Tips for creating and optimizing your job portfolio website
Everyone has a resume, they are a necessity when it comes to applying for a job, but why stop there? A great way to make yourself stand out, highlight your work and show off your personal style is to create a job portfolio website.
If you have never heard of a job portfolio website, don’t worry. They are very straightforward. A job portfolio is an organized way of sharing your prior work and skills with potential employers. For example, a film student would want to put any relevant short films or screenplays they have created on a job portfolio, whereas a computer science student could highlight their most impressive code or successful projects they’ve worked on. A job portfolio is a great way of creating a visualizer for your work so that employers can see your skills firsthand.
While there are a lot of different ways to go about creating a job portfolio, each portfolio should follow some basic rules:
- Collect all the materials you want to use in your portfolio.
Have you been a part of any senior projects, award-winning organizations or independent activities that demonstrate your skills? Maybe there was an assignment that you aced, or maybe you're really proud of your thesis project. Whatever it is that best highlights your skill set and demonstrates the value you can bring to future employers, consider adding it to your portfolio.
School projects aren’t the only way to build a portfolio. College provides a wonderful time for exploration that allows you to engage in activities and projects outside of the school curriculum— i.e., a YouTube channel, a personal construction project, pictures of volunteer work and activism, etc. Highlight the entirety of your creative and professional spectrum to give yourself a well-rounded appeal. While an employer might be looking for a specific set of skills to fill a position, they are looking for people who are more than just a set of skills.
- Organize your materials so that employers can find information easily.
The most prominent thing on your job portfolio website should be your name, followed by the positions you are skilled in or looking to fill. Don’t make people guess as to what you are interested in, and make sure that they remember your name! Many people will use their name as the domain or URL for their job portfolio website, which can be very helpful for getting recognition.
Make sure that your portfolio is well organized. If there is anything that will make a future employer toss your application straight into the garbage, it's disorganization. You want your portfolio to be clearly laid out, labeled, and for it to require minimal page navigation. If an employer has to click three to five times before they get to the important information, they probably won’t ever see it.
Make sure to check out examples of other people’s job portfolios! There are plenty of examples online that can help you determine proper formatting and content. Don’t be afraid to experiment and see what looks best!
- Choose a free online portfolio template.
There are a multitude of websites and templates to choose from when it comes to creating your portfolio. Softwares like Adobe Express and Canva can help you design the aesthetics, while websites like WIX and Squarespace can provide great templates and instructions for creating your website.
While templates can be helpful, they shouldn’t feel limiting. Templates can provide great references for: how much info should be on one page, how many pages should you have, how to format text and pictures together, and how to create a coherent aesthetic that doesn't distract.
Whether it be free software or if you have the money to pay for extra features, these online templates can help you figure out a professional yet pleasing format that will catch eyes and keep them. Each service has its benefits, so be sure to research your options before you jump in.
- Make your portfolio visually appealing by showing visual demonstrations of your work.
A major part of any portfolio is going to be your completed work. A resume is a great place to summarize yourself, your skills, and your experience. A portfolio is a great place to actively demonstrate your work in full. If you have a video you created or edited that you are really proud of, a paper or a grant proposal that was received well, or anything that can be visualized and shown… put it in the portfolio.
Portfolios should be seen before they are read. While written information is very important for contextualizing your work, a prospective employer should be able to tell what the work is by the visual that is provided. If an employer has to read through paragraphs of text to get the full picture, your portfolio will start to feel more like a lengthy resume, and you may not get the attention you’re looking for. Take advantage of the creative freedom and find impactful pictures, videos, and graphics that can actively show what work you did.
If you are having trouble deciding what should and shouldn’t go in, picture yourself in an interview setting being asked the question: “Why does this matter?” If you can explain why it is important to you, your experience, and how it has developed or demonstrated your skills, then you should include it. If you find yourself having trouble with that explanation, come back to it once your portfolio is more filled out, and see if it is still necessary.
- Decide on an overarching theme that aligns with your personal brand.
Resumes are meant to be professional, clean, and simple. Portfolios should be as well, but they also provide you a chance to express your creative side. Striking images, fun themes, flowery prose, vibrant color palettes, etc. This is your chance to have fun and create an aesthetic that represents you!
This isn’t to say there aren’t rules to follow while doing this. You still want to keep things clean. Make sure that your creative additions don’t translate into visual clutter, but instead draw attention to the important work on your portfolio you want to highlight. Have your images correlate with the content on the page, make sure your color schemes and graphics are matching, and format your pages so that they are not overloaded with content.
- Put yourself out there!
Once your portfolio is completed, the only thing left to do is make sure people see it! A website is a great medium for your portfolio because it is easily accessible, long-lasting, and you can share it with a link! Once you have your website domain, it should be on every piece of personal marketing you put out there: business cards, resumes, social media accounts, etc. The more people see your work, the more likely they are to think of you when they need similar work done.
A portfolio is a creative and fun way of showing off your work. It gives you more space to elaborate on your achievements and work beyond the restrictions of a typical resume, as well as space to be artistically creative. If you are hitting a wall with resume building, a portfolio could be exactly what you need to reignite your motivation and get your creative juices flowing.