recruiter names removed and company names changed to descriptions)
Government Agency Reps - Both recruiters say that portfolios could be useful
- for example, to show analysis of data, like a spread sheet, and to be able
to talk about why they used this method vs. that method, and so on. One also
said that he was asked for writing samples as part of his interview process,
because what they do is analyze figures and write reports. Both liked the
idea of portfolios.
Retail Company Manager - said that portfolios could be useful, if students
focus on projects that had impact - What were the results? What could they
DO with the analysis or the problem solved?
Insurance Company - said that she’s really interested in portfolios and would
like to see more on it. As with many, she wasn’t sure what I meant when I
said "portfolios," but when I explained, she thought it would be
a wonderful help for someone interviewing for a job, and would make them less
nervous because they would have something to focus on.
Retail Company - says he’s never seen a student bring in a portfolio, but
he uses portfolios all the time himself. He says to tell the students not
to throw away anything. He says he has to do P&L statements in jobs and on
projects, and he also collects the positive comments others make about him.
He does a business plan for each job he interviews for within the company
to demonstrate what he could do in that job. He says that lots of others in
his company use portfolios too.
Financial Services Company – at first said that a portfolio wouldn’t help
in an interview, but after I explained what I meant by portfolios, said it
would be very useful if a student knew what job skills were needed and showed
that they had them. For example, an Excel spread sheet or an Access database,
and explained the analyses they’ve done with the data. She said, “Let me see
what they DID, because I know they can do it again.” Skills she focuses on
are teamwork and being part of work groups. It is important to have been part
of project groups in classes, and to be able to talk about how they divided
up the work and how they put the results together. Says she is looking for
behavioral style. Says she has never seen students bring a portfolio, but
she has seen professionals use them for evaluations and projects. Says would
be really useful to show ability to work in teams and to do projects.
Financial Services Company - just wasn’t interested in hearing about portfolios
and said, “Nah, we want to talk with them one-on-one. It’s the way they relate
that’s important.”
Government Agency - said that portfolios wouldn’t fit into the interview
because he wants to hear about the student’s accomplishments, so I asked if
a student wanted a job in sales and had had an internship in sales and had
graphed his sales over the course of his work, would that be useful? He said
yes, very useful, so I asked if a student had a page on his/her ability to
use languages, and do accounting and use computers (the skills they look for,
including the ability to organize) and if they put that together in a portfolio,
would that be of use, and he got much more interested and said yes that would
be someone they would really want to look at. (He seemed at first to think
that portfolios would be useless, but as we talked he came around and said
that if a student organized that kind of information about him/herself, he’d
be really interested in that student.)
Later, I talked with a recruiter from another production-and-retail company
who says that it’s important for students to make the connection between what
they want to do and the education they’re getting (Are they getting what they
need? He says they need some idea of their career path and suggested they
take a course in career development before they graduate. Says they should
be able to use the online recruiting system effectively.
My conclusion from all this is that quite a few recruiters don’t know what
portfolios are/can be. They have much the same misconceptions that many students
do about what portfolios are. Only a very few recruiters have seen students
use them and what they saw were not usually impressive. Very few have ever
seen them used in interviews, although a very few have used themselves or
see them being used internally within their companies.
Kate Duttro
April 6, 2001
Also
see Kate's about-to-be-revised Web pages on Portfolio
Resources.
http://depts.washington.edu/geogjobs/Careers/pfolresources.html
P.S.
This page is now coming up on the first page of a Google search for "career
portfolios."