You May Need a Public Portfolio Even If You Are Not a Freelancer or “creative”.
Even if you are not a freelancer or “creator,” you will probably find it helpful to have a page that describes your accomplishments, not just your work history. If you ever want to give a talk, get a quote in an article, work on the side, start a business, or just get a job offer, then you need a public portfolio.
Bare minimum solution
Do this experiment. Get a friend to do a quick Google search for your greatest work accomplishments and your contact information from scratch. If they can’t find both in thirty seconds, you need to fix the problem.
The quickest solution is a public LinkedIn profile. Make sure it describes the job you are most proud of, not just a list of past jobs. Refresh your profile picture, include your email address (or a disposable address that you check regularly), and check your settings to make sure you’re searchable.
Go beyond LinkedIn
A public resume is a great start. But resumes look the same. They’re dry, complete, and focus on job titles rather than accomplishments. You need a portfolio too, even if you work in a traditional full-time job.
In fact, the less “creative” your line of work and the less your colleagues have a portfolio, the more yours will stand out. It doesn’t have to be a gimmick or win any design awards. You just need to draw people’s attention to your best work. This is important if:
- You’re in a crowded field
- You have impressive clients
- Your best job is not related to your current job or your day-to-day job
- It’s hard to explain what you do or do
- Your work can be visualized
Whatever you do, try to break it down into projects. If you are a sysadmin, list the incidents that you handled well, or present each area of expertise as a service you provide. If you are cleaning houses, ask your favorite client if you can photograph their cleaned house. If your work contributes to larger team projects, show why those projects need you. Imagine yourself as a specialist, not a product.
Consider your audience
Who do you want to attract: new clients? Audience? Are reporters looking for an expert source? What do you want them to know about you? This is something that your portfolio can answer better than a resume (which, by the way, doesn’t fool anyone with all these accent marks).
If you’re looking for clients, highlight the job you want to pursue. It may be the job you enjoy the most, or it may be the one that makes the most money. You can list your most impressive past clients if you think it will build confidence in the future clients you want, but not if you think it will scare them off.
If you want to look impressive to reporters, conference organizers, or others who can consult you as an expert, share your highest level work, even if it wasn’t your best.
If you are doing your work for the general public and would like to help them find more of it, please indicate where it can usually be found. In each entry, point to other similar entries.
Be sure to show the full range of your work – if you want more. Since this is not a resume, no one is looking for gaps in the job, so you can skip whatever you want. Show only projects that will help you get more work that you really want (or need) to do.
Use simple tools
It doesn’t take much to make a portfolio. In fact, you should choose the simplest solution that suits your needs. Because you will come back to your portfolio every time you need to add new work.
Paid:
- Squarespace : In addition to solely funding the podcast industry, this user-friendly hosting site provides you with a plug-and-play website with templates that you can customize as much or less as you like. Personal accounts cost $ 16 a month or $ 144 on a one-year contract.
- Hover over : you don’t need to buy a personal domain for your portfolio. But if you do, Hover is my favorite registrar. It has a clean interface, offers a wide variety of TLDs such as .me, .art and .tech, and hides your personal information from the public Whois database.
Is free:
- Tumblr : If you don’t like the idea of paying forever to keep your site alive on Squarespace, Tumblr is a good free alternative with its own free and paid templates . The platform was built for blogs, not portfolios, so you might have to dig into the settings to get it set up just the way you like it. And don’t worry about any association with Tumblr – if you buy your own domain and change a few things in your theme settings, no one even knows it’s Tumblr.
- Contently : A good solution for freelance writers. Contently’s real customers are marketing companies looking to hire creatives, so they let them build free portfolios. As an editor, I was always happy when a potential writer sent me their Contently page.
While those are my favorites, look for other options like About.me , Behance, or Dropr . Just pick a tool within the first hour, otherwise you will wear out before you do the real work. A good portfolio is still better than no portfolio.
Easy to find
Don’t hide your portfolio. Link to it from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and from anywhere that appears when you enter your name into Google. Listen to comic artist Riana Seeg (whose thread inspired this post):
You shouldn’t write anything nasty or derogatory about your job search. The URL field on your Twitter profile is often enough. But if you want it to be crystal clear that you are available to work, do it!
Keep him posted
When you have this suction cup, you must keep it fresh. Otherwise, you will look like you haven’t accomplished anything since the day you did it. Let your sense of duty oppress you! You can raise it only by updating your portfolio!
It’s like cleaning a bathroom: you hate to start doing it, but when it’s done, you will feel so good. And unlike your bathroom (I hope), your portfolio will bring back fond memories of your best work, and you will feel successful, productive and worthy of new opportunities. Portfolio management is a great therapy.
Don’t be these guys
Over the years, I have hired designers, writers, artists, photographers, actors, coders, film crew, handymen and carpenters. I’ve searched for interview topics, expert sources, and podcast guests across all industries. In all of these cases, anyone with a portfolio, video, or even a simple list of past work had a huge advantage.
Even when you are looking for work through job applications or personal connections, you need a portfolio. Many times I got excited about a candidate, but I needed to demonstrate its value to my boss, my team, or a friend looking to outsource the job. Without the coil, it didn’t matter if I spoke to the promising actor. Without a portfolio, I couldn’t have become an illustrator. It shocked me how many qualified candidates lost opportunities because they did not set an example to the world for their work. Most of them never found out.
Don’t be this cautionary tale. Build your portfolio and get the job you really want.