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.)

  1. 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

  1. 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.

Minuses

  • 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)?

 

  1. What do Recruiters want to see in portfolios??  (as perceived by college career counselors)
    They w
    ant:
  • 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.

Results of Kate's interviews with several recruiters. 

 

  1. What can College Career Counselors do to help students with this??
  • 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.

  1. 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:

  1. How do YOU define a career portfolio?
  2. What potential do you see in the idea of students preparing career portfolios for interviews?
  3. What do recruiters want to see in career portfolios?
  4. 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."